Responding to criticism about Canada’s decision to purchase 65 Lockheed-Martin Joint Strike Fighters (F35), through a sole source contract for a total cost of about $16 billion, the government has twice highlighted interceptions of Russian bombers as justifications for the purchase.
Does this analysis make any sense?
Partly, it comes down to what the Russians are trying to do. If they just wanted to obliterate Canada, they would do so using ground- and submarine-based ballistic missiles, and perhaps cruise missiles. There would be no reason to send vulnerable bombers into Canadian airspace. On the other hand, just as NATO regularly tests Russian air defence systems, the Russians could be flying into Canadian territory to provoke us into pointing RADAR in their direction, so they can try to suss out what capabilities we have. Finally, the flights could be an attempt to assert sovereignty or de facto control over the Arctic.
In the foreseeable future, the only plausible path to a war with Russia would be an invasion of a central European country prompting an armed response from NATO. In such a circumstance, Canadian Joint Strike Fighters could conceivably be useful. They could also potentially be useful in conflicts like Afghanistan, where air superiority and close air support are clear advantages for Canada and its allies. Also, purchasing Joint Strike Fighters could help keep Canada in the good graces of the United States, especially given how politically savvy the big defence companies are, and how strategic they are about spreading big weapon contract jobs across the country.
Does that justify a price tag of around $500 per Canadian? Does it justify whatever ‘collateral damage’ will result from the purchase of the jets?
{ 25 comments… read them below or add one }
Another factor to consider: how much extra swagger will Canadian Prime Ministers have at international meetings, if they get 65 F35s to play with?
“Does it justify whatever ‘collateral damage’ will result from the purchase of the jets?”
What do you mean by collateral damage? Are you talking about Public Relations?
The serious question is, is the purchase in Canada’s strategic security interests, or is it only in the interests of small factions.
I meant unintentionally killed civilians.
It seems likely that at least some of these jets will be used in future operations like the ongoing war in Afghanistan and, by extension, some civilians will be killed who would not have been if Canada had never bought them and they were never built.
“It seems likely that at least some of these jets will be used in future operations like the ongoing war in Afghanistan and, by extension, some civilians will be killed who would not have been if Canada had never bought them and they were never built.”
While I appreciate your concern for the killing of innocent civilians, perhaps it would be better directed as a holistic interpretation of the fact and manner of Canada’s involvement in specific armed conflicts, rather than towards a particular piece of hardware. If the Jets will kill innocent civilians, it won’t be because of any special properties of the Jet, but because of decisions made by soldiers and commanders.
I think weapons systems are a situation in which supply creates its own demand; when states buy weapons, chances are they will end up being used.
For instance, whenever NATO is organizing a joint operation, they will make requests of member states based on the kind of hardware and manpower they have available. As such, buying jets quite possibly increases the number of people who will die in future conflicts.
“For instance, whenever NATO is organizing a joint operation, they will make requests of member states based on the kind of hardware and manpower they have available.”
Any NATO state which has ratified the UN charter is not bound to participate in any armed engagement which subverts attempts
“…to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace”
There is certainly no agreement that the NATO operation in Afghanistan is helping rather than hindering attempts to fight terrorist forces in the region, and there is no consensus that “peaceful means” could not better accomplish the claimed strategic goals for the region. If NATO chooses to to make request of states that subvert the basic values of international peace and cooperation, then no states are under any obligation to acquiesce to those requests or to remain members of a military alliance designed to protect us from the evils of communism.
My point is: the likelihood that the new planes will cause civilian casualties that would not otherwise occur is one thing that should be taken into consideration, in assessing the wisdom of the decision.
As for the legal obligations of NATO states, they certainly are legally bound to come to one another’s aid in the event that one of them is attacked:
The right to collective self defence is affirmed in Article 51 of the UN Charter:
In short, until such a time as the Security Council has “restore[d] and maintain[ed] peace and security” states can take the measures they deem necessary, including the use of force.
“the likelihood that the new planes will cause civilian casualties that would not otherwise occur is one thing that should be taken into consideration, in assessing the wisdom of the decision.”
The reason this is nonsense is that the same people who decide to buy the planes are those who decide whether to use them to kill civilians.
And, if you think Article 51 can justify the attack on Iran, you must also think that it could justify an invasion of the UK by the US if the IRA had carried out a bombing in Boston?
*I meant Afghanistan, not Iran.
Military systems like fighter aircraft last for decades. People have been making B52s since 1946.
As such, the probable uses for these F35s lie a lot farther out than the question of bombing Iran or letting them develop nuclear weapons. One or the other of those things may well take place before Canada even receives the planes.
