That's 75 million for each war weapon, purchased from Lockheed-Martin, the company that got the contract for our Canadian census.
Reference: The harper government has paid Lockheed Martin about $81 million for “optic recognition” software to process the mailed-in census forms. That’s right, Lockheed Martin — the world’s largest weapons manufacturer, which is building Canada those F-35 fighter jets.
source: http://www.thestar.com/news/
Canada will buy a fleet of F-35 stealth fighters to replace aging CF-18s and won't pay more than what's already pledged for the 65 planes, Defence Minister Peter MacKay said Friday.
MacKay made the promise to hundreds of people attending a military conference in Ottawa that included a number of defence industry executives.
"We have been clear that we will operate within that budget," he said at the Conference of Defence Associations' annual meeting.
"And we will give our airmen and women the best available aircraft, which I believe is the fifth-generation F-35 Lightning II." MacKay said.
The F-35 stealth fighter program has been dogged by controversy as the manufacturer – Lockheed Martin – and the U.S. Pentagon restructure the program for a third time.
The Conservatives have repeatedly said they will pay US$75 million for each plane, but critics argue that cost is more than likely to double.
Canada is part of a joint effort involving Britain, Norway, Denmark, Holland, Italy, Turkey and Australia to buy the aircraft.
MacKay said the purchase will go ahead despite deep cuts expected in the upcoming federal budget, expected in March.
"We will make sure the Royal Canadian Air Force has the aircraft necessary to do the dangerous and important work that we ask of them," he said.
He also said the government will go ahead with billions of dollars in new spending for military equipment.
MacKay cited recent decisions by the government to commit to a national shipbuilding strategy that will create years of work for shipyards in Halifax and British Columbia as part of the upgrade of the military.
source: http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/
The planes are currently in the Production, Sustainment and Follow-on Development stage, and we are expected to start receiving them in 2016. What Canada did last summer is unusual, when it committed to buying 65 planes before they had even been completed, or tested
.
The planes themselves, when we buy them, are said to total $9 Billion, with up to $7 Billion in maintenance costs over their lifespan. That would bring the total cost of the planes to $16 Billion, on top of the 711 million dollars in ongoing investment.
This sounds like a lot of money in itself, but even the $16 Billion is bound to be too low, for a number of reasons.
First, the program has been plagued by cost overruns, and estimates continue to grow. Project Ploughshares, using U.S.-based data, has estimated that the planes will come to a total cost of $30 Billion, which is about double what officials are saying. Further, because the planes are not completed and have not been tested, and there is simply no idea how much we will have to pay.
In testimony to the Canadian parliament, U.S. military critic Winslow Wheeler warned about the possibility of the planes being much more expensive than advertised. His testimony is worthy of being quoted at length:
“In this country, advocates cite various figures, all of them misleading. The gimmicks include excluding important parts of the airplane, such as the engine, excluding all development costs, using obsolete dollars that understate the contemporaneous cost, and – in your case – using American, not Canadian, dollars. There are other tricks that can be hard to unravel; I encourage you to thoroughly research any unit costs cited to you.
“Neither you nor I currently know, but it is certain that the costs being cited to you now are the ‘buy-in’ costs. Real costs, when your government negotiates an actual contract and as the program goes through its life cycle, are sure to be an unpleasant surprise to you.”
Moreover, the cost per plane is based on an estimated global market that is steadily decreasing.
The more planes sold, the cheaper they will be, but many countries are starting to back down from their previous commitments. Project Ploughshares has reported on the fact that the sales projections quoted by proponents are now 10 years out of date; the 2001 projection was that 5,179 planes would be sold, and now it is more likely to be between 2 thousand and 3500. Using the old estimates are almost certainly intended to deceive, as they drastically reduce the expected price.
All this is to say that the 16 Billion dollar price tag is likely to be drastically inaccurate, and the supposedly good deal is not looking quite so good.
MacKay affirms stealth fighter purchase to military | CTV News
No comments:
Post a Comment