“For Canada to start wobbling at this stage would be a very, very serious blow to the program,” Bill Sweetman, chief editor for the Washington-based Defense Technology at Aviation Week, told The Hill Times on Wednesday.
Another leading U.S. military publication, which this week posted an exhaustive account of the turbulence created by rising costs in development, testing and production of the Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jet, predicted the Conservative government will likely go ahead with the acquisition, whatever results emerge from an independent audit of Canada’s projected F-35 costs that has now been delayed for at least a month.
“Canada will probably sign a contract by 2015, which would make it too expensive for any successor governments to cancel the program,” said an article summarizing the overall U.S. program in Defense Industry Daily.
“If the Conservative Party government doesn’t sign a contract before the next election [in 2015], they had better win again. Otherwise, the conduct of this acquisition program has so antagonized the opposition Liberal and NDP parties that the F-35 buy will be a priority target for cancellation,” the essay said.
Mr. Sweetman, who has chronicled opposition to the program in the U.S. and the spiraling cost of the state-of-the art fighter jet, said the Canadian government is likely under intense pressure from the U.S. to continue its acquisition plan, even if the number of fighters it acquires—originally 65—is forced down because of the growing price tag.
Recent estimates based on U.S. cost forecasts are now up to an estimated acquisition cost of more $120-million per plane for Canada compared to a 2010 government cost estimate of $75-million per aircraft, not including maintenance and operating costs for the lifetime of the fleet. The government has frozen the initial acquisition cost at $9-billion, and National Defence has internally estimated a further $16-billion for maintenance and operating costs over 20 years. The acquisition cost includes new infrastructure such as runway extensions.
Mr. Sweetman predicted Mr. Harper’s (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) government will press on with the F-35 acquisition despite statements that it is considering “all options” following Auditor General Michael Ferguson’s highly critical report of the multi-billion-dollar project last April. The government has also pointed out, as part of its response to Mr. Ferguson, that no planes have yet been purchased and no contracts to buy any of the aircraft have yet been signed.
“They’re saying that, but I don’t think they want to do that,” Mr. Sweetman said about the government’s attempt to signal it has not ruled any other aircraft out.
“What is happening in other countries [is] there is very strong pressure on the Canadians, on Canada, to buy the JSF [Joint Strike Fighter F-35], from the U.S.,” he said, referring to several countries who are part of a consortium developing the plane in partnership with the United States that have reduced the number of aircraft they intend to buy.
“Nobody ever likes to be forced by somebody else into accepting that they made an error, or simply that they didn’t exercise due diligence in making a decision. Due diligence in this case sort of meant seeing actually what else was on offer,” Mr. Sweetman said of the Conservative government’s predicament.
Liberal MP Marc Garneau (Westmount-Ville Marie, Que.) agreed the government is likely under U.S. pressure to stick with the F-35 acquisition, whatever new cost forecasts emerge from the independent audit. The government this week came under opposition fire after re-issuing a request for bids, giving contracting authority back to the Public Works Department despite criticism the department received from Mr. Ferguson. Opposition MPs said the new timetable means Parliamentary committees will likely be unable to scrutinize the estimates until next February, following the winter recess.
“I think it is under enormous pressure,” said Mr. Garneau, a former Canadian naval officer and astronaut who has been in space three times on NASA shuttle missions. “There are a number of partners who have partnered into this and if one of the partners decides to remove themselves—and over the last couple of years, countries like Italy and Norway and the Netherlands have made noises about delaying or cutting back or even pulling out—it’s the domino thing.”
Mr. Garneau noted that the Liberal Party was the first to bring attention to the need for a tendered contract for the F-35s two years ago. “We will continue to say that there has to be an open competition,” he said. “That is the only way to do this thing properly, and Canada must do that. The Conservative government has hemmed and hawed and made excuses, and now they’re talking about moving procurement into a secretariat under Public Works and all that, but they have not yet said, ‘We will hold an open competition,’ and we’re not going to stop until they do.”
The Public Works department as of Wednesday had not yet responded to questions The Hill Times asked about why the government gave responsibility for the auditing contract to PWGSC, rather than the independent Treasury Board Secretariat as originally proposed, or whether the government will table the audit report prior to the winter recess.
The deadline for submitting the final independent auditor report on F-35 costs to the government is now Nov. 27.
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: TIM NAUMETZ
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