“Canada has been involved in the Joint Strike Fighter Program from its beginning, investing US$10 million to be an “informed partner” during the evaluation process. Once Lockheed Martin was selected as the primary contractor for the JSF program, Canada elected to become a level 3 participant along with Norway, Denmark, Turkey, and Australia on the JSF project. An additional US$100 million from the Canadian Department of National Defence (DND) over 10 years and another $50 million from Industry Canada were dedicated in 2002, making them an early participant of the JSF program.
Alan S. Williams of Queen’s University has indicated that he believes that Canada’s rationale for joining the JSF project was not due to an urgent need to replace Canada’s fleet of CF-18 Hornets; instead, it was driven primarily by economics. Through Canadian government investment in the JSF project, Williams says that Canadian companies were allowed to compete for contracts within the JSF project, as there were fears that being shut out from industrial participation in such a large program would severely damage the Canadian aviation industry. Joining also furthered Canadian access to information regarding the F-35 as a possible contender when it eventually plans to replace the CF-18 Hornet fleet. Improved interoperability with major allies allowed the DND to gain insight on leading edge practices in composites, manufacturing and logistics, and offered the ability to recoup some investment if the government did decide to purchase the F-35.
As a result of the Canadian government investment in the JSF project, 144 contracts were awarded to Canadian companies, universities, and government facilities. Financially, the contracts are valued at US$490 million for the period 2002 to 2012, with an expected value of US$1.1 billion from current contracts in the period between 2013 and 2023, and a total potential estimated value of Canadian JSF involvement from US$4.8 billion to US$6.8 billion.”
You touch, Milan, upon a couple of things that suggest to me that the PMO is so far more interested in spinning facile fabrication than in supportable public policy:
1) PMO spokesperson Dmitri Soudas has twice trotted out long range Russian bomber incursions to justify buying JSFs, and;
2) The Tu95 bombers in question are Soviet cold-war counterparts to the B52s you mention. As in, they first flew in 1952.
The cost-benefit ratio of buying a clutch of hideously expensive advanced stealth aircraft capable of Mach2+, to chase the occasional 60-year old subsonic turboprop is kinda murky. Oh, okay, outright illogical…
Is there any reason we actually have to be fearful of Russian bombers violating Canadian Airspace? American planes (our allies) regularly violated Soviet Airspace during the Cold War – that was the whole point of the SR-71 project. And sure, the Soviets developed the Mach 3 Foxbat in response to the abandoned (they didn’t know that part)Valkyrie project, but really – were any of these violations of airspace actually going to compromise anyone’s national security?
More than anything, all this gesturing reminds me of immature children playing. They should stop pandering to their bully friends and get to work saving the species.
“One response to high manpower costs is to rely on technology. But that does not come cheap. Study after study shows that the price of combat aircraft has been rising substantially faster than inflation, often faster than GDP. The same is true of warships. In a book published in 1983, Norman Augustine, a luminary of the aerospace industry, drafted a series of lighthearted “laws”. In one aphorism, he plotted the exponential growth of unit cost for fighter aircraft since 1910 (see chart 2), and extrapolated it to its absurd conclusion:
“In the year 2054, the entire defence budget will purchase just one aircraft. This aircraft will have to be shared by the Air Force and Navy 3½ days each per week except for leap year, when it will be made available to the Marines for the extra day.”
Nearly three decades on, Mr Augustine says, “we are right on target. Unfortunately nothing has changed.” These days Raptors go for $160m apiece ($350m including the cost of developing the jet), compared with $50m-60m for the venerable F-16. In the long run, high unit costs must limit numbers. Since 1970 America’s fleets of combat aircraft and major warships have shrunk, even as defence spending rose (see chart 3).”
“Mr Pugh also identified another intriguing trend: the race for bigger, better weapons is fiercest in peacetime but tends to fall once war actually breaks out. At that point, he argues, quantity takes precedence over quality. So the fact that the cold war never turned hot may help explain why Western ministries of defence got into the habit of developing weapons slowly and expensively. “You cannot optimise cost, performance and development-time at the same time,” says Mr Krepinevich. “In the cold war everything was sacrificed to performance.” Cost was secondary, and time was least important of all, given that there was no shooting war. The F-22 began development before the end of the cold war; so did the Typhoon.”
Russian bombers a make-believe threat
Michael Byers
Don Quixote is famous for attacking windmills that he imagines are giants. Stephen Harper and Peter MacKay have been tilting at make-believe enemies too, in the form of Russian planes in international airspace.
Last Wednesday, Harper’s communications director sent an email to journalists informing them that a pair of Tupolev TU-95 bombers had been intercepted by Canadian CF-18s some 30 nautical miles (56 kilometres) from our Arctic coastline.
“Thanks to the rapid response of the Canadian Forces,” Dimitri Soudas wrote, “at no time did the Russian aircraft enter sovereign Canadian airspace.”
