What indicates an intentional effort to mislead Canadians, some of them argue, is that the government and military repeatedly have laid out the cost of maintaining and sustaining the stealth fighters for 20 years instead of the aircraft's full 36-year life expectancy — despite those longer-term numbers being available.
The Conservative government admitted Thursday that it knew weeks before the last year's federal election that the full cost of obtaining, maintaining and operating 65 F-35s would be more than $25 billion, rather than the $14.7 billion put forward by National Defence.
It insisted it was merely reporting the cost of purchasing and maintaining the stealth fighters, and did not include pilot salaries, training costs, jet fuel and other expenses because they would be incurred no matter which aircraft was bought.
While the government has said it will include all such costs going forward, Alan Williams, a former Defence Department official who spent years overseeing military purchases, said excluding such additional expenses is not unusual.
"If you want to cost a new acquisition, you typically don't include what it costs to operate," he said Monday. "Maybe you should do that, but that's not normally reported."
The bigger question, said Williams, is why estimates from National Defence and the government only projected the cost of maintaining and sustaining the F-35s for 20 years when it knew the aircraft would be used for more than 30.
"That's a known distortion," Williams said. "If you have as your intent to be as open as possible, you don't do that."
There is no question that government and military intends the F-35 or whichever other aircraft replaces Canada's aging fleet of CF-18s to remain the country's main aerial fighter until the middle of the century.
"It has to go for at least 30 years, which is our typical expectation," Royal Canadian Air Force commander Lt.-Gen. Andre Deschamps told a parliamentary committee on Sept. 15, 2010.
However, its cost projections have consistently stopped at 20 years — a fact that raised eyebrows with both the parliamentary budget officer and the auditor general.
"In presenting costs to government decision makers and to Parliament, National Defence estimated life-cycle costs over 20 years," Auditor General Michael Ferguson wrote in his report, released last week. "This practice understates operating, personnel, and sustainment costs, as well as some capital costs, because the time period is shorter than the aircraft's estimated life expectancy."
A government official said 36-year cost projections will be included going forward. However, he refused to say why the government has not included them in the past.
Instead, the official pointed to comments made by the Defence Department bureaucrat in charge of military procurement, Dan Ross, to a parliamentary committee in December 2010 in response to a question about military helicopters.
"We all drive cars, but no one here can tell me what the price of gas is going to be next week," he said. "To predict what it's going to be 30 years from now — or the cost of aluminum, repairs, and repair and overhaul — is a very difficult business."
Ferguson's report, however, said the military does have long-term figures for the F-35.
"The estimated life expectancy of the F-35 is about 8,000 flying hours, or about 36 years based on predicted usage," Ferguson wrote. "National Defence plans to operate the fleet for at least that long. It is able to estimate costs over 36 years."
The auditor general added that the multinational office responsible for overseeing the F-35 program actually was providing National Defence with 36-year costs.
University of Ottawa military expert Philippe Lagasse said that by capping the estimates at 20 years, the government has been able to exclude not only long-term maintenance expenses, but costs related to buying replacement F-35s and upgrading the fleet.
Williams and Lagasse said they believe the decision was intentional.
"Already the figure was rather large and it's a good way to keep the number low, artificially low, and to make it more palpable," Lagasse said. "Why did they package it that way? Because it's easier to swallow."
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Lee Berthiaume
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