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 contract 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 Friday 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.
Original Article
Source: ottawa citizen
Author: Lee Berthiaume
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