The F-35 sham
HOW CANADA’S MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX MADE SURE OTTAWA BOUGHT ITS PREFERRED FIGHTER JET
In his 1961 farewell address, U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower warned about the potentially detrimental impact of the “military-industrial complex” on public policy.
“We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence,” he said.
The spectre of shadowy defence contractors plotting with unhinged generals has been the stuff of conspiracies ever since.
The reality is less dramatic but still alarming in its disregard for due process and democratic guardrails.
Take the nearly two-decades-long process to purchase the F-35 fighter jet.
According to painstakingly assembled research provided to National Post by an anonymous whistleblower who says his only interest is to uphold the oath he took to serve the Canadian public, the military decided in 2004 it wanted the F-35 — that, de facto, it was solely interested in it — and that all subsequent competitions were a sham.
The evidence the whistleblower lays out can only be touched on here but much of it is compelling. Readers will draw their own conclusions.
Let’s start with a leaked cable discussing F-18 modernization via Wikileaks, which has not been reported on previously.
The leaked cable from December 2004 features two “senior host nation (Canadian) military officers with direct access to the information reported” who approached the U.S. embassy in Ottawa.
One officer divulged the state of the $2.6-billion effort then underway to retrofit Canada’s F-18 fighter jets. The upshot was that, of 138 aircraft, only 80 would be modernized and, on any given day, a maximum of 34 were available. “Source A” told the Americans that Canada could defend by air only four major population areas: Vancouver, Edmonton/calgary, Ottawa/montreal and Toronto. There was no capability to defend Winnipeg, Halifax or Quebec City, the source said.
Canada was already then a participant in the joint strike fighter program that would produce the F-35 and the military sources told the Americans that internal Air Force documents called for a study into a new-generation fighter capability to begin in 2008, allowing selection in 2011 and delivery in 2015.
The military was already committed to the idea that aircraft would be the F-35. “Sources remain available for further exploitation,” the cable concluded.
(When asked recently if Canada’s defensive air cover has improved since 2004, a spokesperson for the Department of National Defence said those figures are classified and cannot be released publicly.)
By 2006, the Ottawa Citizen was reporting that the Air Force had concluded that the F-35 was the most cost-effective plane to meet its needs, even though only one test model existed at the time.
DND tried to convince the Harper government of the day to buy the plane without a competition. By 2010, then defence minister Peter Mackay was posing for a photo op sitting in a mocked up F-35 saying Canada would buy 65 fighters, with delivery beginning in 2016.
The government claimed the procurement was not sole-sourced and that a competition had taken place, with Canada as a participant.
However, as the political heat was turned up, a former senior bureaucrat who had been involved in the process, Alan Williams, testified to a parliamentary committee that the narrative had been twisted to suit the desires of the military. The “competition” had taken place in 2001 between a Boeing prototype and a Lockheed Martin prototype. Canada had simply been an observer, leading Williams to say that the government was misleading Canadians.
“Saying we participated when we did not is a complete fabrication and distortion of the truth,” he said.
The attempt to fast track the purchase had backfired and the government suspended the plan to buy the F-35 in 2012.
But the military had not given up hope on its favoured fighter — not even when Justin Trudeau’s Liberals won the 2015 election, in part on a pledge to ditch the F-35. The military simply bided its time, as the F-18 grew more obsolete by the year.
One telling sign was DND’S announcement in 2019 that it would provide $150 million to extend the 6,000-foot runway at Inuvik Airport to 9,000 feet “to support a greater variety of military aircraft.”
However, a review of data revealed the only Canadian — or, rather, potentially Canadian — military aircraft that needed a runway longer than 6,000 feet was the F-35A, which requires a minimum of 8,000 feet to operate safely.
DND now says that the extension project dates to 2008, when it was recognized that the F-18s needed more runway to stop on their own power in icy conditions. “Special equipment called ‘arrestor gear’ was being used more frequently to mitigate this issue but it is not preferred,” the department said in a statement. A spokesperson pointed out that the CC-330 Husky transport/tanker that the RCAF is developing will also require more than 6,000 feet.
That Inuvik is the forward operating base for the new F-35 fleet is apparently just a happy coincidence.
By 2021, the Liberals had dropped their opposition to the F-35 in two successive election campaigns.
New bidding criteria had been drawn up and media reports suggested the Boeing Super Hornet had been eliminated from the competition, leaving the Saab Gripen and the F-35 as the two final bidders.
Saab had been wavering on whether to bother taking part but by summer 2020 had submitted a bid that committed to building and maintaining its jet in Canada. The government subsequently announced that both the Gripen and F-35 were fully interoperable with Canada’s NATO and NORAD allies.
But Saab’s reservations were confirmed in March 2022 when the government announced the F-35 was the top-ranked bid and that “finalization” negotiations on costs, delivery schedule and economic benefits would take place with Lockheed Martin.
The competition was technically still underway and the government said it could yet walk away if its conditions were not met.
But if not rigged, the process had always been tilted toward the F-35. As Saab officials told the parliamentary operations committee, the decision to move to the finalization phase was “inconsistent” with the procurement guidelines they were given, which was that the bids were to be evaluated, not negotiated.
“The fact that there are ongoing negotiations should be concerning … to all Canadians,” said Simon Carroll, president of Saab Canada.
DND maintains it held a “fair, open and transparent” competition, even though the final scores of the Gripen versus the F-35 were never released.
The department points out that operational requirements were reviewed by the Independent Review Panel on Defence Acquisition, a body that former deputy minister of defence Richard Fadden told the House defence committee last fall was not particularly effective because it was subject to “gentlemen’s understandings” between the different branches of the service.
The Army is not going to veto an Air Force request, or vice versa, he said, adding that the military is always pushing for “gold-plated solutions” and the civilian side rarely says no.
“A lot of it is a desire to do good but there is a lack of discipline on the department side and on the military side in my view,” he said.
The department said that there were additional safeguards: an independent third-party reviewer and an independent fairness monitor.
Having covered this (and other) processes over the past two decades, my own take is that the military is adept at conjuring tricks — offering the politicians of the day the chance to pick a card, any card, from the pack, but ensuring they always pick the one the generals, air chiefs and admirals want.
Any outcry has been muted by the fact that most informed observers believe Canada has chosen the right aircraft and has not been hosed financially in the process.
Was the competition “corrupt” as the whistleblower says? That suggests dishonest practices, and even bribery. There is no evidence of that.
But even people involved in the process have used the word “inevitable” about the competition that ended up with Canada buying the F-35.
Two European manufacturers decided not to bid, in part because the outcome was widely considered to be preordained.
But, by definition, there can be nothing inevitable about a fair, open and transparent competition. As per, Eisenhower’s warning, “unwarranted influence” was at play.
IF NOT RIGGED, THE PROCESS HAD ALWAYS BEEN TILTED TOWARD THE F-35.