Wednesday, November 2, 2011

F-35 a political commitment

But look for Harper to bail out on project as plane's woes grow

BY MICHAEL DEN TANDT, THE GAZETTE NOVEMBER 2, 2011

There is no Canadian-signed contract yet for the F-35 project and there won't be one for at least another three years.

Photograph by: AFP, GETTY IMAGES, The Gazette

There is nothing edifying about the sight of a minister flailing when he knows there's blood in the water, and that some of it is bound to be his.

Even the few who are exceptionally good at deflection develop a hunted, perpetually aggrieved look. They'd love nothing better than to angrily lash out at their foes across the floor. They can't do that because uncontrolled emotion plays poorly on television. So they retreat and evade, repeating paint-bynumbers talking points they figure won't get them into deeper trouble.

Such has been the case in the House this week as the associate minister of defence in charge of procurement, Julian Fantino, faced renewed peppering from the opposition about the precarious state of the F-35 fighter-bomber procurement. Fantino gamely offered the pro-forma non-answer: This is the best fighter for the Canadian Forces and the government is determined to give the men and women in uniform the best technology possible to do their jobs.

If only it were that simple. It's hard to see how this albatross of an acquisition, initiated by the Liberals in the late 1990s, could devolve into an even worse state politically.

The Conservatives fought an election in which their rivals did their best to disparage the purchase, and they won a majority anyway. Polls show that Canadians, though leery of the F-35 project specifically, generally approve of the Harper government's rebuilding of the military. The Tories have earned some goodwill for re-investing in the Canadian Forces, and deservedly so.

That said, the government is in heavy weather with the F-35 now and, for reasons beyond Canadian control, the trouble is growing.

The difficult but smart move would be for the PMO to stand tall, turn tail and order a redo, with an open, apolitical competition, such as that held in the recent $35-billion naval-ship procurement.

Liberal leader Bob Rae has said the shipping-contract process set a new standard: He's right. The F-35 process does not come close to measuring up. In fairness this is not one individual's fault, but rather an accumulation of bad news that now threatens to reach critical mass, because of debt crises on both sides of the Atlantic.

Here's the skinny on this plane: It will be beautiful and lethal, the finest fighterbomber ever built, when it's finally flying in air forces around the world. In time the bugs will be ironed out: Too much money has been invested already, mainly by the U.S. government, for there to be any other outcome. But the number of planes, and their cost, remains an open question; for Canada, anywhere between $75 million a plane and $150 million.

And there are other problems: Michael Gilmore, the senior Pentagon official in charge of weapons testing, now wants the test-flight program on the F-35 delayed because of concerns over pilot safety.

Meantime, the Pentagon is poised to give the manufacturer, Lockheed-Martin, its latest accounting of what it thinks the F-35 should cost - and clearly, cuts are on the table.

The U.S.'s own F-35 program, roughly pegged at 2,400 planes for $380-plus billion, is simply too expensive for the debt-strapped Treasury.

The program has already suffered a string of delays and cost overruns, prompting such key partners as Australia to mull buying other planes.

What happens when the Pentagon itself is forced to delay or curtail development, due to defence budget cuts estimated at $1 trillion over the next decade?

Ottawa's commitment to this aircraft is at present just political.

There is no signed contract, indeed there won't be one for at least another three years or so. The ministers have time to go back to the drawing board if they wish to, with no penalty, and hold an open contest.

Here's why they haven't, so far: It's not just about us. Because the price is tied to the number of planes ordered, any cancellation or delay boosts costs for everyone, which has a cascading effect. In sticking to its guns, Canada is attempting to be a reliable ally.

But here's the kicker: The cascading effect is already upon us, due to economic problems elsewhere. How long can Canadian ministers be expected to strap themselves to this anvil before they cut it loose and pop their chutes?

Harper has often shown an ability to execute tactical retreats with lightning speed, if he feels he's lost the high ground.

Look for that to happen with the F-35, sooner rather than later, as the economic gloom deepens south of the border.

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

F-35 Fighters: Careful Consideration Needed

October 26, 2011

Last year, Stephen Harper’s Conservative government announced that it would proceed unilaterally with the purchase of sixty-five F-35 jets to replace our CF-18 fleet. The government did not once consult the opposition or want to debate the issue. This lack of debate has inevitably caused some serious issues to arise.

The Harper government still refuses to release the statement of requirements developed by the Department of National Defence. Not only is the government preventing any real debate on the subject but it is making itself the sole arbiter of this extremely costly and highly questionable purchase. When the government says that the F-35 is the only aircraft that can meet Canada’s needs, we are forced to put our blind faith in its decision.

