The detailed report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office on F-35 testing and development problems—which the report suggested the program as it was originally planned is at risk—came out only a day after the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) unveiled a high-level committee of bureaucrats and outside experts, including former federal auditor general Denis Desautels, that will take charge of Canada’s F-35 acquisition program following a scathing report from Auditor General Michael Ferguson last April.
The F-35 report from the U.S. Congress Budget Accountability Office, a spending watchdog for all U.S. government programs that also has investigative powers, revealed development delays that could affect the Canadian government’s original plan to begin acquiring fully operational F-35s by 2020—the year the government has cited for retirement of Canada’s only fleet of fighter jets, aging CF-18 Hornets that were acquired in the early 1980s. “Full rate production is now planned for 2019, a delay of six years from the 2007 baseline,” says the report from the Budget Accountability Office.
The report confirmed projected U.S. acquisition costs for the aircraft, the largest military procurement in U.S. history with the Department of Defense planning to buy 2,457 of the warplanes, have soared to $395.7-billion from a $233-billion estimate when the program began.
The report reveals the U.S Department of Defense has established an "affordability" target for the cost of flying and maintaining the air force variant of the F-35—the version Canada plans to acquire—at $35,200 per flying hour for each aircraft. The cost of flying Canada's existing CF-18 fighter jets is about $19,000 per flying hour, Conservative MP Laurie Hawn (Edmonton Centre, Alta.), the former Parliamentary Secretary to Defence Minister Peter MacKay (Central Nova, N.S), recently told The Hill Times. Prior to and during the 2011 federal election, up to the auditor general’s April report, Mr. Harper and Mr. MacKay had insisted F-35 production delays and problems would not significantly affect the cost of the 65 F-35 stealth planes the government announced in 2010 it would acquire.
The first indication the government expected acquisition costs would be higher than planned came during a series of House of Commons Public Accounts Committee hearings into Mr. Ferguson’s report, when a senior National Defence official acknowledged the acquisition cost is now estimated to be about $85-million per plane, compared to the original 2010 price tag of $75-million for each aircraft. Other experts now put the acquisition cost between $120-million and $125-million per plane.
The government has frozen a $9-billiion budget to acquire the 65 jets, but its $14-billion budget for maintenance and sustainment over 20 years came into question after the auditor general said National Defence and Cabinet had withheld more than $10-billion worth of costs for operations and personnel from Parliament and the public.
The U.S. Department of Defense formally briefed Canada’s National Defence May 2 on what the 65 aircraft Canada planned to acquire are now expected to cost, but National Defence has not made public those estimates.
Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose (Edmonton-Spruce Grove, Alta.), responsible for a new secretariat within her department to manage the project, said the estimates based on the U.S. briefings will not be tabled in the Commons until October, contrary to the government’s promise in the wake of Mr. Ferguson’s report that the figures would be tabled within 60 days of obtaining the cost estimates from the U.S.
Ms. Ambrose also announced Treasury Board will contract an independent review, from outside government, to verify the new National Defence estimates, and the forecast cannot be tabled until after the review. “The long-stated intent that the JSF program would deliver an affordable, highly common fifth-generation fighter aircraft that could be acquired in large numbers is at risk,” the U.S. Government Accountability Report says. “Continued increases in aircraft prices erode buying power and may make it difficult for the U.S. and international partners to buy as many aircraft as planned and to do so within the intended time frame.”
Opposition MPs said the report is evidence the Conservative government has hidden information about problems the F-35 is facing, with rising costs and delays, and the mountain of information contained in the report is in stark contrast to the skimpy amount of information the Harper government has released.
“The report confirms that this government has decided to buy a pig in a poke, and has invested nearly a $1-billion into it,” said NDP MP Matthew Kellway (Beaches-East York, Ont.).
Liberal MP Gerry Byrne (Humber-Ste. Barbe-Baie Verte, Nfld.) said the report not only sums up the risks the F-35 project faces, but also shows how secretive the Conservative government is about the project, compared to the U.S.
“The Harper government has to sit up and take notice that, despite being obviously more vested in this fighter jet than anyone else, the U.S. government is raising serious red flags about their own jet while the Canadian government is involved in a cover up,” Mr. Byrne said.
The report recommends U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration take action by directing a review of the impact postponement of high numbers of U.S. Department of Defence F-35 acquisitions will affect the program’s cost and schedule, and a separate directive to the Department of Defence Joint Strike Fighter Program for a “comprehensive assessment” of a global supply chain the Harper government has said will offer Canadian aerospace firms an opportunity to bid on nearly $10-billion worth of supply contracts. The report contained some of the worst news the U.S. and its eight partner countries have heard about the F-35 this year, coming in the wake of an earlier report from the Government Accountability Office as well as criticism from the Armed Services committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.
Through 2011, the project’s flight-test program had completed only 21 per cent of nearly 60,000 planned flight test points.
“Initial development flights tests of a fully integrated, capable JSF (Joint Strike Fighter) aircraft to demonstrate full mission systems capabilities, weapons delivery, and autonomic logistics is not expected until 2015 at the earliest,” the report said. “This will be critical for verifying that the JSF aircraft will work as intended and for demonstrating that the design is not likely to need costly changes.”
The report cited the 24 million lines of computer code required to fly the F-35 and, warning that software is “critical to the delivery of war fighter capabilities,” said only four per cent of the computerized mission systems the plane needs to “provide core combat capability” have been verified.
The global supply chain that will allow Canada and other countries to bid for contracts as part of production and sustainment for the F-35 aircraft around the world—a key part of the Canadian government’s argument in favour of acquiring the aircraft—also came under criticism.
“Overseas suppliers are playing a major and increasing role in JSF manufacturing and logistics,” the report says. “For example, center fuselage and wings will be manufactured by Turkish and Italian suppliers, respectively, as second sources. In addition to ongoing supplier challenges—parts shortages, failed parts, and late deliveries—incorporating international suppliers presents other challenges. The program must deal with exchange rate fluctuations, disagreements over work shares, and technology transfer concerns.”
The report sharply contrasts with a glowing report on the F-35 project that was published online in Forbes magazine this week. “Few outsiders realize how smoothly the F-35 flight-test schedule is unfolding,” said the article, which Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro (Peterborough, Ont.) tweeted as evidence Canadian news media have not presented an accurate picture of the F-35 problems.
“This article tells a pretty different story on the F-35 program that most of you have likely read or heard,” Mr. Del Mastro said in his Twitter link to the column, written by a U.S. defence journalist.
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: Tim Naumetz
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