11 minute read
May the best plane win
SAAB Gripen E
You’d think a country with a vast arctic frontier sitting on top of the 2nd-largest geographical footprint on the planet would make defence and territorial surveillance, and therefore military procurement, a top policy priority. Not this country.
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The sad tale begins with the Ross rifle, the Canadian-made preference to the British Lee-Enfield rifle that would have equipped Canadian forces similarly to other troops from the Empire during WWI. Sir Sam Hughes, minister of Militia and Defence, was an ardent supporter of the Ross, but the Ross had the unfortunate tendency of jamming and failing in battle, resulting in hundreds of thousands being withdrawn from service in 1916 and replaced by the Lee-Enfield.
Laurier’s government established the Royal Canadian Navy in 1909. It chugged along underfunded for decades until WWII when our fleet topped 471 fighting vessels that dominated the North Atlantic. 110 vessels and 10,000 men landed in Normandy in June 1944. Things skidded off the runway again with the legendary Avro Arrow, the often-cited example of worldleading Canadian innovation that failed to launch due to government apathy. Then there was the DEW (distant early warning) line, a string of 63 radar stations from Alaska to Greenland that left a toxic mess, requiring $575 million to clean up the chemicals. Or Canada’s on again/off again flirtation with nuclear weapons. Or Paul Hellyer’s integration and unification of Army, Navy and RCAF into a single green uniform. Or Mulroney’s disintegration with a wardrobe makeover of said forces in 1984, before he torpedoed DND’s nuclear submarine hopes. Is your head spinning yet? There’s more.
In 1993, Jean Chrétien won a general election in part thanks to his promise to scrap the Mulroney/Campbell purchase of the EH-101 helicopter, the replacement for the Sikorsky CH124 Sea King, a twin-engined antisubmarine warfare helicopter designed for shipboard use by Canadian naval forces, based on the US Navy's SH-3. Chrétien called the EH-101 a "Cadillac" helicopter, especially relative to a federal deficit the size of Hudson Bay, making the purchase politically and fiscally untenable, even though the Sea Kings were 30 years old back then. They served the Canadian Armed Forces from 1963 to 2018.
Equipping military forces is extremely expensive. Healthcare tops the list of government budget lines here at home, compared to defence, homeland security, and veterans affairs in the US. We don’t wrap our identity in military might as do our benevolent neighbours, so frigates and jets are a hard sell when hospital wait times affect us all. We’re also a country that is letting the prime minister’s official residence degrade into an historical ruin.
There’s also the naive question by some regarding who exactly we are defending ourselves against. Russia may seem a very far ways away on the far eastern frontier of Europe, but it is in fact sitting up there just over the horizon from Ellesmere Island where arctic ice is giving way to an abundance of resources. At an April policy convention, the NDP's Spadina-Fort York riding association put forward a resolution which stated “An NDP government will commit to phasing out the Canadian Armed Forces. All members … will be retrained … into civil service roles that help expand
Lockheed Martin F-35
Canadian, provincial and municipal social services, such as expanded health care, education, community services, public transit and parks.” The ludicrous resolution was rejected. since Billy Bishop went to war?
