iPolitics is also guilty of this behaviour in the past.
It doesn't help media credibility.
As expected, where the media advert sales department excels, the reporting on the government effort to mislead the public about the CF-18 fighter replacement under-performs.
For example, the United States Air Force (USAF), the largest alleged buyer of the F-35A (the model the Canadian DND wants) at 1763 jets has a much different price than what the DND claims.
USAF predicts their average cost of the jet with an engine to be $120M each. That is a far cry from the misleading claim by the Canadian government.
That USAF cost does not include research and development. It also assumes that the whole of the program will stay untouched. That is, that the "economy of scale" myth of the F-35 program will endure and there will be over 3000 F-35s made.
Large amounts of F-35 development problems (due to management incompetence) have kept the dream of an affordable and combat-effective aircraft from happening. Costs are soaring while engineering challenges are taking a huge toll.
The USAF number will probably go up. Why? History. In 2009, USAF thought they would get their jets for $90M each.
Where will that number be in another 3 years?
What the Canadian media misses (again) is that MacKay stated since 2010, that Canada would start buying their jets during a time of "peak-production" during the 2016 time-frame at around $70M each. That folks, is misleading.
Of interest, (reported by the media) the DND had planned to add 14 more F-35s which no-one else knew about (as a separate project) for 79 jets. This kind of deception won't fly with the public either.
---
UPDATE- iPolitics today....
---
2 comments:
The F-35 has severe buffeting issues which may render the whole fleet useless and may be unfixable. Before any more airframes are being purchased, this issue has to be resolved, not in 2014, but now.
No surprise on the quality of mainstream media these days. Reporters don't really check their sources anymore; if they even have any. To much reporting is "twit" reporting. Just regurgitation of other material because of tight timelines to get eyes on the page. Sadly, getting the pop out there has replaced quality or content of the message.
The really sad part is that the average Canadian doesn't even know what an F35 is, let alone what a boondoggle the entire affair has become. Most probably think it's a car from Nissan or a new tire.
Post a Comment