LILLEY: F-35 audit shows incompetence at DND and across Ottawa

Article content

The report on the cost of the F-35 from the auditor general is more about incompetence than anything else. It’s also a worrying sign given that Prime Minister Mark Carney just pledged billions in new spending for the Canadian Armed Forces.

The headline from the audit is that the original cost projection to buy 88 F-35 fighter jets was $19 billion and now it’s $27.7 billion, a 46% increase.

Any rational person would be outraged at this kind of cost increase, but your outrage should be directed to bureaucrats in Ottawa, the officers at DND HQ and the Liberal government. They flubbed the original cost projection because as the auditor found, they were using old data.

“We found that National Defence’s 2022 estimates were based on outdated data at the time. Information used in those estimates had been gathered during the competitive process for acquiring the CF-35A dating back to 2019,” the audit states.

They also found that DND was only 50% confident in the cost estimate before releasing it. What this tells me is that they lowballed the cost off the top, perhaps through incompetence, but also to appease their Liberal political masters who had already canceled the F-35 contract in the past and wouldn’t want to be seen spending money on the military.

So, in reality the cost has not increased 46% from 2022, it’s increased from the false numbers presented to the public. The Joint Strike Fighter Program Office already had data in 2022 showing cost increases were happening — remember that this was a time of out-of-control inflation — the government should have presented realistic figures and did not.

A second major point to consider is that the cost of the actual fighter jets is not increasing by as much as the other costs. The false 2019 estimate had the aircraft costs at $10 billion, now it’s pegged at $12.2 billion or a 22% increase.

While that is still outrageous, and well above the overall cost of inflation, it pales in comparison to other increases.

Infrastructure costs have increased from $1.3 billion to $2.5 billion, a 92% increase. The facilities to house the fighter jet fleet and support their maintenance at CFB Cold Lake in Alberta and CFB Bagotville in Quebec are also running three years behind schedule.

The facilities were supposed to be ready by 2031 and now it looks more likely that they won’t be ready until 2034. That means the facilities not being ready until well after we have taken full possession of the full fleet of 88 jets.

Weapons systems costs have also increased from $1.6 billion to $2.5 billion, or a 64% increase, while what is labeled as “contingency” has increased from $2 billion to $6.2 billion, more than three times originally estimated.

All of this to say that this isn’t Lockheed Martin or the Americans ripping us off by jacking up the costs, this is incompetence and bad project management out of Ottawa. Coming as it does when Carney has announced an additional $9-billion cash infusion into the military; it is all very concerning.

The PM has said that every dollar will be expected to be spent wisely and acknowledged that he understands procurement is a problem in the military. This report from the Auditor General puts that in sharp focus and should serve as a warning to the PM and his top advisors.

It should also lead to some people losing their jobs, though the chance of that happening in Ottawa is slim to none. Perhaps Carney will at least send in some adult supervision and competent project managers to get the F-35 costs under control and the infrastructure timeline back on track.

Now is the time to fix this program, not to scale it back or cancel it altogether as some will now call for.

RECOMMENDED VIDEO

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

Try refreshing your browser, or
tap here to see other videos from our team.

Play Video