Three articles below. And read a commentary on this subject by Derrick O’Keefe, the recently appointed editor of Rabble.ca, ‘F-35 scandal: We need a Canadian spring more than ever’, April 6, 2012.
Defence turned blind eye to warnings on F-35 delays, costs
By Lee Berthiaume, Postmedia News, March 16, 2012
http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Defence+turned+blind+warnings+delays+costs/6315925/story.html
Defence Department officials glossed over warnings that the F-35 project was facing serious scheduling and cost problems as they pitched the stealth fighter to the government in 2010, newly released documents indicate.
OTTAWA — Defence Department officials glossed over warnings that the F-35 project was facing serious scheduling and cost problems as they pitched the stealth fighter to the government in 2010, newly released documents indicate.
Rather, while Lockheed Martin was admitting the program was thousands of hours behind schedule and missing numerous benchmarks, the Canadian military was giving slick presentations highlighting the aircraft’s stealth capabilities.
The documents, provided to the Commons’ finance committee on Friday, have emerged following a report the auditor general is preparing to slam the department next month for misleading Parliament on its handling of the file.
When the Conservative government announced in July 2010 that Canada was planning to buy 65 F-35s for $9 billion to replace the country’s aging fleet of CF-18s, it did so with great fanfare. “This aircraft is the best that we can provide our men and women in uniform, and this government is committed to giving them the very best,” Defence Minister Peter MacKay told reporters after entering with a military band.
That message was consistent with what Defence Department officials themselves were saying about the stealth fighter in flashy presentations aimed at convincing the government to purchase the aircraft. One slide from an undated presentation entitled “The Road to Recommendation,” for example, says that “4th-generation” non-stealth fighters can succeed at their missions, “but with high attrition (and) significant support assets required.”
The description is accompanied by an illustration showing dozens of supposedly Canadian aircraft being forced to run a gauntlet of enemy fighters and anti-aircraft munitions to hit a “high value target.”
The next slide, in contrast, shows “5th-generation” stealth fighters making a beeline to the target, easily avoiding any enemies along the way. The benefits of stealth, the accompanying description says, are “threat avoided or defeated, reduced force requirements, low support requirement, and low attrition.”
Another slide states that “stealth provides threat avoidance, survivability and mission success” while indicating that such capabilities reduce the risk of being shot down by 95 per cent.
Other slides describe the F-35 as the “lowest cost for aircraft” while highlighting the estimated $12 billion in economic benefits Canadian companies would enjoy if the government signed on the dotted line.
The same messages are repeated in several other presentations, including a package of slides for a technical briefing dated March 17, 2010 — four months before the government announced its decision to buy the F-35.
The March presentation notes that “to date, more than 680 flights (have been) flown by (F-35) aircraft generating some 1,000 flight hours.” It adds that the stealth fighter program was being continuously reviewed and that a “program restructure” in January 2011 would provide “a solid and realistic foundation for development, production and sustainment.”
Mentioned only in passing, however, was that the F-35 program was already behind schedule — a fact that had been repeatedly highlighted less than a week earlier in a Lockheed Martin presentation to partner nations in Fort Worth, Texas. In contrast to the Defence Department presentations, Lockheed Martin acknowledged that of 298 test flights planned for 2009, only 54 had been conducted, and that the entire program was more than 11,000 hours behind schedule.
The company also noted that the company was having a hard time securing material for its aircraft while a number of other performance targets had been missed. None of this was mentioned in the Defence Department documents.
In defending its decision to purchase the F-35, the Conservative government has stated it is buying the best aircraft — based on the information provided to it.
The National Post reported Thursday that Auditor General Michael Ferguson has accused the military of misleading Parliament on the F-35 in the first draft of a report to be released next month. The Canadian Forces was accused by Ferguson’s predecessor, Sheila Fraser, in October 2010 of misleading politicians and top bureaucrats when it came to buying 28 Cyclone and 15 Chinook helicopters.