purchasing countries run for political cover when technical issues emerged? Canada came oh-so close to purchasing It was Parliamentary Budget Officer F-35s stealth fighters from Lockheed Kevin Page who suggested that the Martin under a contract issued by the price tag was lowballed and did not Harper government. The government factor in “life cycle costs” that included Canada needs new fighter jets. They had already sunk $637 million US all related expenses over the lifespan of come with a numbingly complex set into F-35 development contracts with the fleet. That’s when it all became yet of requirements. They have to operate 33 Canadian companies, beginning another procurement election issue, here at home, where temperatures with the Chrétien government, no with the neophyte Trudeau promising during northern operations could purchasing strings attached. So did to cancel it. Shots were fired from all render them useless. They have sides, underscoring one of the to be compatible with the big stumbling blocks to military current CF-18 infrastructure We don’t wrap our identity procurement in this country. It’s and refuelling systems, both on the ground and in the air, and in military might as do our benevolent political. with our NATO partners and neighbours, so frigates and jets are a UK PM Boris Johnson recently commitments. They have to be affordable to purchase and hard sell when hospital wait times affect and casually announced that his country is boosting its nuclear repair, and quick on delivery. us all. We’re also a country that is letting arsenal to stave off foreign The RCAF cannot settle for anything less, any more than the prime minister’s official residence threats. He’s prepared to bolster Britain’s stockpile of Tridents you’d purchase a prototype degrade into an historical ruin. by 40 per cent raising the cap autonomous vehicle, not from 180 to 260 warheads. God knowing the delivery date, the knows what the price will be, garage bills, the warranty, or whether other countries, all maneuvered by or how this will play out with the the thing is going to plug into standard sexy claims by the Pentagon. Harper demise of the Reagan/Gorbachev charging stations or drive itself into moved to purchase, and then came the 1987 intermediate-range treaty, or the ditch during a snowfall. So if we questions. with Russia parked on Ukraine’s front know the requirements, why has the door. But it doesn’t matter, because procurement of new jets flummoxed Why did we need such stealthy it’s jolly good hubris in a post-Brexit bureaucrats and ruling governments gizmo-laden planes? Why did other nation whose champions took back
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control; and will again, with weapons that will never be deployed, and if they are, well bugger the cost. Fascinating it happens in the UK with no real debate, by a majority government who is not fighting for reelection. If they can do it, why can’t Canada just build the ships and buy the jets? Post-COVID economic stimulus may finally provide the political rationale.
Military procurement is entangled in domestic economic spinoffs and the political capital contained therein. Canada does have an aerospace industry that can supply parts and assembly, so long-term post-procurement considerations include lucrative repair and maintenance contracts. The three companies vying for the latest jet contract are all stressing how their domestic contracts will dovetail with the Liberal post-COVID economic recovery plans. Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s first budget allotted $100 billion in stimulus spending over the next three years, intended to give the economy a post-pandemic shot in the arm. The government’s Future Fighter Capability Project has already allocated the estimated $19-billion needed for the purchase, meaning it does not add to the national debt and hopefully will not be politicized. The stimulus would be big.
Federal officials are now reviewing three fighter jet proposals, with a final decision expected sometime in 2022. The companies in the running are the American giants Lockheed Martin and Boeing, and Sweden’s Saab AB. All do faithfully swear to include Canadian parts manufactures and software developers at the core of their supply chain, and in adherence to the government’s industrial and technological benefit (ITB) policies. All three are touting the numbers.
Boeing’s twin-engine Block III Super Hornet is compatible with the RCAF’s existing pilot training, as well as 65 per cent of its current infrastructure and all of the current weapons stores. It will work in the Arctic on NORAD duty, and can refuel other Hornets, multiplying its effectiveness. Boeing has already delivered 800+ Super Hornet fighter jets tallying more than 10 million flight hours. According to Boeing, it would inject $61 billion into the Canadian economy over the 40year life of the program.
Lockheed Martin is pitching its latest F-35 as being the answer, with a bonus $16.9 billion into the Canadian economy. Lockheed has supplied aircraft to the RCAF for more than 80 years. The F-35 Lightning II is a twinengine with a sophisticated sensor system and network-enabled capability that streams data to commanders at sea, in the air or on the ground. Lockheed Martin reminds the government that it has been a valued partner in the F-35 program since its inception.
Finally, there’s the SAAB Gripen E, which boasts plenty of sophisticated onboard technology of its own, such as a large touch screen display that immerses the pilot in a virtual world of fused data that is constantly updated via a fighter-to-fighter link. No wonder it comes with an investment in a new research and development facility in Montreal specializing in artificial intelligence and related fields, plus a sensor facility in British Columbia.
