Proceeding with the decision to sole source F-35 fighter jets for the Royal Canadian Air Force is irresponsible and flies in the face of fiscal conservatism. Currently, we are waiting for the results from a special panel of “experts” commissioned by the Harper government’s National Fighter Procurement Secretariat.
The media is reporting it’s highly likely that this panel will recommend the government proceed with its sole sourcing of the F-35 as recommended by the Department of national Defence to Public Works and Government Services Canada. This decision was originally justified with an infamous 160-word memo that preceded a complete statement of “Canadian” operational requirements.
The facts: The F-35 is already seven years behind schedule and is many billions of dollars over budget. The United States Director of Operational Test and Evaluation report indicates significant technical problems with the aircraft’s software and other aircraft systems.
To keep the project moving, several performance requirements have been reduced to below the minimum acceptable as originally demanded by the Joint Operations Requirements Document.
A technical discussion on the performance merits of the F-35 contains a multitude of forward-looking statements by the manufacturer that time has shown to be significantly less impressive than promised. There is a high probability that this “expert” panel continued to compare these forward-looking statements against competitor “unclassified” information.
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-Time's Battleland - 5 Part series on F-35 procurement - 2013
-Summary of Air Power Australia F-35 points
-Bill Sweetman, Aviation Week and the F-35
-U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO) F-35 reports
-F-35 JSF: Cold War Anachronism Without a Mission
-History of F-35 Production Cuts
-Looking at the three Japan contenders (maneuverability)
-How the Canadian DND misleads the public about the F-35
-Value of STOVL F-35B over-hyped
-Cuckoo in the nest--U.S. DOD DOT&E F-35 report is out
-6 Feb 2012 Letter from SASC to DOD boss Panetta questioning the decision to lift probation on the F-35B STOVL.
-USAFs F-35 procurement plan is not believable
-December 2011 Australia/Canada Brief
-F-35 Key Performance Perimeters (KPP) and Feb 2012 CRS report
-F-35 DOD Select Acquisition Report (SAR) FY2012
-Release of F-35 2012 test report card shows continued waste on a dud program
-Australian Defence answers serious F-35 project concerns with "so what?"
-Land of the Lost (production cut history update March 2013)
-Outgoing LM F-35 program boss admits to flawed weight assumptions (March 2013)
-A look at the F-35 program's astro-turfing
-F-35 and F-16 cost per flying hour
-Is this aircraft worth over $51B of USMC tac-air funding?
-Combat radius and altitude, A model
-F-35A, noise abatement and airfields and the USAF
-Deceptive marketing practice: F-35 blocks
-The concurrency fraud
-The dung beetle's "it's known" lie
-F-35's air-to-air ability limited
-F-35 Blocks--2006 and today
-The F-35B design is leaking fuel
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