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.
-30-
No comments:
Post a Comment