Conservative MP Laurie Hawn (Edmonton Centre, Alta.) made the comment on Thursday as he also disclosed that the Department of National Defence will likely have to delay the purchase of any F-35s by at least one or two years, possibly more, beyond its current initial acquisition target year of 2017 because of delays and rising costs.
Furthermore, Mr. Hawn told The Hill Times he expects a top-level interdepartmental secretariat the government is establishing to take over management of the fighter acquisition project from the Department of National Defence will in the end verify that the F-35, still in testing and development stages, is the only aircraft that can meet top-secret operating requirements that the Air Force has established for Canada’s new fighter fleet, thus vindicating National Defence and the Public Works Department following a scathing report by Auditor General Michael Fraser in April.
Mr. Hawn, who was Parliamentary secretary to Defence Minister Peter MacKay (Central Nova, N.S.) through the period that led to the government’s 2010 decision to buy 65 F-35s, which the government claimed at the time would cost $14.7-billion for acquisition and sustainment and operating costs over 20 years, said there is no need to “panic” over delays in acquiring new fighters, with National Defence citing 2017 as the first delivery date in a recent report to Parliament.
“I think it’s probably going to be later than that,” Mr. Hawn. “We’re not in any position to put anybody in a panic yet.”
“We’ve got the (Public Works and Government Services) secretariat, let it do its work, let it verify, which they will, they’re very competent, and they will verify that that airplane is the only airplane that meets our requirement,” Mr. Hawn said.
Liberal MP Gerry Byrne (Humber-St. Barbe-Baie Verte, Nfld.), a member of the Commons Public Accounts Committee that is conducting an inquiry into Mr. Ferguson’s findings, agreed, and also reacted strongly to Mr. Hawn’s statement about the huge gap between the operating cost of the current CF-18 fleet and the forecast cost of flying the F-35s.
A U.S. Department of Defense report to Congress last March estimated the F-35A, the Air Force version of the F-35 that Canada would acquire, will cost $32,000 per flying hour for each aircraft to maintain, sustain and operate, 42 per cent more than the $22,000 per hour cost of maintaining and operating U.S. Air Force F-16s.
A senior National Defence official involved in the F-35 project recently told the Public Accounts Committee the new stealth aircraft, with pioneer computer systems that require 24 million lines of code, would cost more to operate than the CF-18, but did not elaborate. At a later committee meeting, Defence officials were asked what the CF-18 hourly operating and flying costs were, but told the committee they did not have them at hand.
Mr. MacKay has said several times the F-35 operating costs would be similar to CF-18 operating costs, and that was why the government did not include them in the 20-year costs National Defence provided to Parliament.
Mr. Hawn told The Hill Timeson Thursday, in an interview after Question Period, that the CF-18 operating costs are roughly $19,000 per flying hour.
“If you look at just the operating, fuel and oil (and other direct costs), it’s nineteen thousand, nineteen five, nineteen six, something like that,” said Mr. Hawn, a former CF-18 pilot.
Mr. Byrne said Mr. Hawn’s disclosure of the CF-18 costs suggests the National Defence officials were not straightforward with the Public Accounts Committee.
“Someone is lying,” Mr. Byrne told The Hill Times. “Now we just need Parliament to find out who.”
Mr. Hawn dismissed the F-35 operating cost forecast as “all guess.”
“Do we know exactly what the F-35 is going to cost? No, it’s probably going to cost more per flying hour than the F-18, but we’re going to have a smaller fleet, I’m not sure how many flying hours we’re going to fly per year, probably less,” Mr. Hawn said.
“Those numbers on the F-35 are estimates, and that’s the fallacy, they’re trying to determine a lifecycle cost out to 30, 40 years. There’s no idea, what’s the cost of fuel, what’s the cost of diesel, what missions are we going to do, where are we going to wind up fighting. We have no clue,” he said.
The government established a new secretariat within the Public Works and Government Services Department to oversee the procurement of a fighter jet to replace the aging CF-18s following Mr. Ferguson’s critical report on the program’s management over the past six years.
Mr. Ferguson singled out events that took place in the months leading to the government’s July, 2010, announcement it would acquire the F-35s, saying National Defence omitted $10-billion in operating costs in a report to Parliament prior to the May 2, 2011, federal election. The auditor general said Public Works failed to demonstrate due diligence when it accepted a one-page letter from National Defence in June 2010, as justification the F-35 could be acquired without a competition.
Public Works accepted the letter as legal evidence that National Defence could acquire the F-35s on a sole-source procurement basis because they were the only aircraft that met the operating requirements National Defence had established for the new fighter.
In its announcement setting out the new secretariat to take over the project, which will be led within Public Works by the deputy ministers of both the departments, Mr. Ferguson criticized, as well as the deputy minister of Industry Canada and senior officials from the Privy Council Office, the Treasury Board Secretariat and the Finance Department, the government said National Defence would “continue to evaluate options to sustain a Canadian Forces fighter capability well into the 21st Century.”
The phrase led MPs and observers to believe the government was open to consideration of new fighter jets other than the F-35s being developed by Texas-based Lockheed Martin under the auspices of a nine-country consortium, including Canada and the U.S., that are taking part in the project with the option of acquiring F-35s to qualify for global civilian sustainment contracts throughout the aircraft lifetime.
The government later changed the name of the panel from the F-35 Secretariat to the National Fighter Procurement Secretariat, apparently in reaction to criticism that National Defence intended to continue on with its plan for the F-35, despite the placement of the project within Public Works under new management.
NDP MP Matthew Kellway (Beaches-East York, Ont.) said Mr. Hawn’s belief that the secretariat will eventually verify selection of the F-35s signals that the government has never intended to consider other options.
“His confidence the F-35 will be the plane that this secretariat will choose is well founded, because it’s pre-determined,” Mr. Kellway said. “The fix has been in with this government since 2006. They’ve made the decision, multiple times, and confirmed that decision multiple times, and here is a member of the government once again confirming that’s going to be the decision they’ll make, one more time.”
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: Tim Naumetz
No comments:
Post a Comment