Soudas was right about Canada’s airspace, which extends just 12 nautical miles (22 kilometres) from shore. But he was wrong to suggest that the Russian bombers were headed there.
His efforts at sensationalism were quickly short-circuited by a spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command. “Both Russia and NORAD routinely exercise their capability to operate in the North,” Lt. Desmond James explained. “These exercises are important to both NORAD and Russia and are not cause for alarm.”
Later, when the Prime Minister was asked about the matter, he suggested that the Russian planes had actually entered Canadian airspace. “This is a real concern to us,” he said. “I have expressed at various times the deep concern our government has with increasingly aggressive Russian actions around the globe and Russian intrusions into our airspace.”
Then, as now, the inaccurate accusations were clearly not appreciated by the United States. NORAD commander Gene Renuart took the unusual step of publicly correcting the Canadian ministers. The four-star U.S. general told journalists: “The Russians have conducted themselves professionally; they have maintained compliance with the international rules of airspace sovereignty and have not entered the internal airspace of either of the countries.”
The public slaps on the Canadian wrist are indicative of the importance placed on improved U.S.-Russian relations by the Obama administration.
The cost of weapons
Defence spending in a time of austerity
The chronic problem of exorbitantly expensive weapons is becoming acute
Aug 26th 2010 | Farnborough and washington, dc
Robert Gates, America’s defence secretary, has ordered that production of the F-22 should end this year, capping the fleet at 187—a final cull for the Raptor, whose numbers were once supposed to reach about 750. In Europe orders for the Typhoon—a fighter made by Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain—will fall. And on both sides of the Atlantic the rising cost of the stealthy F-35 Joint Strike Fighter means its order book could shrink sharply.
On August 9th Mr Gates announced a new set of money-saving measures: among them cutting at least 50 of the 900-plus generals and admirals; eliminating the joint-forces command, which promotes integration among the services; cutting funds for contractors; and reducing staff in Mr Gates’s own office. There are sound military reasons for this internal cost-cutting, especially the need to redirect money to the war in Afghanistan. But Mr Gates knows that after a decade of ever-rising defence spending, “the gusher has been turned off”; now his greatest fear is that defence spending will be cut to curb the budget deficit.
His dread is already reality for many European colleagues. This week Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, Germany’s defence minister, said he favoured suspending conscription, with the option of resuming it later, in order to create a “smaller but better and more operational” army that would shrink by a third, to about 165,000. The move is part of Germany’s plan to cut €8.3 billion ($10.5 billion) from the defence budget by 2014. Even Britain, which has the largest European force in Afghanistan, is likely to cut defence spending by 10-20% over the next five years, following an overdue defence review in the autumn. Spain cut defence spending by 9% this year; Italy will chop by 10% next. Less drastically, France is freezing defence expenditure.
A U.S. defence analyst says Canada’s new fleet of stealth jet fighters will cost almost double what the Conservative government is projecting.
Winslow Wheeler, of the Centre for Defense Information in Washington, injected himself directly into the federal election by providing his estimate at a news conference on Parliament Hill.
Wheeler says the unit cost of the F-35 jet will be about $148 million per airplane — an estimate that is in line with what the parliamentary budget officer has projected.
The government says the unit cost will be up to $75 million per jet, and has mounted repeated public attacks on the budget officer’s estimate.
The untendered jet purchase is a contentious issue during the federal election campaign. The Liberals want to scrap the deal, saying it’s not the way to go while the country is in deficit.
In the debate Harper responded to criticism of the F-35 purchases by stating that all parties had agreed in the past to replacing the Canadian F-18s when they ended their service life. That may be true, but it isn’t a justification for choosing the American F-35 when, by all the numbers I can find, Eurofighter Typhoons would be far cheaper, and the cost more certain because the planes are already in production and service.
The future of the Joint Strike Fighter
Coming up short
America should cut back orders for its late and expensive new fighter—and spend the cash on more useful kit
IT SEEMED like a great idea at the time. When Lockheed Martin won the contract in 2001 to develop what became known as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the aim was to produce a relatively cheap tactical aircraft with radar-beating stealth capability that would replace at least four other types in service. The biggest military programme in history would not only provide the backbone of America’s fighter fleet for the next 50 years but would also bring in sales from the United States’ closest allies. At least 3,000 F-35s would be ordered from the outset (over 2,400 by America alone). The result would be huge efficiency savings, initially from the scale of production and subsequently from the Southwest Airlines model of running just one basic type of aircraft across 90% of the fleet. Deliveries of operational aircraft were meant to begin in 2010.
