Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/196923
n next-gen FighTer henning Jacobsen is the owner of hJa solutions, a consultancy that has advised numerous defence companies, including ThyssenKrupp Marine systems and dcn international. he is a former executive with Bombardier, spar aerospace and Oerlikon contraves. by ThE nUMbERS: Revisiting the Joint Strike Fighter W e are coming up on a year since KPMG delivered its report to Treasury Board Secretariat on the total lifecycle cost (LCC) of the F-35 Lightning II. The report was the final installment in a long series of deliberations to determine the total ownership cost for a fleet of F-35A fighter jets. The report's findings caused the Conservative government to hit the "rest button" on the fifth generation fighter program and establish a secretariat within Public Works and Government Services Canada to reconsider all options, including the possible acquisition of a fourth generation alternative. In analyzing the information provided by KPMG, it appears that the assignment was an abstract exercise prepared without detailed technical information and without the cooperation of the F-35 Joint Project Office (JPO) in the United States, the Canadian presumptive in-service support (ISS) provider or the Operational branch of the Royal Canadian Air Force. In short, it reflects a slew of questionable guesses about the future and, 32 OcTOBer/nOVeMBer 2013 www.vanguardcanada.com as a result, is yet another in a lengthy series of misinterpretations that have created a cross-purpose dialogue in Canada since 2010. pricing differences In 2011, the debate over the F-35A acquisition heated up when the Canadian Parliamentary Budget Office announced that the price of each F-35A would be $129 million (this price was also used in the KPMG study). When Canada signed its Memorandum of Understanding with the aircraft's manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, in 2002, the rough order of magnitude (ROM) estimate was $70 million per aircraft, a cost that raised few objections at the time. The recent 2013 U.S. government cost for delivery of the F-35A starting in 2020 is pegged at $85 million per aircraft (1.5 percent annually compounded escalation between 2013 and 2020), indicating a 2013 Low Rate of Initial Production 7 (LRIP 7) price of $75 million per aircraft. The KPMG report