Prime Minister Mark Carney has asked for a review of Canada’s plan to purchase a fleet of F-35 fighter jets.
The deal with Lockheed Martin and the U.S. government is for 88 planes at a cost of about US$85 million each.
A spokesperson for Defence Minister Bill Blair said Carney has asked Blair to look into whether the F-35 contract is the best investment for Canada, or if there are better options.
“We need to do our homework given the changing environment, and make sure that the contract in its current form is in the best interests of Canadians and the Canadian Armed Forces,” Blair’s press secretary Laurent de Casanove said.
F-35 is the most advanced aircraft currently available. We’ve also already sunk enough money into the program to pay for the first 16 IIRC. This puts us in an awkward position, considering the possibility of degraded functionality of the F-35 without US assistance1.
One of the worst ways to balloon military spending without getting anything in return is to keep changing your mind and hanging procurement up in endless indecision. Combined with the money already spent, I think we have to stick with F-35 for at least a bit.
I like the Gripen, and I’d suggest a switching some of our 88 fighters to Gripen’s, but apparently Gripen’s aren’t that much cheaper.
Long term though, I think Canada should get in on GCAP, the Global Combat Air Program. It’s not expected to deliver until 2035 if everything sticks to plan, so we’d still need the F-35 or Gripens I was mentioning in the interim.
1 My understanding is that the “kill-switch” myth is pretty much that, a myth. There are software systems that depend on the US, apparently ALIS/ODIN, plus the MDF file updates. The possibility of a kill-switch can’t be totally excluded IMO though, there is a lot of software in the F-35, and the US writes and patches it all. Even if there isn’t a kill-switch, the US knows what vulnerabilities they are patching, and if any of them where exploitable, I’d imagine they’d know.
The key thing you’re missing here is that the programming of the ECM pod, the thing that makes the F-35 able to do what it does, the thing it’s just an average 6th gen fighter without, is only done by US personnel.
Even if you could make the entire plane locally, parts wise, the US will not ever give out the pod code. Ever.
Because without it, the plane is worth less than nothing, it’s a liability.
As long as you can service and maintain them. Without a reliable supply chain for parts and servicing, they’re just expensive decorations.
Absolutely. This is the true “kill switch”. Turning off support for most US made weapons means killing them.
As I’ve said elsewhere the ECM pod updates can only be done by US staff. Without this week’s pod frequencies to hit the latest radar frequencies, the plane is a liability in the air because of it’s cost.
There is no way the US is going to code “enemy” planes’ ECM.
The F-35 program may well flatline from this upset.
Uncle Sam keeps his ECM frequencies under a pretty tight lock and key, speaking as someone who’s had to service ALQ-99 pods.
in west, but it may also be too advanced as root cause of its reliability and maintenance cost problems.
should demand refund for those 16.
$85m vs $109m is a fair bit cheaper. Again, the maintenance costs and flight readiness metrics matter significantly.
We don’t need to focus on whether there is a “mid air kill switch or not”, when we know there is a “make this a paper weight switch”. Naive or disingenuous of you to say “if Lockheed finds a kill switch, they would surely patch it out”
Saab is offering to move part of the production to Canada, Trump might prevent US defense contractors from having facilities outside the US… So… Yeah
This is one of the reasons I really liked the Saab offer. Supporting a domestic aerospace defence industry is probably a good strategic aim.
GCAP would also offer a chance to foster our domestic aerospace industry.
There are other combinations that achieve much the same though. FCAS (Future Combat Air System) is similar to GCAP, a joint France, Germany and Spain project, but it isn’t scheduled to deliver until 2040.
I am in no position to know what’s “best”, but it’s undeniable that there are some good options. It’s unfortunate though that there will be a cost to pay that we went with F-35 all those years ago. Still don’t have a Canadian F-35 in the air.
Another piece of trivia, that I really don’t know if significant is that Sweden nearly joined GCAP. If we went with Gripen and GCAP, and Sweden rejoined GCAP there might be opportunities for long term partnerships. Then again I think there are similar opportunities with Eurofighter and FCAS.
Also, even without any malicious back doors it is still likely far easier to attack the software and electronic vulnerabilities of the aircraft as you said.