Local firm to continue making parts F-35 fighter jets

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This article was published 04/11/2016 (3319 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Magellan Aerospace is going to be building horizontal tail assemblies for the F-35 joint strike force fighter jet for at least another two years.

Magellan’s Winnipeg division has been engaged in the F-35’s supply chain for almost a decade and is the largest Canadian structural supplier to the controversial jet.

It just announced a two-year extension with its customer, BAE Aerospace, one of the key suppliers to Lockheed Martin, the jet fighter’s developer.

Two years worth of production will mean about $70 million in revenue for Magellan, but the company stands to generate about $2 billion through the life of the F-35 program. Magellan has about 150 people employed on the project, and company officials say that number could triple as production ramps up during the next few years.

However, those long-term prospects will likely be altered if the Canadian government chooses to purchase a different jet fighter to replace its aging fleet of CF-18s.

Officials from National Defence, Public Services and Procurement Canada, and Innovation, Science and Economic Development are in the midst of an industry consultation with at least five fighter-aircraft manufacturers — Boeing, Dassault, Eurofighter, Lockheed Martin, and Saab — as well as governments that deploy the equipment.

The process is being undertaken “in order to gather the most current, up-to-date and accurate information on the various aircraft options available to meet Canada’s defence needs.”

Official documentation on the consultation process says it is neither a call for tenders nor a request for proposal and no summary or final report will be issued following the collection of information from industry.

The Trudeau government made it clear in the last election it did not want to buy the F-35, and there is speculation it favours the Boeing Super Hornet. Boeing officials were in Winnipeg in mid-October when they released an economic-impact study of its presence in Canada as part of efforts to bolster its profile as Ottawa continues to consider what kind of fighter jets it wants to buy.

Industry officials say once all the information from the consultation process is in, it’s expected Ottawa will make a decision by the end of this year or early 2017.

Scott McCrady, Magellan’s corporate F-35 program director and the chairman of the Canadian JSF Industrial Group, said Magellan is not worried about its customer honouring its contracts, but he also said there will likely be a migration of work out of Canada if the government chooses to buy another jet.

“If Canada makes a commitment to buy the full quantity (of jets) and it is not F-35s, there won’t be a cliff, but there will be an erosion of work, absolutely, out of Canada,” McCrady said.

Lockheed officials made that point publicly as recently as this past summer.

Magellan is on target to produce more than 1,000 sets of horizontal tail assemblies for the conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) variant of the F-35. Over the life of the F-35 program, that would represent about 50 per cent of the tail assemblies for that variant of the jet.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca