Lockheed-Martin’s Unexpected Leverage

Vincent J. Curtis

21 Feb 2018

At a major press conference held on Dec 11, 2017, senior government officials solemnly intoned noises that sounded like Canada’s fighter capability gap was under firm control.  Turns out, it’s not.

The press conference was held, ostensibly, to announce that the competition to replace Canada’s aging fleet of CF-18 fighter aircraft was open for bidding.  Secondarily, and of more immediate concern, was the announcement of the stop-gap aircraft that would fill the “urgent capability gap” of Canada’s air commitment to NORAD and NATO.   The void, until the new fighters were built, was going to be filled by used Australian F/A 18A’s of the same vintage as Canada’s collapsing fleet.

The government said that Australia had made a formal offer that would be subject to negotiation, but the expectation was that the first “classic” Hornets would begin arriving in January, 2019.

Turns out, January 2019 is not going to be the case.  Assistant Deputy Minister (Material) Patrick Finn later told CBC News that “a final agreement is still months away.”  The summer of 2019 would see the delivery of the first two Australian aircraft, and maybe one more in December, 2019.  And maybe those first two might get pushed back later into the fall.

This slow and paltry delivery rate of the tired replacements is because Australia won’t release an aircraft until they take delivery of a brand new F-35.  The release rate is one for one: as Australia gets a new F-35, Canada gets one of their older but still functioning Australian F/A-18s.  Canada’s interim replacements arrive at a pace determined by the delivery schedule of Lockheed-Martin for its new F-35!

Who knew that the delivery schedule of aircraft that the Trudeau team said it would never buy holds Canada’s fighter capability gap hostage.  If Lockheed-Martin were of a mind, they could put the RCAF out of business simply by slowing down their rate of delivery to Australia.  Considering that Lockheed-Martin is in the fighter replacement competition, this situation gives them an unexpected leverage over the government for that big contract of 88 replacements.  If Canada is to fulfill its treaty obligations in NORAD and NATO between 2020 and 2025, it needs eat crow and place its order with Lockheed-Martin quickly, or everybody but Australia will get its order for F-35s on time.

The Trudeau government put itself – and Canada - into this bind.  It was Justin Trudeau who said during the 2015 campaign that a Liberal government would never buy the F-35, without having a clue what else there was.  “We’ll hold a competition!” he promised, without understanding the lay of the land in respect of fighter aircraft manufacturing.  “We’ll put the manufacturers through their paces!  We’ll make them spend lots of money trying to prove to us that they deserve our business!”  Such were the implications of promises made on the campaign trail.

Then came another unexpected blunder that gave leverage to Lockheed-Martin.  The Trudeau team intemperately took umbrage with Boeing for the trade action it took against Bombardier.  The Trudeau government publicly embarrassed Boeing executives and lambasted Boeing the company for “harming Canada’s economic interests.”  For the sin of engaging in tough business practices, Boeing was denied the chance of supplying Canada’s interim replacements with new F/A-18E/F Super Hornets from its idle production line.  It ruined Boeing’s enthusiasm for participating in the competition for the big replacement contract.  And it placed Canada more firmly into the hands of Lockheed-Martin.

If, in 2023 and the Trudeau team is still in power, and it wishes to buy a Block III F/A-18E/F Super Hornet from Boeing as the replacement for the then clapped-out forty year old F/A-18A’s, it will get its choice of colour scheme, take it or leave it.  Lockheed-Martin will happily supply Canada with all the F-35s it wants as quickly as it needs them, while the rest of us enjoy the look of eating crow on the faces of the Trudeau team.

And if the Trudeau team, to avoid these obvious humiliations, chooses to go outside of North America to replace the fighter fleet, it will be surprised to discover interoperability problems with American-standards systems in NORAD.  The Saab Gripen E, for example, was designed first and foremost to protect the skies above non-NATO member Sweden, not above the vast spaces of North America.  Saab is a much smaller company with fewer resources and fewer examples in service than, say Boeing.  All the smaller car companies of the 1950s were squeezed out of business because they couldn’t compete against the Big 3, GM, Ford, and Chrysler, and the same thing is already happening in the fighter space.  Where are General Dynamics (F-16), McDonnell-Douglas (F/A-18) Grumman (F-14), and Fairchild-Republic (A-10) now?

Because of its lack of knowledge of the military world and its emotional responses to ordinary affairs of business, the Trudeau team placed itself at the discretion of the very industry it said it would exploit to Canada’s benefit.

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As the World Turns

Vincent J. Curtis

12 Feb 2018

Like the ongoing soap-opera, As the World Turns, the soap opera that is the Canadian Future Fighter acquisition project spins on.  I expect to see how Coronation Street ends before we learn what the new Canadian fighter turns out to be.

Let’s review the role that the new fighter is expected to fill.  The CF-105 Avro Arrow was the ideal aircraft for the primary role of the RCAF: the interception of Soviet Tu-95 (Bear) bombers flying over the Arctic region on their way to drop nuclear weapons on the United States.  The Arrow was smokin’ fast in a straight line, could intercept from extremely high altitudes, and could fly a long way on internal fuel.  A fully-realized Arrow was a notch below the YF-12A (SR-71 Blackbird) in terms of flying performance, but a single one could tear a big hole in a formation of bombers.  Its mission profile would be similar to that of an Me-262 taking on a wing of B-17s over Holland and Germany.

Our role in NORAD is the same today as it was in the 1950s, against the self-same Tu-95 bomber fleet.  We all know the fate of the Arrow, and when sanity returned its role was filled by the CF-101 Voodoo interceptor.  The CF-104 Starfighter could be an untouchable interceptor, for it was screaming fast in a straight line and high flying.  The CF-104 interceptor could be in and out before the hapless victim knew what happened.

Membership in NATO and later in US-led coalitions brought about a second role for the RCAF: that of maintaining air superiority.  This role imposed the requirement for maneuverability upon the aircraft.  In the late 1970’s, the choice of a fighter-interceptor for Canada boiled down to the F-16 and the F/A-18.  The F-16 was designed by the “fighter mafia” of the US Air Force which, after the experience of the air war over North Vietnam and of the 1973 Arab-Israeli conflict, wanted a pure dogfighter in the US. Fighter inventory.  The F-16 was designed to be cheap to build, cheap to maintain and operate, extremely maneuverable, and fast.  Over time, and to the disgust of the fighter mafia, the F-16A evolved into the F-16C, with ground attack capabilities, losing speed and maneuverability in the process.

The competitor to the adoption of the YF-16 was the YF-17.  The YF-17 developed into the F/A-18, which was selected by the U.S. Navy as the replacement for the F-14 Tomcat air superiority fighter on its aircraft carriers.  The ‘A’ designation meant that the aircraft was capable of a ground attack mission as well as fill the air superiority ‘F’ role.  Canada selected the F/A-18 over the F-16A because the two engines of the F/A-18 allegedly gave a margin of safety to the pilot who was flying over the High Arctic.

The F-16 turned into the most successful and most produced jet fighter of all time, with nearly 4,600 made, and production continues.  The F/A-18A was a developmental dead-end, and the Super Hornet, the F/A-18E/F, was developed - with its 25 per cent larger airframe - to continue the Hornet concept as a dual-purpose carrier-borne combat aircraft.  The production line of the Super Hornet is being kept open by Boeing in the hopes of getting foreign sales, and Trump wants 24 more for the US.

The selection of a fighter to replace the Canadian F/A-18 (a.k.a. CF-188 a.k.a Hornet) is something of a charade.  There are only half a dozen aircraft to choose from, and if one names an aircraft one won’t buy (the F-35) and won’t do business with the manufacturer of another (Boeing), then one is left with a choice from among one North American made aircraft (F-16) and three European ones.  If the RCAF fighter experts don’t already have strong opinions about which one they prefer, then you have to wonder what they do all day.

The danger is that the Liberal government, suffering from a high sense of self-importance, will turn a three year charade into a farce.  They’ll end up choosing from among boutique aircraft whose principal user’s needs do not align with Canada’s.

For grand strategic reasons, Canada needs to buy from a North American manufacturer, plain and simple.  We need to – and only need to – stay current with the Americans.  That means we’re down to Boeing and Lockheed-Martin.

Boeing is doing very well for itself.  On the day that the U.S Trade Commission dismissed its complaint against Bombardier – thus eliminating the objection of the Trudeau government to the Super Hornet interim purchase – Boeing announced the sale of 14 more 747-8F cargo jets and four 767’s to UPS.  It’s going to buy Embraer, and maybe Woodward.  It announced $900 million in sales at the Singapore air show.  Boeing simply doesn’t need Canada’s paltry fighter jet business, and being smeared with the accusation that it is “responsible for harm to Canada’s economic interests” disinterested Boeing in competing for the fighter contract, and perhaps for more besides.

The three year “competition” to choose Canada’s next fighter jet(s) is a charade.  If the selection does not come from either Boeing or Lockheed-Martin then the whole thing was a farce.  And there is no good reason to choose just one type with 88 on order.  A mix of types: ground attack with a genuine fighter-interceptor, would meet Canada’s future needs better than a jack-of-all-trades.

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Crown Assets Disposal – Australia Division

Vincent J. Curtis

9 Jan 2018

Canada’s choice for interim fighter aircraft to replace our aging CF-18’s has been announced.  The aircraft to replace our aging CF-18’s in the interim - are Australia’s aging F-18’s.  That’s right, the aircraft our pilots are going fly - perhaps into 2035 – are coming from Crown Assets Disposal – Australia Division.

The reason why Australia is surplussing its early 1980’s vintage F-18’s is that they are replacing them right now with brand new F-35’s from Lockheed-Martin.  You know, the aircraft the Trudeau team won’t touch because it got the cooties from Team Harper?  The Australians, apparently, weren’t bothered by that.

The RCAF aren’t getting Super Hornets as interim replacements because Boeing has the temerity to take on domestic favorite, Bombardier.

Conspicuous by its absence has been noises favorable to the decision from the RCAF.  The photo taken of the decision’s announcement team doesn’t have a single member of the RCAF at the table.  Let’s apply a little Kremlinology to the photo and see what we can tease out of it.

The position of right marker is taken by Chief of Defense Staff General Jonathan Vance, and he is the one doing the talking.  Next to him is Minister of National Defense, LCol (Ret’d) Harjit Sajjan, Vance’s nominal boss, with hands folded.  Sajjan isn’t making the announcement perhaps because the government doesn’t want it to look like they are outright shafting the RCAF with the decision.  With Vance ramrodding what the decision will be, it doesn’t look so bad.

Next to Sajjan is Carla Qualtrough, Minister of Public Services and Procurement.  She being where she is is the only logical component of the photograph.  Next to Qualtrough sits Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science, and Economic Development.  What is he doing there?  He is just filling space, because buying used has nothing to do with innovation, science, or economic development.

Finally, at the end of the table, is Minister of Transport Marc Garneau.  Again, what is he doing there other than filling space?

Chief of the Air Staff and Commander of the RCAF, LGen Michael J. Hood was nowhere in sight.  Assistant Deputy Minister (Material) Patrick Finn was nowhere in sight.  Neither gentleman was quoted saying something favorable in any of the stories I’ve read about the decision.  Not a peep from anyone having to fly in these aging Australian crates, the service history of which RCAF maintenance has only second-hand information.

The political dodging started immediately.  When challenged on the decision, MND Sajjan always turned to saying that the government was actually announcing that the replacement competition would start – in another three years, 2020!  That a replacement competition was to be held to avoid taking the F-35 was an announcement made during the 2015 election, and repeated immediately after the election of the Trudeau government.  The competition to start in 2020 is to reach a decision in 2023 with first acquisition starting in 2025, according to Sajjan.

What is significant about those dates is that no one in the photograph is going to be around then.  The next federal election is in 2019, which means the Trudeau government is making pledges potentially on behalf of its successor, and the next election after 2019 would conceivably be 2023 - the year of the announcement of the winner of the competition.

Vance will be retired.  Sajjan, if he is around in 2023, won’t be Minister of National Defense; Garneau will likely have retired.  Young Mr. Bains and Carla Qualtrough might still be in cabinet – assuming the Trudeau government itself survives into 2023, by no means a given.

Given the state of play in the fighter market, in 2023 the Super Hornet will be off the market.  Other than the F-16, which will still be around, and the F-35, the only other source of Gen 4.5 or greater aircraft will be the Saab Gripen from Sweden, the Dassault Rafale from France, or Eurofighter Typhoon from a European consortium.  I can’t imagine that either Russia or China would sell us aircraft that would be any good.  Not much else to choose from, off the shelf.

These Australian jets don’t come for free.  The estimate being kicked around is $500 million to get them air-worthy again.  When challenged on that point, MND Sajjan would dodge, meaning that the amount is at least that much, and probably more.  Note that the fly-away cost for 18 new-build F-16s from Lockheed-Martin is in the neighbourhood of $750 million.  For a few dollars more, the RCAF could have had absolutely new and certifiably air-worthy aircraft capable of carrying the load for twenty years, and the F-16 is famously low maintenance.  Forty year old F-18’s – not so much.  You have to wonder if the lower initial investment won’t be offset by higher routine maintenance within five years.

The RCAF got shafted with the decision to take old Australian F-18s.  They’re going to get shafted again in 2023 if the Trudeau government is still around.  The silence from the RCAF brass is deafening.  Can we expect a resignation or an early retirement from that quarter soon?

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A version of this appeared in Esprit de Corps magazine Vol 25 No. 1.

Hillary’s Last Laugh

Vincent J. Curtis

11 Feb 2018

Two expressions are being tossed around stupidly and recklessly by the media in respect of the Trump-Russia collusion investigation.  They are “oppo research” and “corroborated” or “verified.”  Let’s put paid to these terms of Democrat resistance to the Trump presidency.

The important thing to know about opposition research is that the findings are true.  More than true, it is dirt on the candidate that can be demonstrated with video, court documents, or written records.  To illustrate, consider two examples from the career of George W. Bush.

When Bush was running for president in 2000, there was a DUI conviction in his record that, while known, was not widely known well enough outside of Texas to have been discounted in the course of the 2000 campaign.  The Gore campaign released and pushed this conviction into the media on the weekend before the election, and it almost cost Bush his victory.  The DUI conviction was true, and Bush couldn’t truthfully deny it.  Gore almost won on account of good oppo research.

In the 2004 campaign, CBS News anchor Dan Rather was given a document that purported to demonstrate that Bush had essentially skipped out of the last few months of his service with the Texas Air National Guard unit, tending to support the notion that Bush was a “chickenhawk” and nearly approximate to a Vietnam war draft-dodger.  It didn’t take long for the internet to discover that the document had been fabricated because the typestyle of the print was modern and did not match the typestyle then in use in 1974.  When coupled with the fact that the originator of the document had a history of anti-Bush activity, the document was deemed false in the public’s eye, and Dan Rather paid for his mistake with his career and reputation.

Oppo research – the finding of political dirt on the opposing candidate – has the characteristic of being true and readily verifiable in the public domain if you know where to look.

Now let’s turn to the matter of verifiability, and to do that consider the novel The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara.  It is a fictionalized account of the battle of Gettysburg, and Shaara did a tremendous job of research in putting the book together.  Shaara incorporated much detail that he had discovered from his historical research in the book.  But the book is not an historical account of the battle, but of a story woven around the battle.  Shaara included characters that did not historically exist, included conversations between characters that we know didn’t happen or couldn’t have happened, recorded conversations between characters that might have happened but for which no historical record exists, and provided thoughts from the minds of characters which are impossible for someone not that person to know.

In short, there is lots of stuff in Shaara’s novel that can be verified from the historical record, but that doesn’t change the fact that his book is a work of fiction.  No amount of verification of the true stuff can make the fictional stuff true.

Thus when were hear and read in the press about this or that element of the now notorious anti-Trump Steele dossier has been “verified” that doesn’t mean that the essential element of the case – that Trump colluded with the Russians to steal the 2016 election from Hillary Clinton and the Democrats – is true or on the road to verification.  Yes, Russia is a country and Carter Page is an American citizen, and certain named Russians in the dossier may be considered oligarchs and might even be friends with Vladimir Putin.  Yes, Carter Page traveled to his old haunt Moscow in July 2016 to deliver a speech to some economic conference.  All or most of this can be verified from public records.

But the aspects of the dossier that say that Page met with oligarchs who are friends with Putin and that they discussed ways in which Trump could help by easing sanctions if Russia used its resources to tilt the election his way, are the writings of fiction.  Of a vivid imagination.  Sure, these things may be plausible if one is so inclined, just as the fictional conversations between characters in Shaara’s novel are plausible; but unless Page comes out and admits his guilt none of this stuff is “verified” in the significant sense of that word.

From the Nunes memo, the Grassley-Graham referral to the Department of Justice that Steele be charged with lying to the FBI, the discovery of the involvement of Sidney Blumenthal and Cory Shearer in the creation of a second dossier, and the admission by former State Department official Johnathan Winer that he passed the Blumenthal dossier to Steele, it becomes clear that the only sources of Russia-Trump collusion documentation were paid to create it by Hillary Clinton!

That ought to give a reasonable person pause.  Steele was not witness to any of the things alleged in his dossier.  His direct source didn’t witness the alleged event either.  What Steele reported as true was hearsay three degrees removed.  Even if Steele reported accurately what he was told, he appears to be set up as a patsy for the conveyance  to the media and to the FBI of Hillary-created fiction about Trump.  And if the material didn’t originate with Hillary, it came from the Kremlin.

No matter how much of the material can be verified, the essential element – that of Trump-Russia collusion – hasn’t been and cannot be – BECAUSE IT DIDN’T HAPPEN.

The Steele dossier is a work of fiction intended to smear Trump with falsehood and innuendo.  It need hardly be said that the Blumenthal dossier is a work of fiction intended to smear Trump with the same charge.  The public was supposed to be fooled because two supposedly different sources were alleging the same thing, when in fact the fiction all originated with Hillary.  It fooled the FBI because they wanted to believe it.  The leadership of the FBI wanted to run down anything that could bring down Trump – even after he was elected!

We are now in a position to understand that the Steele dossier is a work of fiction, paid for by Hillary, and was intended to smear Trump and prevent his election.  Perversely, the FBI so wanted to believe the dossier that it continued its surveillance of Carter Page in the desperate hope that something would turn up, and it deceived the FISC in order to keep up that surveillance of Page well into Trump’s presidency.

The Mueller investigation began after Comey was fired by Trump for implying one thing in public while saying another in private in respect to Trump’s guilt of collusion with Russia to steal the election from Hillary.  The Mueller investigation has turned up precisely nothing in respect of collusion because none happened, and all Mueller has been able to do is get convictions on process crimes from hapless victims whose memory was not as good as the documentary record.  He has charged Paul Manafort with a crime completely unrelated to Mueller’s mandate.

Now Mueller hopes to entrap Trump in “perjury”, that is another process crime of lying to the FBI because his memory is not as good as the historical record.  If Trump does meet with Mueller, Trump ought to insist that Mueller brief him first on the progress of his investigation.

Mueller’s brief is a counter-intelligence investigation, not a criminal investigation.  As president, Trump is entitled to be briefed on all counter-intelligence work, just as Obama was in September 2016 when Comey briefed him on the progress of the Trump investigation.  Trump ought to demand an accounting from Mueller, not the other way around.

The Steele dossier was a political ruse and dirty trick by Hillary against Trump and against the electorate.  The Mueller investigation is Hillary’s last laugh.

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A really secure place

Vincent J. Curtis

5 Feb 2018

I didn't write the piece below, but it is hilarious, and apocryphally true.  It deserves to to be publicized. 

During a recent press conference, a reporter with MSNBC hollered from the press corps, "Where is President Trump hiding his tax returns?”

Press Secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, astutely responded, "We've found a very secure place and I'm certain they won't be found.”

"And just where is that?" said the reporter, sarcastically.

Mrs. Sanders grinned sardonically and said, "They are underneath Obama's college records, his passport application, his immigration status as a student, his funding sources to pay for college, his college records, and his Selective Service registration.”

"Next question?"

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Men? Women? Violence? What?

Vincent J. Curtis

1 Feb 2018

RE: Changing perceptions on gender violence

It is strange to read about a program targeting high school boys that tries to “reshape how men view violence against women and their role in stopping it.”  The same people who complain about male violence against women are the same people who advocate for transgender bathrooms because gender identity - male and female - are fluid concepts not grounded in reality.

We see the same kind of incoherent thinking in the administration of the program.  Violence “needs to be broadened to include sexist jokes and homophobic remarks.”  I submit that there is a substantial difference between a punch in the mouth and an off-colour joke, in that one is delivered in words and the other with a closed fist.  The pain inflicted by one is psychological; the other, physical.  These two things need to be kept separate if one is to proceed in a rational way to address the problem at issue, namely violence by men against women.

Only by getting rid of mutually incoherent progressivist fashion statements can one even talk about ‘violence’ by ‘men’ against ‘women.’  One must also shed politically correct fashion statements about sexual etiquette, and become realistic.

While we ought to stress among the physically strong the importance of the maintaining the veneer of civilization, the physically weak need to be taught not to presume too much upon the thickness of the veneer maintained by the strong.

In short, the real problem is one dealt with perennially by any Protestant minister or Catholic priest.  Except that modern progressive political correctness lacks the mental equipment necessary to address the problem in a rational and coherent way.  The problem is one as old as humanity itself, and is rooted in human nature.  Human beings combine animal appetites with a rational intellect, and addressing the problem of violence requires appeal to the rational aspect of human beings which are able to control through the will the animal appetites.  To do that one must have a rational basis for making one’s argument.  The progressive approach to the problem relies on chop-logic and assertions dogmatically made.  ("That's bad.  Don't do it! etc.)

Dogmatic assertions of chop-logic morality fail to appeal for long to rational intellects.

Progressivism, which holds that gender identity is fluid, that women should be sexually liberated, and that a punch is the same as a joke, is utterly unequipped to deal rationally with violence by men against women.  It relies for its effect upon emotion alone.

An ethic founded upon a rational basis, such as found in Aristotle's The Nichmachean Ethics or in scholasticism (which forms the "preambles" to Christian faith) or even Christianity itself provides a far more powerful argument for establishing the wrong of violence per se.  Combine a rational argument with emotional commitment, and there is a convincing combination.

Progressivism creates a chop-logic ethic.  "This is good, that is bad" statements are dogmatically asserted.  Programs intended to enforce such an ethic are bound to fail because they rely upon emotion alone and are essentially empty of coherent rational arguments that appeal to the rational intellect, and it is the rational intellect that sustains the judgment after the emotion passes.

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