By Ken Pole | April 30, 2014 Estimated reading time 5 minutes, 49 seconds.
As the Government of Canada considers if and when to release an internal comparison of alternatives to the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II as its next front-line fighter, a noted critic of the program warned on April 29 that F-35 life-cycle costs could be even higher than currently anticipated.
University of British Columbia political science professor Michael Byers released his study, “The Plane that Ate the Canadian Military,” through the Rideau Institute and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Byers explained that he worked with the Department of National Defence’s (DND’s) own 2013 information in preparing the report.
Reports issued by the Parliamentary Budget Office in 2011 and the Auditor General in 2012, stated that the government was anticipating a total project cost of approximately $46 billion. Byers’ report estimates that after additional costs not considered by the government, the total bill could amount to $126 billion in the worst case scenario. That’s $80 billion higher than the government’s most recently acknowledged number.
Byers, who has held the federally-funded position of Canada Research Chair in International Law and Politics since 2004, highlighted in his report what he saw as a critical flaw in all studies by the government in general, and the DND in particular: they were based on the cost of operating the Royal Canadian Air Force’s current fleet of Boeing CF-18 Hornets, rather than on F-35 data. To remedy this discrepancy, Byers based his report on U.S. Department of Defense and Government Accountability Office studies, which deal specifically with projected numbers for the F-35.
The difference between the Harper government’s numbers and the numbers Byers found in the American studies amounts to an $11 billion gap, he told reporters.
“F-35s have a much higher operating cost than CF-18s for a host of reasons,” he said. Those reasons include “a lot more uncertain developmental technology in F-35s as compared to the CF-18s, and the U.S. Air Force, and Lockheed Martin and the U.S. government, are discovering that there is a substantial price difference.”
Byers said U.S. numbers point to a lifecycle cost of $56 billion for Canada’s fleet. He said that additional costs not acknowledged by the Government of Canada included $420 million to modify in-flight refuelling hardware, $218 million for munitions, $200 million to add drag chutes, and $217 million for a computer programming facility. “Once you add those other actual costs . . . you get to $57 billion,” he said.
Other worrisome “uncertainties” included the prospect of even a small shift in the Canada-U.S. currency exchange rates. An 85-cent dollar would add $800 million to the capital costs of the F-35s, he said, and a two per cent increase in inflation would add $1 billion. Yet another potential risk to consider was the possibility that F-35 orders would not be as high as Lockheed Martin projects, driving up unit costs.
“Add all this up and under a moderate risk scenario . . . you go up to $90 billion for the lifecycle cost of a fleet of F-35s,” Byers said. “Change the risk parameters just slightly—go to a four per cent increase in inflation and . . . you go to $126 billion!”
Byers urged Prime Minister Stephen Harper to go public with a report he commissioned two years ago on possible alternatives to the F-35, which has since been finalized and released to the government.
As for possible alternatives to the F-35, Byers pointed out that the Royal Australian Air Force, despite recently ordering 58 additional F-35s, were still 28 aircraft short of the 100 the RAAF initially contemplated. “One of the reasons it’s lower is that they decided to buy some Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornets and Growlers,” he told Skies. “We’re not seeing the significant increase in overseas sales of F-35s that Lockheed Martin has been talking about. We’re seeing roughly the same or slightly lower in terms of overseas sales, and we’re also seeing at least a delay in U.S. sales.”
Asked whether the Super Hornet would be his “platform of choice,” Byers said he had not done enough analysis on the other potential contenders—the Eurofighter Typhoon, the Dassault Rafale or the SAAB JAS-39 Gripen—but he said that the Super Hornet could buy the RCAF time to carry out a genuine competition. “Purchasing 20 to 30 Super Hornets,” he said, would “extend the capability of the CF-18 fleet without having to go through the full retraining of pilots and mechanics.”
It would also give the RCAF and the government more time to explore the growing capabilities of remotely-piloted vehicles. “The F-35 could be rendered obsolete in 10 or 15 years by advances in drone technology,” said Byers.
Lockheed Martin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
