F-18s on the Brain

I watched the last episode of Jetstream last night. It’s a TV show following a class of Canadian CF-18 pilot trainees through their training course. It was a great trauma for me when I had to get eyeglasses in grade 3, meaning I could never be a fighter pilot.

Speaking of F-18s: India had a deal with Russia to buy a refurbished Admiral Gorshkov, a 40,000-ton “cruiser carrier”. Seems the Russian shipyard has been stalling and asking for more money, and threatening to hold back delivery of the ship for several years longer than agreed.

Meanwhile, the USS Kitty Hawk, an 80,000-ton conventional carrier, is slated to be decomissioned this year. So the US has offered to give it for free to India. I can only see this as a good thing. I’d far rather see democratic India holding the balance of power in the Indian Ocean, rather than, say, totalitarian China.

Anyway, if India accepts the offer, it makes it more likely that India will choose American F-18s in its next round of fighter purchases, since the US carrier is already set up to, er, carry them, which brings this post back around to a neat literary close.