In terms of program costs, there is no way of knowing exactly how much we will pay for the F‑35s. The government puts the cost at $75 million per aircraft, not counting maintenance. The U.S. Government Accountability Office anticipates that Canada will pay at least $110 million per aircraft, and Kevin Page, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, estimates a price tag of $148 million each. Declining orders for the F-35 and significant delays in the development of the aircraft mean that the $75-million estimate is completely unrealistic. Everyone except the Harper government expects the costs to exceed initial estimates. Moreover, the economic benefits of the F-35s are very ill-defined. We have no guarantee on contracts for Canadian companies, even though the industrial benefits policy stipulates that the economic benefits to Canada must equal 100% of the value of the contract.

Lastly, the F-35 has many shortcomings. Tests show that, given its lack of speed, the F-35 would consistently be beaten in aerial combat by the previous generation of jets, particularly the CF-18 that we want to replace. The F-35s are effective for air-to-ground attacks but would require an integrated military approach, where Canada’s role would be limited to supporting other countries and other air forces. Moreover, the aircraft would not be effective in defending Canada’s security and borders, contrary to the government’s position. Durability tests by Lockheed-Martin also show that cracks appeared on the aircraft’s wings after 1,600 hours of flight. Problems with the aircraft’s communications system announced this week are the last straw.

In short, not only does the government refuse to debate replacing the CF-18s but it is consistently trying to conceal cost overruns and problems with the F-35s. We are calling for a real debate on this issue, and for an open and transparent competitive process.

Christine Moore

MP for Abitibi–Témiscamingue

Official Opposition Critic for Military Procurement

Opposition blasts ‘botched’ jet purchase and gun-registry ‘bonfire’

OTTAWA— Globe and Mail Update

Posted on Monday, October 31, 2011 5:58PM EDT

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The opposition tried a number of scare tactics, accusing the Conservative government of mishandling its fighter-jet purchase and of scorching the earth with its long-gun registry bill, on Monday’s Halloween edition of Question Period.

Associate Defence Minister Julian Fantino was shouted down as he tried to defend the government’s multi-billion-dollar stealth fighter deal amid accusations that his boss, Defence Minster Peter MacKay, “botched” the purchase.

“It is a simple but very important question, so I will ask it again,” said NDP MP Matthew Kellway. “When will the Conservatives finally admit that the F-35 scheme is in a tailspin? When will they start putting Canadian taxpayers first, cancel the F-35 and establish a transparent and competitive process for the replacement of the CF-18?”

Mr. Fantino was only partway through his answer, in which he was blaming the Liberals for initially signing on to the process to acquire the 65 new fighter jets, before he was shut down by the opposition’s heckling. The Speaker had to intervene.

“The minister has been asked a question. He has the right to answer it. The honourable minister has the floor,” Speaker Andrew Scheer told the Commons.

Mr. Fantino did not stray from the government line – that the jets are the only “aircraft that meets the needs of Canada’s Armed Forces.”

It was a rancorous Question Period – and one that is featuring fewer and fewer NDP MPs criticizing the government. Peggy Nash and Robert Chisholm both resigned their high-profile finance and trade critic roles this weekend after announcing they were running for the leadership, bringing to eight the number of candidates vying to replace the late Jack Layton.

The Liberals, meanwhile, also want the jet fighter purchase to be a competitive one. So far, it has been a sole-source contract with other NATO countries, including Canada and the United States, deciding on the Lockheed-Martin airplane.

The jets will cost between $9-billion and $30-billion, depending on who is doing the math. By comparison, the shipbuilding contracts the government awarded this month worth $33-billion.

Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae tried to lay a trap on that front, asking Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose about the process that led to the awarding of the shipbuilding contracts.

“I wonder if the minister can tell us whether she considers the work of the fairness officer in assessing the value of the contract with respect to the building of ships was an important and integral part of that entire process.”

Ms. Ambrose said it was “invaluable.” Indeed, that process, which successfully kept politics and pork out, was lauded by the opposition and even the lobbyists.

Armed with Ms. Ambrose’s answer, Mr. Rae countered: “If it is good enough for the ships, why is it not good enough for the planes?”

He didn’t get the answer he wanted.

“What we saw under 13 years of Liberal rule was a constant degrading of the Canadian Forces’ budgets and that can never happen again,” said Heritage Minister James Moore, who was standing in for an absent Stephen Harper. “If the Leader of the Liberal Party does not like the process with regard to the F-35s, all he has to do is look to his left and look to his right because it is his party that started it.”

