President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced Thursday a new strategy for the U.S. military, emphasizing it will be smaller, but “flexible and adaptable.” The plan comes in response to massive cutbacks planned for the next decade, over which time roughly $450 billion will be sliced from the Pentagon’s coffers.That, according to reports in the U.S., means the JSF program, under which the F-35 is being produced, will be restructured yet again.
According to Reuters Thursday, the Pentagon’s new plan could delay production of 120 of the 423 F-35 planes scheduled to be built between 2013 and 2017.
That is the same period when Canada was expected to purchase and begin receiving its first F-35 fighters, and delays could put pressure on its aging fleet of CF-18s.
Delays are not new. In March, U.S. Lt. Gen Mark Shackleford told a U.S. House subcommittee the U.S. Air Force was, even then, not expecting its planes to reach initial operational capability by 2016, as anticipated. Instead, “we currently expect up to a two year delay,” he said.
Lt-Gen. (Ret.) George Macdonald of CFN Consultants – who has worked with Lockheed Martin, the manufacturer of the F-35 – told iPolitics that the Canadian program anticipated some delays in production. However, he said, that allowed time has perhaps “largely been consumed by the perceived delays in the ultimate production of the aircraft that Canada wants to purchase.”
Delays in the program, or an overall scaling back of the number of planes the U.S. plans to purchase could affect Canada. But, given Canada’s planned purchasing schedule, issues could be mitigated, Macdonald said.
“The ramp-up rate of F-35 deliveries were pretty shallow to start with. There was only one aircraft, I think, that was expected to be delivered in 2016 – maybe two – but it was a small number,” he told iPolitics. “So, delaying that a year and bunching up the first couple of years, the first three years into two years, would not be a significant problem, I don’t think.”
That is, he said, as long as the transition from the CF-18 is managed correctly.
But Thursday’s announcement and the news of fewer production planes, could mean the production line will run later than Canada had planned. In that case, says Macdonald, “if Canada still wants to find the bottom of the cost curve for production aircraft, [it] will have to consider procuring aircraft a little later.”
In December, Julian Fantino, the associate minister for national defence, told L’Actualité magazine that in 2013, when Canada decides on the final number of jets it will buy, it may be fewer than the anticipated 65.
While Panetta and Obama did not directly address the F-35 on Thursday, the proposal they presented does put the project in an interesting position, says Philipe Lagassé, defence analyst and assistant professor of public and international affairs at the University of Ottawa.
The new U.S. military strategy emphasizes a need to keep its forces at the edge of innovation and retaining its ability to deter threats and wage war into the 21st century, while at the same time noting a need to cut back financially.
The F-35 straddles a line between the two, says Lagassé.
“On the one hand it’s clearly part of this constellation of high tech forces that you want to maintain. On the other hand, the cost savings and the cost overruns that the program is bringing about may jeopardize it,” he pointed out.
However, he said it seems the strategy emphasizes “high tech and a need for a strong conventional force,” and in so doing “somewhat” protects the F-35.
At the same time, though, says Lagassé, the new U.S. strategy focuses on a particular type of defence policy that Canada is “not at all that well placed to answer quite yet.”
“We’re still trying to do everything under the sun and they seem to be going in a slightly more specific direction,” he said.
That direction, he says, might run more in line with a new NATO strategic concept for smart defence and a pooling of resources or capabilities within the alliance, where rather than nations replicating similar elements, there would be more specialization in certain areas – one country might not acquire the same military hardware as another.
But Canada is not there yet, he says.
Instead, the Canada First Defence Strategy is putting the emphasis on rebuilding the major fleets and maintaining Canadian capabilities across the board, says Lagassé. That’s fine for a small force in theory, as it’s necessary for Canada’s forces to do a number of things, but he wonders whether it is an affordable strategy in the long run.
“Given our own budget constraints, maybe now is the time — when you have the U.S. trying to find major economies, when you have Great Britain as well looking to cut back — it seems to me that now’s the opportune time for Canada and some of its larger allies to say ‘what can we do together, rather than replicate on our own?’” Lagassé said. “Maybe now is the time for Canada to start looking more seriously at what capabilities do we need, and what can we share with who.”
For now, the Conservative government is maintaining its stance on the F-35. For months, Fantino, under questioning from the opposition parties, has told the House of Commons the program is “on track.”
On Thursday, his office told iPolitics the government “remains committed to replacing our aging CF-18s before the end of their useful life. We will provide our brave men and women with the best aircraft available to protect our sovereignty for generations to come.”
“The state-of-the-art F-35 is the best solution to meet the challenges of the 21st Century,” it said in a written statement.
Original Article
Source: iPolitico
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