Why America and a Key Ally are Going to 'War' Over the F-35

David Axe

Security,

The kerfuffle over industrial workshare is just the latest embarrassment for the Canadian government as it struggles to acquire new fighters.

Canada’s faltering effort to buy a new fighter jet for its beleaguered air force has run into yet another serious obstacle.

The Canadian government in May 2019 backed down from a requirement that the supplier of the Royal Canadian Air Force’s new fighter also channel work on the planes to Canadian companies.

The United States had objected to the requirement and threatened to pull the Lockheed Martin-made F-35 stealth fighter from the Canadian competition to replace 85 aging F/A-18A/B Hornet fighters with as many as 88 new jets.

The F/A-18s in RCAF service are known as CF-18s.

Reciprocal industrial benefits are common in fighter competitions. The idea is that a company that builds airplanes for a foreign country also should ensure that companies in that country get subcontracts to supply parts to the main production effort. That way, a government tender to a foreign company also supports some domestic jobs.

But there was a catch as Ottawa relaunched its $19-billion competition to the replace the 1980s-vintage F/A-18s, which lack key upgrades and rapidly are becoming obsolete, according to the Canadian government’s own auditors. The RCAF wanted the F-35 to compete in the contest alongside Sweden’s Saab Gripen, the European Eurofighter and the F/A-18E/F, a radically enhanced Hornet, from American firm Boeing.

But Canada is already a partner in the international F-35 program. After paying $500 million into the plane’s development effort, Canada became eligible for portions of the production process. Canadian aerospace companies over the past 20 years have received contracts worth no less than $1.5 billion to build parts for the F-35.

The F-35 program office in the United States claims it apportions work on F-35 production strictly by merit. In requiring that the F-35 program guarantee to Canadian firms a certain amount of work as a term of competing for the RCAF fighter contract, Ottawa violated its agreement with the F-35 program.