Liberal defence critic John McKay said Friday that he has had a growing suspicion the military did not provide “the straight goods” when it came to the pros and cons of the F-35 project. “It does speak to the issue of the military’s ability to snowball politicians,” he said. “Having said that, this is a government that basically snookered themselves by wrapping themselves in the military’s flag so they can no longer critique the military.”
Alan Williams, former head of military equipment purchases, said the Canadian Forces does sometimes make mistakes, such as underestimating the cost of bringing the four Victoria-class submarines online. But he had no doubt the military intentionally distorted the facts on the F-35. “This is the first case that I can recall of a clear and unambiguous hijacking of the process,” he said.
On Friday, Associate Defence Minister Julian Fantino told defence industry representatives that contingencies built into the government’s plan to purchase the F-35s have accounted for the cost overruns while recent upgrades to Canada’s fleet of CF-18s has given it a buffer against delays.
Fantino announced that Canadian companies have so far acquired $435 million worth of contracts related to the F-35, and “if these companies deliver high-quality work, and I have full confidence that they will and in fact they are, then we expect that they will keep these contracts over the life of the F-35 program.”
Several defence industry representatives said after Fantino’s presentation that they still expect the government to move ahead with the F-35.
Government’s resolve wavers in plan to buy F-35 fighter jet
By CAMPBELL CLARK, Globe and Mail, March 13, 2012
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/governments-resolve-wavers-in-plan-to-buy-f-35-fighter-jets/article2367979/
Fantino concedes delays and costs are prompting the Harper government ‘to think it through further,’ a major shift in tone since 2010
The Harper government is conceding it might back out of its multibillion-dollar plan to buy F-35 stealth fighters.
Delays and setbacks have cast confusion over the price tag of the fighter jets, so Ottawa is now acknowledging it will have to wait and see how much they will cost – even if it doesn’t have a clear idea of a Plan B.
It is a marked change in tone for a government that pledged its commitment to the F-35s in 2010 at a news conference complete with a military band. Ottawa stuck by the plan while the development of the plane was riddled with problems, insisting it was the only plane to do the job, and the order would create jobs in Canada.
At a meeting of the Commons defence committee, Julian Fantino, the associate defence minister now overseeing the purchase of military equipment, repeatedly used the word “if” when referring to buying the planes – although he maintained the government is still convinced they are the best available.
“But we have not as yet discounted the possibility, of course, [of] backing out of the program,” he told MPs. “None of the partners have … And we’ll just have to think it through further as time goes on. But we are confident that we will not leave Canada or our men and women in uniform in the lurch.”
The partners Mr. Fantino was referring to are the other eight countries who entered into a arrangement with the United States to develop the so-called Joint Strike Fighter, but are now nervously waiting to see if they will be delivered on time to replace their existing jets, and at what cost.
Canada, too, is in that boat. It had planned to buy 65 of the F-35s, taking delivery in 2016 so that they can replace the current CF-18 fighters, due to be retired between 2017 and 2020. The government has mused recently about trying to extend the life of the CF-18s if the F-35s are not delivered on time – but that still doesn’t get around the problem of what to do if the fighters are just too expensive.
Mr. Fantino said that the defence department is planning for contingencies, but is still at the “what-if” stage. The defence department’s assistant deputy minister for material, Dan Ross, said there aren’t any new alternatives that have come on the market in recent years. “We continue to monitor the options available to us around the world. We really don’t see any change in what’s available out there.”
The government said in 2010 that it would spend $9-billion to buy the jets, along with a package of spare parts. But it estimated the cost at $75-million per plane and some estimates are now running more than twice that much. Senior Royal Canadian Air Force officers have insisted that 65 fighters is the minimum number they need, and Mr. Fantino said the government is sticking to the $9-billion budget.
“We will be spending the allotted amount of $9-billion for the acquisition if we are going to go there,” he said.
The latest wrinkle is a delay in U.S. orders that is setting back production schedules and expected to increase the price tag. Washington decided to delay the production of 179 fighters, because the Pentagon’s practice of buying some fighters while the design is still being developed led to high costs for retrofits.
