Laura Payton,
Ottawa News Bureau Online Producer
Published
Sunday, January 22, 2017 7:00AM EST
The former
head of Canada's military says the Liberal government’s plan to buy an interim
fighter jet fleet will be expensive and difficult to carry out.
Retired
general Tom Lawson, who served as chief of the defence staff from 2012 to 2015,
says he believes Canada will end up buying Lockheed Martin's F-35 fighter jet
to replace the current fleet of CF-18 Hornets despite the government choosing
Boeing's Super Hornet to beef up the current air craft.
"There
are hundreds of these things flying now and they've been declared
combat-capable in the United States," Lawson said in an interview with
Evan Solomon, host of CTV's Question Period.
"And
they'll be getting better and better for years to come. The F-35 is the way
forward, not only for the United States but all the members and the partners
who have bought into that program."
Lawson, a
long-time supporter of the F-35, is now retired from the Canadian Forces. In an
email to CTVNews.ca, he said he has done several days of work for Lockheed
Martin as a strategic adviser, but noted his support for the F-35 dates back to
his time as assistant chief of the Royal Canadian Air Force.
The F-35 was
the source of considerable controversy during Lawson's time as Canada's top
soldier, after the auditor general and parliamentary budget officer found a
range of problems with a planned purchase of the Lockheed Martin jets. The
problems included national defence not telling the government about the
aircraft's potential drawbacks or the full costs of the program, as well as not
having documents to support some of the decisions defence officials made.
Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau promised, during the 2015 election campaign, to hold an
open competition to choose the CF-18 replacement, but pledged at the same time
not to buy the F-35.
Last
November, the government announced it was working on buying 18 Boeing Super
Hornets as an interim measure while holding a five-year competition to choose a
long-term replacement for the CF-18s.
Lawson, a
former pilot, said that decision caught him off-guard because he believes
Canada will eventually purchase the F-35.
"Every
time the F-35 is in competition, it is the top -- in many cases the only choice
out there, and it's becoming cheaper and developing an excellent
reputation," Lawson said.
"So I
think what caught me by surprise is that this putting off of that decision will
of course be expensive and very difficult for the RCAF to carry out."
The current
fleet of CF-18s is more than 30 years old and down from 138 planes to 76,
according to numbers provided by the government.
During the
2015 election campaign, the Liberals estimated the cost of an F-35 at $175
million per plane, with the Super Hornet coming in at $65 million.
Canada has
obligations to NORAD and NATO that require a specific number of jets to be
"mission-ready," although officials won't say how many planes that
means. Defence officials say there aren't enough mission-ready planes, but
admit that is due to a change in policy under which they started counting the
combined NORAD and NATO commitments. That policy changed on the day they
announced the plan to purchase an interim fleet, a defence spokeswoman told
CTVNews.ca.
Original
post: ctvnews.ca
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