Things look less rosy a decade on. The F-35 is now unlikely to enter service before 2016; programme costs have risen to more than $380 billion; the average price of each plane has nearly doubled; and the Pentagon now thinks the F-35 will be a third more expensive to run than “legacy” aircraft, with lifetime costs of $1 trillion. Senator John McCain calls the project “a train wreck”. Even supporters, such as Robert Gates, the former defence secretary who was forced to restructure the programme last year, reckon numbers may have to be cut.
The defence industry
The last manned fighter
It is the most expensive military project ever. It is plagued by delays and menaced by budget cuts. Will the F-35 survive?
LEON PANETTA is under no illusions about what Barack Obama moved him from the CIA to the Pentagon to do. The wily Mr Panetta, who took over from Robert Gates as defence secretary at the beginning of the month, is everyone’s idea of a safe pair of hands. But his greatest claim to fame (other than presiding over the plan to kill Osama bin Laden) is as the director of the Office of Management and Budget who paved the way to the balanced budget of 1998. Mr Panetta has inherited from his predecessor the outlines of a plan to reduce military spending by $400 billion by 2023. But America’s fiscal crisis (and the lack of any political consensus about how tackle it) makes it almost certain that Mr Panetta will have to cut further and faster than Mr Gates would have wished.
That could be bad news for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the most expensive military-industrial programme in history, and its lead contractor, Lockheed Martin. The plane is expected to come into service six years late (in 2016) and wildly over-budget. The Pentagon still plans to buy 2,443 F-35s over the next 25 years, at a cost of $382 billion. But in a parting shot, Mr Gates gave warning that although he did not think the F-35 faced cancellation, “the size of the buy” might have to be cut.
After beating a Boeing design that was deemed technically riskier, Lockheed Martin signed the contract with the Department of Defence to develop the F-35 in 2001. It was an ambitious undertaking. The aim was to reap huge efficiency gains by replacing nearly all of America’s ageing tactical aircraft (the air force’s F-16s and A-10s; the navy’s A/F-18s and the marines’ AV8B jump jets) with three variants of one basic design. There would be a conventional take-off and landing (CTOL) version for the air force, a short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) version for the marines and a beefier carrier version for the navy.
The latest cost estimates from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), published in May to coincide with a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the F-35 programme, were shocking. The average price of each plane in “then-year” dollars had risen from $69m in 2001 to $133m today. Adding in $56.4 billion of development costs, the price rises from $81m to $156m. The GAO report concluded that since 2007 development costs had risen by 26% and the timetable had slipped by five years. Mr Gates’s 2010 restructuring helped. But still, “after more than nine years in development and four in production, the JSF programme has not fully demonstrated that the aircraft design is stable, manufacturing processes are mature and the system is reliable”. Apart from the STOVL version’s problems, the biggest issue was integrating and testing the software that runs the aircraft’s electronics and sensors. At the hearing, Senator John McCain described it as “a train wreck” and accused Lockheed Martin of doing “an abysmal job”.
What horrified the senators most was not the cost of buying F-35s but the cost of operating and supporting them: $1 trillion over the plane’s lifetime. Mr McCain described that estimate as “jaw-dropping”. The Pentagon guesses that it will cost a third more to run the F-35 than the aircraft it is replacing. Ashton Carter, the defence-acquisition chief, calls this “unacceptable and unaffordable”, and vows to trim it. A sceptical Mr McCain says he wants the Pentagon to examine alternatives to the F-35, should Mr Carter not succeed.
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program aimed to replace several aircraft from three major military services with a fifth-generation model capable of short-takeoff and vertical-landing while maintaining the capability of sustained supersonic flight — all while staying affordable. The project has finally gotten some test points validated, but after a decade in development and numerous cost and schedule overruns, it faces an uphill fight against budget reductions. Bloomberg has an interesting story about the program’s troubled past. Quoting: ‘Ten years and $66 billion later, the aircraft is still in development, five years behind schedule and 64 percent over cost estimates. The Obama administration may cancel some models and also cut the Pentagon’s orders. The plane, envisioned as the affordable stealth fighter for the U.S. and allies, has turned into a budget target. “I’d blame the program’s setbacks on the fact that we lived in a rich man’s world,” said Jacques Gansler, a former Pentagon chief weapons buyer in the Clinton administration and now a professor at the University of Maryland at College Park. “There has been less emphasis on cost over the past 10 years,” he said.
Washington could scrap its F-35 jet purchase
Bill Curry
Ottawa – Globe and Mail Update
Last updated Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2011 11:36AM EST
The U.S. government is threatening to cancel its F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program unless Congress approves a credible deficit reduction plan, a move that would risk derailing Canada’s plans to purchase 65 of the next-generation stealth jets.
U.S. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta includes the F-35 program in a detailed list of items that could be on the chopping block should a so-called “super committee” fail to deliver on a plan to find $1.2-trillion-in savings over the next 10 years.