Put F-35 debate in context

The auditor general's report on the F-35 aside, no one knows what Canada will pay for the Joint Strike Fighter, and they won't until a final price is negotiated. So, in the inimitable words of Aislin, "Everybody take a Valium!"

Price estimates now range from $75 million to $162 million per aircraft. The nine partners in the JSF project are currently pressing the manufacturer (and the U.S. government, as program co-ordinator) to get costs down. The odds are, they will.

Things such as which tranche you buy in at, how many aircraft you buy, over what time frame, and where your currency is vis-a-vis the U.S. dollar at the time of signing, all will affect the prices each country pays -- just as with every other similar program.

As things stand now, the Canadian military still reckons the per-aircraft cost, as the U.S. Congress was told last week, is about $85 million and that the federal government still can purchase F-35s under the $9-billion ceiling the Harper government unnecessarily announced two years ago and boxed itself into for good last week.

Still, the overriding question remains: Does or doesn't Canada need a replacement for the CF-18s and if so, what performance should that replacement aircraft be capable of?

Unfortunately, sometimes ridiculously exaggerating what the AG had to say, politicians and other critics conflate these two, using the bureaucracy's and the government's handling of the procurement to question the need for the fifth-generation F-35 itself.

Let's live in the real world. Unless Canada decides drastically to change its defence strategy and becomes pacifist and isolationist, we will continue, as we have done for a century, to commit ourselves to military alliances and partnerships to further our national interests.

The competence and integrity of the folks at the Defence Department aside, what about the eight other partner countries in the program, and the Japanese, who have ordered 42 F-35s? Why are Europeans signed up to an American program when the EU nations already produces several newish fighter jets of their own. Are they all idiots, too?

The multinational JSF program follows on that of the F-16, another U.S. warplane chosen by many European countries about 30 years ago. As with the F-35, the F-16 had some initial teething problems but it was ultimately successful. This may explain why the F-35 European partner nations have shown more patience than Canadian critics.

As for Canada not having a competitive bidding process, neither did its JSF partners except the U.S., which chose Lockheed Martin's X-35 over Boeing's X-32. The Japanese, who are not partners, did hold a competition and concluded the JSF was better than Boeing's Super Hornet and the Eurofighter consortium's Typhoon.

There is no competition to be had if you want stealth and a networked capability because there are no other western aircraft being produced now that have this. It is THAT simple. The justification the U.S., Japan and most of their western European allies have accepted is that China and Russia are rushing to catch up with fifth-generation warplanes of their own.

The only reason for Canada to have a competition to replace its CF-18s is if it decides -- in advance -- that the stealthy fifth-generation aspects of the F-35 are not important. If they aren't, then the F-35 is going to lose any competition, because aside from these potentially revolutionary capabilities, it isn't that much different from the fourth-generation aircraft out there and of course, it costs more.

Much has been made of the United States Navy and the Royal Australian Air Force purchasing a relatively small number of additional, less expensive fourth-generation Super Hornets, with suggestions that Canada should follow their lead. This misrepresents those Super Hornet purchases. Those additional aircraft buys are intended to fill an operational gap due to F-35 production delays, not to replace them.

As for the fourth-generation alternatives to the F-35, several have had troubled histories. Sweden's Grippen had two very public and embarrassing prototype crashes. Nowhere near as advanced as the F-35, reams of its software code needed to be re-written, delaying the program and boosting costs. France's Rafale was long delayed, over budget, and it has little success in export sales despite years of expensive promotion. Eurofighter's Typhoon has experienced enormous problems, delays and cost overruns and has failed to attract buyers outside its builders' group. The only one that has had any real sales success has been the Super Hornet, and most its recent sales have been as bridge aircraft to the F-35.

Why have so few Super Hornets been sold? The one that stands out is that they are not in the same league as the F-35. The prospect of the JSF's arrival has helped keep other aircraft from selling well, as has the prospect of Russian and Chinese fighters in development.

Something else forgotten is that Canada spent several billion dollars to purchase C-17 heavy-lift transport aircraft and rebuilt CH-47 medium-lift helicopters for the Afghan mission without a tendering process. At the time, some demanded that Canada consider Airbus's A-400M heavy-lift transport. Well, the A-400M still has not entered service. We would still be waiting for it if it had won a competitive process.

Almost none of this has shown up in either the government's case for the F-35 or in the broader debate surrounding it.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition April 10, 2012 A11