The revelation — which one analyst says is completely wrong — emerges as the NDP prepares to hold its own hearings into the government’s plans to purchase the controversial fighter jet.
Since the Harper government announced its intention to purchase 65 F-35s in July 2010, it and the Defence Department have maintained that the cost of sustaining the fleet would run in the same order of magnitude as Canada’s CF-18s.
But e-mails obtained by Postmedia News show Defence officials began quietly questioning that assertion in August 2011.
Officials noted that a number of reports out of the United States had estimated the cost of sustaining the F-35s to be between 22 per cent and 50 per cent higher than the American military’s F-18s and F-16s.
Asked why the Canadian military was putting forward the statement that the F-35s and CF-18s would cost the same to sustain, project manager Troy Crosby replied on Aug. 30, 2011: “These statements caught my eye as well, but I let them go unchallenged for now under the assumption that the historical figures had been rationalized.”
The next day, another official, Major John Edelman of the Next Generation Fighter Capability Office, also weighed in.
“I am also looking into the statement on the average sustainment costs of the CF-18,” he wrote. “I am not sure that we are comparing apples and apples here as our definition of sustainment costs are quite likely different from that of the CF-18.”
The e-mails show officials were actually unable to find the original CF-18 project costs, and so used a number of formulas to come up with an estimate of $198 million per year to sustain the entire fleet — as compared to $250 million to $300 million for the F-35s.
Despite the apparent difference, the Defence Department’s website still says that “the cost of sustainment for the F-35 aircraft is anticipated to be comparable our current CF-18s or other equivalent fighter aircraft.”
Former Defence Department procurement chief Alan Williams says the latest figures out of the U.S. indicate sustaining the F-35 will cost far more than either its F-16s or F-18s.
Williams, who has strongly opposed the government’s plan to sole-source the CF-18 replacement, alleged the bureaucrats responsible for the statements were either out of their depth or intentionally understating the costs of the aircraft in the hopes no one would notice.
Williams will be joining three other panellists to discuss the stealth fighter during a day of hearings organized by the NDP on Parliament Hill on Tuesday.
NDP MP Malcolm Allen denied it was a publicity stunt, saying opposition parties had tried to have the panellists appear before a parliamentary committee to talk about the F-35, until the government blocked the effort.
“What drove it is the absolute denial of the government to have those people come to committee,” he said. “At the end of the day if we can glean information from highly credible experts, it’s a good thing.”
While those who will appear are generally opposed to the F-35, Allen said representatives from F-35 manufacturer Lockheed Martin and the defence industry were invited but chose not to attend.
The hearings come a day after the Ottawa Citizen quoted a senior Lockheed Martin officials as saying the company is still planning its deliveries of 65 of the jets to the Royal Canadian Air Force.
Canadian government procurement and military officials are still assigned to the fighter aircraft program office, the funding continues and plans are still on track to deliver the aircraft to Canada, vice-president Steve O’Bryan said.
O’Bryan’s comments are at odds with assertions from the Conservative government that it has launched a seven-point program to review the purchase and that funding for the acquisition has been frozen.
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Lee Berthiaume
No comments:
Post a Comment