Vanguard Magazine

22 DECEMBER 2016/JANUARY 2017 www.vanguardcanada.com FIghter REPLACEMENT F for this specific program, and there is a delicate balance in the member nations' work-sharing arrangements within it. Ne- gotiating Canadian industrial offsets will be complex. Lockheed-martin F-35 Lightning II If the history of past complex aircraft programs is any guide, by 2021 the F-35 program will very likely be hitting its stride, production costs will be con- tained, and most of the residual technical issues will have been dealt with. The US plans to operate the aircraft until 2070, so support and interoperability will not be an issue at any time in its service life if Canada buys it. Production is expected to exceed 3,000 aircraft and run beyond 2035 or 2040, and as a member of the development consortium, Canada al- ready has preferential access to develop- ment, production and support contracts. It would lose this access if it does not buy the aircraft. saab Jas 39 gripen The Gripen is another contemporary of the Super Hornet, Rafale, and Typhoon that will be at or slightly beyond mid-life in 2021. Similar later-life supportability and interoperability concerns will there- fore apply to it. Approximately 250 have been produced to date and, apart from aircraft to be license-built in Brazil, con- tinuation of production through 2021 is uncertain. Saab has a number of develop- ment initiatives for improvements to the Gripen but is not known to be consider- ing a follow-on new fighter program, so industrial offsets will likely have to come from the company's other programs. two trends to consider This very simple review does not, of course, provide a complete picture of the fighter competition playing field five years from now. However, it does offer insights into two key trends. First, by 2021 four of the five contend- ers will be approaching or past the half- way point of their planned operational lives, and five years closer to obsolescence. This has major implications for any coun- try considering their purchase, including the fact that keeping a fighter capability based on any of these four aircraft relevant and viable through to 2065 or beyond will be very difficult. More likely, the aircraft will have to be replaced much earlier. Conversely, by 2021 most of the fog, misinformation, and uncertainty around the F-35 program will have cleared and the aircraft will be just at the start of a ser- vice life planned to extend to 2070. Secondly, in terms of opportunities for industrial benefits, Canada can undoubt- edly extract its traditional dollar-for dollar return out of the purchase of any of the five aircraft in 2021. However, the F-35 program will still of- fer far greater opportunity for Canadian industry than any of the others, both in terms of quality and quantity. Qualitatively, the aircraft incorporates significantly more numerous and more highly advanced tech- nologies than any of the older candidates. Quantitatively, the program will deliver five or ten times the number of aircraft than any of the others. Also, by 2021, production of the F-35 will still be in early stages, whereas all four of the others will be at or near the end. This means that off- sets for their purchase will have to come from other, often smaller, programs that are unlikely to match the F-35's technol- ogy exploitation opportunities. These two trends, especially the first, will only worsen with time, in terms of the vi- ability of the four older contenders. Given this, one wonders what an open, fair, and transparent competition among the five aircraft in 2021 will look like. Col. Charles Davies (Ret'd) is a CDA Institute Research Fellow. lockheed-Martin f-35 Saab JAS 39 Gripen

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