In addition to questions about the jet purchase, the opposition also went after the government for its controversial decision not only to scrap the long-gun registry but to burn the records along with it.

“The government is planning a $2-billion bonfire,” NDP MP Francoise Boivin charged. “Why is it ignoring the pleas of victims and their families? Why will it not put public safety first?”

The NDP is against killing the registry, with Ms. Boivin arguing that Quebeckers – particularly the families of the victims of the 1989 Ecole Polytechnique massacre – want the records maintained. (It was Marc Lepine’s killing rampage that led Jean Chrétien’s Liberal government to create the registry.)

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews fired back, accusing MPs of being anti-victim because the NDP has not supported the government’s crime legislation that is aimed at protecting victims.

“Just because the Liberals spent $2-billion on a long-gun registry does not mean it is worth anything,” added Mr. Toews. “In fact, the only thing it does is target law-abiding Canadian citizens improperly and it obtrusive in their private affairs.
”

Pentagon concludes "should cost" review of F-35

WASHINGTON | Mon Oct 31, 2011 9:11pm EDT

(Reuters) - The Defense Department on Monday said it had finished an initial review of what the next batch of F-35 fighter jets should cost, and would brief the manufacturer, Lockheed Martin Corp, shortly.

Completion of the so-called "should cost" review will pave the way for the start of formal negotiations about a fifth batch of 30 F-35 or Joint Strike Fighter warplanes.

The F-35 program remains under tough scrutiny. It is the largest U.S. weapons program and has already seen costs rise sharply over the past 10 years -- making it a prime target for future cuts as defense officials brace for up to $1 trillion in defense spending cuts over the next decade.

Officials estimate it will cost $382 billion to develop and build 2,447 of the radar-evading fighter jets for the U.S. military, but Pentagon officials have said they intend cut that projected cost sharply through tough cost-cutting measures.

Shay Assad, the Pentagon's new director of defense pricing, was due to brief F-35 program officials on Monday about his lengthy review of overhead and other manufacturing costs, followed by a meeting with Lockheed on Tuesday, according to sources familiar with the Joint Strike Fighter program.

Lockheed spokesman Michael Rein said the company did not publicly discuss details of contract negotiations. Lockheed submitted its proposal for pricing to build 32 to 35 low-rate initial production (LRIP) aircraft in April, Rein said.

The Pentagon's F-35 program office last week said that four airplanes had been cut from the proposed purchase to cover some of the $771 million in cost overruns on the first three batches of planes, reducing the planned purchase to 30 airplanes.

Rein said the final number of aircraft and their price would be determined as part of LRIP 5 negotiations.

F-35 program spokesman Joe DellaVedova said cost overruns ranged from 11 percent to 15 percent on the first three production contracts. The fourth production contract has fixed-price terms, which means that the Pentagon and Lockheed share cost overruns equally, up to a certain ceiling amount. Beyond the ceiling, Lockheed pays all the extra costs.

"Controlling costs is an absolute must," said DellaVedova, adding that the Pentagon saw "signs of emerging stability in the manufacturing flow" at Lockheed and key suppliers.

Lockheed, the Pentagon's biggest supplier, used its quarterly earnings report last week to criticize what it called an "unprecedented" move by Pentagon to make the company pay for design changes that arise during developmental testing of the new warplane, which has already begun low-rate production.

Lockheed said it was willing to pay for some design changes, but could not accept "unbounded" risk.

Pentagon spokeswoman Cheryl Irwin said the department was seeking "an equitable sharing arrangement on concurrency risk" with Lockheed, and negotiations were continuing.

Separately, the Pentagon's testing director told the department's chief weapons buyer in a October 21 memorandum that he had serious concerns about plans to begin pilot training on F-35 warplanes at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida next month.

Director of Operational Test and Evaluation Michael Gilmore, citing the risk of catastrophic failures, recommended the Air Force delay training for up to 10 months until 1,500 more hours of flight testing had been completed on top of 1,000 hours already done at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

In a joint memo, the Air Force's top aeronautical commander and F-35 program director Vice Admiral David Venlet disagreed and said that changing plans for training and evaluating the plane's operational utility would drive up the program's cost.

Acting Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendall asked Air Force Secretary Michael Donley and his chief of staff, General Norton Schwartz in a memo dated October 25 to weigh the conflicting views and decide what to do about flight training.

The correspondence was posted online Monday by the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit watchdog group.

