Over the weekend, the Canadian Press reported that Canada’s F-35s won’t initially be able to communicate from the Arctic. On Monday, the opposition took the government to task yet again for choosing the F-35, saying that this recent issue is just one in a laundry list of problems that ought to make everyone re-think buying the plane at all.
That evening, defence minister Peter MacKay told the CBC that all related costs to modifications that will be necessary to make sure the planes can communicate from the high north are built into the $9 billion that the government has allocated for the program.
Over at the Department of National Defence, they said much the same thing: “There will be no unique additional cost to Canada, as Beyond Line of Site (BLOS) communication is a nine nation partner requirement for the F-35 aircraft,” an official from DND wrote iPolitics in an email. He added that the long lead time that Canada has before it receives its planes will be sufficient to deal with the issue.
“This satellite communications capability continues to be discussed within the various Joint Strike Fighter program working bodies made up of representatives from all partner nations,” he said.
In other words: who knows what it will cost?
Tight belts
What we do know is pressure in the U.S. to get the overall costs of the F-35 program under control is mounting, essentially by the day.
On Monday, the White House endorsed a Senate bill that proposes cutting the U.S. Defense Department’s spending by $26 billion in the 2012 budget. That will effectively freeze defence spending in the U.S. for another year, and one analyst told the Hill the move signals a ‘build-down’ is underway:
With the letter, “the administration has officially endorsed a hard defense freeze in [2012] in order to meet the BCA’s security spending caps,” Matthew Leatherman, an analyst at the Stimson Center, said Monday.
Leatherman said this is exactly how defense build-downs typically work. … “The [Budget Control Act]’s security cap made it difficult to increase military resources above inflation in [2012], and this newly-announced administration position makes that even less likely. There should be no doubt that the build-down has begun.”
According to Politico, the hope is even with less spending over the next 10 years, the U.S. military can still be an “agile, efficient and modern” force. However, JSF partners should perhaps be increasingly worried about where those budget cuts will happen.
From Politico:
Observers are eagerly awaiting the results of a strategic review that will guide decisions on where to reduce Pentagon spending. In the meantime, just about everyone else in Washington is offering their own ideas, with many suggesting that the current U.S. defense strategy — and possibly also some highly sought-after new weapons — won’t survive the planned cuts.
On many analysts’ chopping blocks are weapons systems, including the most expensive defense program in history — the Joint Strike Fighter. The ambitious plan to replace most Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps tactical aircraft with more than 2,400 F-35 fighters in three variants has an estimated $1 trillion cost over a planned 50-year lifespan — an eye-popping figure that attracts budget-cutters.
So while we don’t know what it will cost to add necessary modifications to Canada’s F-35s between now and the time they’re delivered, we can be sure that it will probably cost something. If we’re willing to give everyone the benefit of the doubt here, it would be logical to assume that while this is the first we’ve heard of this communications problem, it’s likely not the first anyone involved with the program has. That being the case, DND’s assertion that the costs will be absorbed by the $9 billion would stand to reason. Having said that, of course, additional costs are additional costs. And when it comes to the F-35 program at the moment, additional costs are the last thing anyone needs.
chorgan@ipolitics.ca
© 2011 iPolitics Inc.