The world is a very difference place since Canada purchased the CF-18s, especially in the Arctic. Alliances are shifting and defence concerns exist as much, if not more, in the cyber realm. Governments have goofed up before and costs have gone sky-high, as recently noted by the Parliamentary Budget Office, which reports that the first of those 15 frigates we are building will now arrive in 2030 at the earliest, five years late, with the price tag ballooning with each turn of the calendar.
It never fails, but that’s military procurement for you n
Stop the impossible and unnecessary estimations of lifecycle costs
Canada’s first fighter acquisition program was in September 1914 when we bought the Burgess-Dunne for $5,000. The life cycle cost was pretty much zero as it was taken to Salisbury Plain and never flown.
Times have certainly changed. Since then, we’ve had a few high-profile fighter programs, some successful and some unsuccessful. The CF-105 Avro Arrow had a “staggering” sticker price of CAD $12.5 million and we never got to a life cycle cost before the program was cancelled in February 1959. The CF-18 Hornet program has been wildly successful in peace and war since the first aircraft arrived in Cold Lake in October 1982. The unit cost then was CAD $14.54 million FY 79/80 and the latest Cost Factors Manual per hour figure is CAD $32,763 for pure operating costs and CAD $51,773 for full cost of operation. Be careful that any figures quoted for other aircraft are “des pommes à des pommes’’.
For several decades under both brands of government, defence procurement has been fraught with baffling delays and uninformed political interference and gamesmanship. Think EH-101 and CAD $500 million in penalties and decades of delay before new helicopters are on the backs of Navy ships.
Speaking of the Navy, it took career- sacrificing work by Vice Admiral Mark Norman to get long-overdue fleet support to the RCN. It also required undisclosed millions of taxpayer dollars in recompense for the Liberal government’s disgraceful treatment of him. Fixed Wing Search and Rescue took extra decades to get airborne and the Canadian Surface Combatant Program continues to be bogged down. The only timely defence procurements recently have been meeting wartime requirements in Afghanistan under Prime Minister Stephen Harper – Leopard tanks, M-777 artillery, C-130J Hercules, C-17 Globemaster, CH147 Chinook, LAV III Upgrade and drones.
Let’s talk about Next Generation Fighters.
After mission effectiveness, costs are the obvious key part of any defence acquisition and big numbers will always attract attention. There are some perspectives of those numbers that are getting lost with all the dithering about F-35 Lightning II or F-18 E/F Super Hornet or J-39 Gripen. F-35 cost estimates previously quoted by the Parliamentary Budget Officer were all based on a purchase calculation of dollars-per-kilogram of fighters since 1950. We don’t put fighters on a weighscale at Superstore and scan them at checkout. His F-35 numbers bear no resemblance to actual costs.
We don’t know specific cost figures that have been included in official submissions from Lockheed Martin, Boeing or Saab but we do have figures from public information.
F-35 flyaway and go-to-war cost has fallen, as predicted, to USD $77.8 million and operating costs will decrease to USD $25K per hour by 2025. Based on other contracts, flyaway cost is about USD $110 million for Super Hornet and USD $85 million for Gripen, but that does not include all the other equipment required for go-to-war. Operating costs for Super Hornet are increasing as the aircraft ages and little is known about operating costs for Gripen, with only three aircraft produced.
Contentious comparisons were exacerbated with rules changes by the Auditor General when he estimated life cycle costs for everything remotely associated with the aircraft and for the entire life of the program, 42 years for F-35. That resulted in false accusations of massive escalation being hidden by DND. This served only to inflame fearful opinions and generate irrational opposition to defence spending.
No one can predict the costs of things like fuel several decades down the road. In any event, the numbers being thrown around are not all new money but are being spent today. Cost Factors Manual figures are being spent today on CF-18 operations and that will simply transition to F-35.
We’ve done our own past detailed options analyses along with many other countries and with the same conclusion – F-35. I’m somewhat confident that the latest evaluation will say that it’s just time to get on with it n