Gilmore last week also sent his memo to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who returned from a trip to Asia on Friday.

"The Air Force is reviewing these concerns and will ensure flight safety is adequately addressed," Irwin said, noting a final decision on when to start training had not been made.

Lockheed on Monday said the F-35 flight test program was more than 9 percent ahead of schedule, as of October 29.

From the start of flight testing in December 2006 through October 29, it said F-35s flew 1,412 times, including flights by production-model planes and AA-1, a flight test aircraft.

It said the F-35A conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) jets being built for the Air Force had flown 398 times in 2011, while the F-35B short takeoff, vertical landing plane had completed 290 flights and 265 vertical landings. The F-35C or carrier variant had flown 131 times in 2011, it said. (Reporting by Andrea Shalal-Esa; Editing by Gary Hill)

Stealth Jet Could Be Unsafe for Flight Training

By David Axe
November 1, 2011 |
6:30 am |
Categories: Air Force

The military could be putting pilots’ lives at risk in its hurry to begin training with the next-generation F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

That’s not some outrageous claim by poorly informed peaceniks or some muckraking journalist: It’s the official position of the Pentagon’s top weapons tester, Dr. Michael Gilmore. The F-35’s developers — the Air Force, the Navy and Lockheed Martin — disagree with Gilmore’s assessment. But the controversy underscores continuing problems with an aircraft that’s supposed to replace almost all of America’s current tactical warplanes, at a cost of more than $400 billion.

In a memo dated Oct. 21, Gilmore, the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, asked Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Frank Kendall to consider delaying the commencement of F-35 training by 10 months, in order to give engineers and testers more time to work out the $100-million-apiece JSF’s kinks. “Initiation of training in an immature aircraft risks the occurrence of a serious mishap,” Gilmore wrote in the memo, which was leaked to the Washington, D.C.-based Project on Government Oversight.

Initial “familiarization” flights for future JSF pilots were set to begin this fall, using a handful of so-called “Lot 2″ F-35As completed by Lockheed this summer. The Lot 2 planes have been parked at Florida’s Eglin Air Force Base — future home of the Pentagon’s JSF “schoolhouse” — for several months, awaiting a certificate from the Air Force that will allow them to begin flying with student pilots aboard.

But Gilmore cautioned that the F-35 design might not be safe enough for trainees, regardless of any Air Force certificates. In his memo, Gilmore outlined several problems that he claims could result in a preventable, fatal accident during early training flights. The problems range from incomplete flight manuals, an untested ejection seat and a faulty generator that recently forced the Pentagon to briefly ground the 20-strong JSF test fleet.

Gilmore backed up his concerns with hard numbers. The JSF team at Edwards Air Force Base in California has racked up 1,000 hours in F-35As since testing began five years ago. “Historically, flight training has not commenced for newly developed aircraft until 2,000 hours to 5,000 hours of monitored flight test have been accumulated,” Gilmore wrote. With that many testing hours, a new warplane traditionally experiences in-flight problems 1,000 times for every 100,000 hours in the air — an “abort rate” that’s considered acceptable. At the moment, the F-35 has an abort rate of 3,000 per 100,000 hours. “A high abort rate correlates to a higher risk of catastrophic failure,” Gilmore warned.

Ten months of additional testing should drive down the abort rate, give engineers time to fix technical flaws and make the F-35As safe for new pilots, Gilmore advised. But a training delay could push the date of the JSF’s combat readiness even farther into the future. Already, the jack-of-all-trades warplane is around five years behind the original schedule, severely disrupting the Pentagon’s plans for replacing its 1980s-vintage F-15s, F-16s and F/A-18s.

The potential for more delays might help explain the JSF team’s response to Gilmore’s warning. In a memo dated Oct. 24, Air Force Lt. Gen Thomas Owen and Navy Vice Adm. David Venlet rejected Gilmore’s advice. Owen oversees aircraft development for the Air Force; Venlet is in charge of the overall JSF effort. The two flag officers cautioned against any “disruption … to the overall program progress.”

Owen and Venlet insisted that no F-35 training would take place until the Air Force awarded the certificate — and that won’t happen as long as there are any “open issues” regarding the JSF’s safety. But the two flag officers still anticipated the certificate would be issued this fall, allowing training to commence.

On Oct. 25, Undersecretary of Defense Kendall wrote to Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz and Air Force Secretary Michael Donley, asking for resolution of the controversy. “I would appreciate hearing what decision you make,” Kendall wrote. Presumably, so would the military pilots whose lives will be at stake when they (eventually) climb into their F-35s for training flights.