Canada convened a meeting at its embassy in Washington with other F-35 countries, but Mr. Fantino said they didn’t get new cost figures from U.S. officials.
Despite the admission that Ottawa hasn’t ruled out backing out from buying the F-35s, Mr. Fantino continued to insist that the government is committed to the Joint Strike Fighter – even though he acknowledged that no decision has been made on whether to order them.
“Well, I’m being realistic,” he told reporters later. “Until such time as the purchase is actually signed and ready to go, I think the only appropriate answer for me is to be forthright.”
The NDP’s military procurement critic, Christine Moore, said Mr. Fantino’s comments were a dramatic change in tone for the government. She said it highlighted the reasons why the government should have held a competitive tender for fighter jets after it came to power, and developed an alternative plan to the F-35s.
“When you’re talking about an important purchase like this, I think it’s essential to have an alternative solution, and they didn’t even do that,” she said
Fewer jets, higher costs, nervous buyers
By Jeffrey Simpson, Globe and Mail, March 16, 2012
Even the Harper government can no longer deny the reality about F-35 costs
Finally, the federal government is beginning to admit what everyone following the F-35 fighter jet file has known for a long time: The jets will cost more, likely way more, than the government has repeatedly insisted.
This emerging reality about the F-35s, and the government’s long stubborn resistance to acknowledge that reality, is part of a disturbing pattern. Faced with inconvenient facts, Stephen Harper’s government often denies them, or plows ahead in defiance of them. The F-35 contract is one example among many.
We saw this attitude on display when the government scrapped the mandatory long-form census in the face of near-unanimous opposition from experts in statistics and users of that material.
We saw it with some of the “tough on crime” measures, such as mandatory minimum sentences, which were condemned as an effective tool against crime by every judge, criminologist and prison expert, including many from the United States, where such sentences have been tried and have failed.
We continue to see it with the government’s constant repetition that Canada will reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 17 per cent from 2005 levels by 2020, a target no one outside the government (and civil servants within it) believes will be reached.
We saw it with the two-point reduction of the goods and services tax, a move denounced by the vast majority of economists and done in defiance of advice to all governments from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
As for the F-35s, evidence from Washington for many months has underscored the unreliability of the per-unit costs of the stealth fighter that Canada and other countries have committed to buy. Some countries have already postponed orders; others have said they will wait until more hard evidence becomes available. A recent meeting in Washington of the buyers, convened by Canada (!), has underscored the deep worries about the project.
Apart from the political issue of having said one thing and now beginning to say another, the Harper government’s problem is that 65 jets is about the minimum number required by the air force. Attrition inevitably takes its toll on aircraft, so what begins as a group that size will become smaller over time.
If the per-plane cost rises, the government could buy fewer of them, but that would risk the planes’ operational effectiveness. Alternatively, the government could pay for 65 planes at the higher per-plane cost, but that would blow the budget for a department about to experience a period of restraint as part of the government’s deficit-reduction efforts.
In addition, although it comes from another part of the department’s budget, defence has another big headache the government has tended to deny: the four disastrous diesel-electric submarines purchased years ago from Britain.
The Harper government inherited these lemons and has spent huge sums trying to make them work properly, but is now faced with another large bill to make them operational. There are those in the government and the military (not submariners, presumably) who would like to can the whole project, on the theory that no good money should be thrown after bad.
Or, these critics argue, only the bare minimum of money should be put into the four subs. They would then operate at something less than full capability while Ottawa begins planning for another submarine purchase when money becomes available.
Three versions of the F-35 are being developed. The one with the worst problems is the short-takeoff version designed for the U.S. Marines; the model Canada is supposed to buy has not been plagued by the same problems, but the per-unit cost is still going to be higher than what the government had said.
Given the size of the U.S. deficit, the Pentagon’s budget is going to be cut, and the F-35 program, the department’s most expensive weapons-procurement project, will not escape cuts. Fewer planes will mean higher per-unit costs, which is among the reasons Canada and the other would-be purchasers are nervous.
This reality has been evident for some time, no matter how many times the Harper government has denied it. Finally, ministers are beginning to fess up.
