Canada scraps F-35 purchase as audit puts true cost past $30B

National Post ^ | December 6, 2012 | Michael Den Tandt

[JerseyanExile]

The F-35 jet fighter purchase, the most persistent thorn in the Harper government’s side and the subject of a devastating auditor-general’s report last spring, is dead.

Faced with the imminent release of an audit by accountants KPMG that will push the total projected life-cycle costs of the aircraft above $30-billion, the operations committee of cabinet decided Tuesday evening to scrap the controversial sole-source program and go back to the drawing board, a source familiar with the decision said.

This occurred after Chief of the Defence Staff Thomas Lawson, while en route overseas, was called back urgently to appear before the committee, the source said.

The decision is sure to have ripple effects around the world, as any reduction in the number of aircraft on order causes the price to go up for all the other buyers. Canada is one of nine F-35 consortium members, including the United States.

Defence Minister Peter MacKay is not a member of the cabinet operations committee. It remains unclear whether he was present at the meeting Tuesday. However, MacKay is a member of the cabinet Priorities and Planning committee, which is to discuss the F-35 decision Friday morning.

The F-18s currently flown by the RCAF are at the tail end of their life cycle and are not expected to be operable much beyond 2020, at the outside.

Last spring, Auditor-General Michael Ferguson ignited a political firestorm when he reported that the top-line cost cited by the Conservatives in the 2011 election campaign – $9-billion for 65 planes, or $15-billion including maintenance and other life-cycle costs – was $10-billion below the Defence department’s internal estimate.

[MasterGunner01]

Time for the CAF to upgrade to the Super Hornet, F-18E/F. Their logistics support is established for the Hornet, so the upgrade makes sense. The USN has operated both types side by side as they transitioned from F-18C/D Hornets to E/F super Hornets.

[phormer phrog phlyer]

I did a Med cruise on LPH-12 the USS Inchon, it was the last ship of the Iwo Jima class. It was built from the hull, boilers and elevators of the USS Boxer from WW II. It was a McNamara special, it had a single screw and above 12 to 14 kts you could tell how fast you were going by how much it vibrated.

[Squawk 8888]

Canada Ping!

[SandRat]

Next thing you know, they'll only want only the RCAF quipped with Sopwith Camels to save money. </s

[Mashood]

Tell Canada to hang in there or no more F-18 parts.

[NVDave]

The F-111 was one of the overview studies we had in engineering school of “engineers gone wild” and “second system effect.” We were told to “learn from this project, because the result was a financial fiasco - if you do this in the private sector, you’ll end your company.” The nut of the lesson was “keep your requirements within reach and realistic. No system can be everything to everyone.”

The F-35 violates this very simple rule of successful large-system engineering in so many ways, it’s not even remotely funny. Multiple roles, multiple engines, multiple nations... it’s absolutely certain that this thing will go over budget, over schedule, have horrendous life cycle costs.

The F-111 mess started with Robert Strange McNamara and his numbers boys thinking that they could reduce costs by making a multi-role aircraft - fighter, bomber, Air Force and Navy.

There was actually a notion that they could land a F-111 on a carrier early in the project.

The weight of the design increased steadily until the Navy had to put a stop to the foolish idea that this thing was going to land and trap on a carrier and the USN went off in pursuit of the F-14.

The F-111 was also a multi-nation debacle, and I think the Aussies are still fielding the F-111 after all these years. The planes became maintenance pigs due to their complexity, and that’s a big chunk of the lifecycle cost of an aircraft.

As for Boyd: He was anything but a dumb fighter jock.

[Dartman]

I have been saying that for years. Why would we buy an aircraft still in development to replace an aircraft so close to it’s best before date? There is much wrong with the F35 (single engine, etc) for Canada. By the time they roll off the assembly line (if ever), the Russians or whoever will have figured out how to beat the stealth thing. We should have bought a boatload of Super Hornets 5 years ago. We would have been transitioning them into our fleet now.

[Candor7]

The Grippen is a good fit for Canada:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49L9BlYQSjw

AND

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErbKrV19Dd0

[Dartman]

re the Grippen
I’m no expert, but the fist thing I saw was the single engine. Our guys spend a lot of time patrolling the Arctic. I don’t think I’d want to be hundreds of miles from anyone or anything when my ONE engine develops a problem.

[Yo-Yo]

There was actually a notion that they could land a F-111 on a carrier early in the project.

The notion was correct.

[tanknetter]

The F-111B wasn’t really designed to be a “fighter”. It was designed to be an interceptor - go out far from the carrier at great speed and shoot down enemy aircraft with long-range missiles.

As such it wasn’t designed to be maneuverable and had a high degree of “heads-down” workload for the pilot an RIO.

It grew out of a USN legacy that went back to the F3D Skynight (USN nightfighter with a side-by-side cockpit arrangement that proved semi-successful when used by the Marines as an F7F-N Replacement) and replaced, conceptually, an F3D derivative called the F6D Missileer.

What happened was that Vietnam intervened and showed that it was better to develop a “fighter” with good air combat maneuvering that could be used as an “interceptor” than to try to make an “interceptor” perform as a “fighter. This is what ended the F-111B, relegated the USAF F-111 variants to a medium strike/interdiction platform (a very, very good one, if expensive) and led to the development of the F-14 and F-15.

Two additional side notes: the USAF interceptor families (the F-102, F-106, etc) sucked at ACM as well. The proposed “ultimate” interceptors - the F-108 and YF-12 (which was a member of the A-12/SR-71 Blackbird Family) would have sucked as well too. But the mission for them was to go up north as fast as possible and shoot missiles into the Soviet bomber streams coming over the Pole. Not get into a firball.

Second, I’ve always maintained that the F-111B would have made a wonderful A-6 replacement in the USN medium-strike role.