Does Harper have the guts to junk the F-35?
by Geoffrey Stevens
The Harper government is still scuffling around on the F-35 fighter jets, trying to pretend the acquisition remains a viable option.
The government should abandon that effort. It is time to cut its losses, to admit that, back in 2006, in its early days as a new and inexperienced administration, it made a catastrophic error by signing on to the US-controlled and -manipulated Joint Strike Fighter program. It compounded that error by trying, repeatedly, to hide the true costs of the F-35 from Parliament and the public; but no amount of bookkeeping jiggery-pokery can camouflage the deception.
The government should concede that this white elephant — or "supersonic albatross," as they are calling it in the United States — which is useless for most Canadian purposes and far too expensive for the national treasury, will never see service with the RCAF. If the price tag doesn't kill it, the performance deficiencies or production delays will (it's already nine years behind schedule and counting).
This baby is ready for the last rites.
But the Harper government is not ready to summon a priest. At this stage, it is primarily interested in saving face — with those Canadian voters who assume the Conservatives are competent managers, and with Washington, where it wants the administration to believe the Harper Tories are dependable allies and reliable partners in matters of trade and investment.
So, instead of doing the sensible thing — canceling the F-35, retrofitting the existing CF-18s to extend their service life, and organizing an open competition to choose an aircraft that will suit Canada's needs at a price the country can afford — the Conservatives are maintaining that the F-35 stealth fighter is still a living, breathing government policy.
In the wake of a scathing report from the Auditor General — so scathing that it should cause the entire cabinet to lie awake nights wondering where they had gone so wrong — the government decided to move primary responsibility for aircraft procurement from the Defence Department. It created an inter-departmental "secretariat" (that's a "committee" to non-bureaucrats) to review the F-35 and, in the words of Julian Fantino, the military hardware guy in Harper's cabinet, "to lead this project moving forward."
Before "moving forward," Fantino, Harper and Defence Minister Peter MacKay ought to consider the assessment offered by an American expert, Winslow Wheeler. Wheeler spent 31 years as a national security advisor on Capitol Hill and today he is director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information in Washington. He is a leading critic of the F-35.
Winslow Wheeler’s article, “F-35: The jet that ate the Pentagon,” should be a wake-up call to governments on both sides of the border.
He wrote an article in the April issue of Foreign Policy magazine. It was republished in the Toronto Star on Sunday. The title, "F-35: The jet that ate the Pentagon," should be a wake-up call to governments on both sides of the border.
Wheeler describes the Joint Strike Fighter program, involving the air force, navy and marine corps in the US as well as nine allied countries (including Canada), as a "calamity" and the aircraft itself as a "gigantic performance disappointment" and an "unaffordable mediocrity."
The F-35 is supposed to be fast, but isn't. Being a "stealth" aircraft, it is meant to be invisible to enemy radar, but much of the time it isn't. Even some antiquated radar systems can "see" the F-35.
The cost is staggering. For Canada, it is a relatively piddling, but still breathtaking, $30 billion or so for 65 aircraft. For the US, which was originally planning to order 2,866 F-35s, the pricetag is astronomical. A few months ago, it was $1.1 trillion (that's trillion with a "t"); even though the Pentagon cut the order by 400 planes, the price kept rising. The most recent figure is $1.5 trillion, and still heading north.
"Junk it," Wheeler recommends. "…The dustbin awaits."
A half-century ago, John Diefenbaker junked the Avro Arrow. Regardless of what one thinks of that still-controversial decision, it took political guts. Does Harper have the guts to junk the F-35?
About Geoffrey Stevens
Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens, an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail, teaches political science at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Guelph. He welcomes comments at the address below. This article appeared in the Waterloo Region Record and the Guelph Mercury.
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