Fighter project tweaks aim to stop favouritism

The federal government’s rebooted jet-fighter procurement has been set up as an “options analysis” rather than a full competition to begin with to prevent the Royal Canadian Air Force from again stacking the deck in favour of a single plane, a source familiar with the process says.

“If you simply ask the military to go back and revise the statement of requirements, you have no guarantee that they will not do it again in favour of a particular aircraft,” the source said.

Questions have been raised about whether the new process itself is legitimate, or mere window-dressing for a government desperate to restore its credentials for sound management of the public purse.

Opposition critics have demanded the government forgo the options analysis and go directly to an international competition, based on a new statement of operational requirements (SOR) outlining the role and functions of Canada’s air force, which is now flying aging CF18s. The CF-18s will reach the end of their usable lives around 2020.

However, a revision of the existing statement of requirements would necessarily be carried out by the RCAF, sources say, as they are the only ones with the expertise to do this work.

Though the government has established a National Fighter Procurement Secretariat, managed by bureaucrats, and advised by a civilian panel, there is reluctance to impose a new SOR from outside the air force, sources say.

At the same time, the existing SOR is based on an options analysis, dating back to 2007-08, that was done without proper due diligence, according to Auditor General Michael Ferguson’s audit of the F-35 program last spring.

The SOR was famously skewed to favour one plane, Lockheed-Martin’s F-35.

In July of 2010, the Conservative government announced with great fanfare that Canada had selected the F-35 as the air force’s next fighter.

Virtually since that day, the program has been an albatross around the government’s neck, providing regular fodder for the opposition. This culminated in Ferguson’s audit last spring, which led to the climbdown last week.

The thinking among program planners now is that, by having the military start from scratch, with civilian oversight, they can ensure an impartial drafting of requirements this time.

This would appear to confirm that a full competition, based on the new statement of requirements that will eventually emerge from the options analysis, is the inevitable end result of this new process.

Contenders for the contract are expected to be Boeing’s Super Hornet, Dassault’s Rafale, Saab’s Gripen, the Eurofighter Typhoon, and Lockheed-Martin’s F-35.