And just what in the world would Canada do with an amphibious assault ship? What's the mission? Are they going to fill it with all of those helicopters that it has been trying to buy for 20 years or maybe some F-35b's? And where are the skilled personnel to man it going to come from?
Yes, the RCN has more pressing needs but an amphibious assault ship does have merit, albeit not Mistrals. In addition to real military applications, they could be marketed to the Canadian kumbayah public for humanitarian missions, which is a viable and reasonable mission need. Unfortunately, the Canadian public is too kumbayah about DND in general so the RCN will likely morph into a dysfunctional coastal navy.
Nations surrounding Canada (not many to begin with) don't often run into natural disasters on a scale the communities cannot handle on their own. That kinda eliminates the HADR role for a Canadian Mistral.
Haiti and the Carribean in general during hurricane season is an example. Rescuing citizens of convenience from their former countries (e.g. Lebanon) is another example albeit one I am not in favour of.
While this is true, mission like these (Haiti as an example) are widely supported by the Cdn. public and politicians alike. It feeds into this sort of narcissistic attitude Canadians have; we like to show off to the world how giving we are and how, unlike our neighbors to the south, we primarily use our military to help / rescue people and not conquer them (not my views - just trying to describe Cdn attitudes on these matters).
Is it? It's pretty normal. The USA has stopped deliveries quite a few times, as has just about everyone else - including France, more than once. It's in the rules. Go up against* your arms vendor, & it'll stop selling to you.
I refer you to my previous answer.
Although not explicit, I think that it should be understood that the above implies that armed aggression against a friendly nation, even if not an ally, is beyond the pale.
Eh. It gets complicated. Ultimately France is not required to stop those deliveries by aggression against a friendly nation. It's a decision based on expediency not on principle. Because Russian defense officials don't value the Mistral deal, they're willing to play a game with them, and are putting France in a position where delivering them will look bad, but not delivering them will be expensive. Notice how no similar issues have arisen with say Thales thermals for the T-90 and the T-72B3, or with the Thals TopSight for the MiG-29K and KUB variants.
Well, that and not being prepared not to sell them to Russia.
Had this been a Spanish sale (which I agree was not on), there would some interested parties. I would like to think Canada would consider this but it would be very unlikely. It would be a better deal than Mistrals though.
JC1 is a known quantity that won a pretty fair contest by a country that is pretty open about it. To be honest the Spanish should probably just build another hull and try to find someone to buy it, they probably would (ie zero risk build).
