{"id":123347,"date":"2015-10-21T13:03:23","date_gmt":"2015-10-21T13:03:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=123347"},"modified":"2015-10-23T07:01:37","modified_gmt":"2015-10-23T07:01:37","slug":"canadas-new-prime-minister-really-doesnt-like-the-f-35","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=123347","title":{"rendered":"Canada’s new prime minister really doesn’t like the F-35"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clay Dillow — Fortune.com Oct 21, 2015<\/h1>\n
\"Two<\/a>

Two U.S. Marine F-35B Lightning II Joint Strike Fighters complete vertical landings aboard the USS Wasp (LHD-1) during operational testing May 18, 2015. REUTERS\/U.S. Marine Corps\/Lance Cpl. Remington Hall\/Handout<\/p><\/div>\n

Canada\u2019s Justin Trudeau says he\u2019ll cancel plans to buy the troubled F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.<\/span><\/p>\n

Stephen Harper\u2019s Conservative government may not be the only casualty in Monday\u2019s electoral upset in Canada. <\/span><\/p>\n

Justin Trudeau, the leader of Canada\u2019s victorious Liberals and soon-to-be Prime Minister, has vowed to cancel the country\u2019s purchase of 60 F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets from Lockheed Martin <\/span>and instead focus on bolstering its Navy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Trudeau\u2019s victory marks another setback\u2014albeit a small one\u2014for the military program as Lockheed Martin continues its efforts to drive down the per-aircraft price of the F-35 by boosting production rates. However, Lockheed\u2019s loss will likely translate into someone else\u2019s gain as Canada shops for a less expensive alternative to replace its aging CF-18s fighter jets.<\/span><\/p>\n

Canada has been part of the F-35 program essentially from its origins in 2001, when Lockheed Martin beat out Boeing for the privilege of building a new fighter jet. Canada pledged $150 million to aid the aircraft\u2019s development, alongside several foreign partners including Japan, Norway, Denmark, Australia, and the U.K. That initial investment bought Canada\u2014and the Pentagon\u2019s other foreign partners\u2014the right to acquire F-35\u2019s later at a lower price.<\/span><\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s Conservative government had previously announced it would purchase at least 60 of the jets. Additionally, the government likely would\u2019ve also purchased between four and eight F-35s each year at $80 to $100 million per aircraft starting in 2017. Monday\u2019s Liberal victory puts that order in serious doubt since Trudeau intends to scrap the Conservatives\u2019s F-35 buy. <\/span><\/p>\n

If Trudeau follows through on the promise, Canada will lose the $150 million already invested in the F-35\u2019s development, and Lockheed would lose what would have been billions of dollars in sales to the Royal Canadian Air Force (and likely millions more on follow-on contracts for ongoing maintenance).<\/span><\/p>\n

For Lockheed, the loss of 60 orders in a program that will eventually produce thousands of aircraft is negligible. Should Canada withdraw from the F-35 program, the more significant industry impact would be the competition to replace it. Possible contenders to replace Canada\u2019s vintage CF-18s include the twin-engine Rafale from France\u2019s Dassault Aviation, the single-engine Gripen manufactured by Sweden\u2019s Saab Group, and the Eurofighter Typhoon. <\/span><\/p>\n

But perhaps no one in the aerospace world stands to come out a bigger winner from Monday\u2019s election than Boeing. The manufacturer makes the F\/A-18 Hornet jets, which is a cousin of Canada\u2019s current fleet of CF-18s fighter jets. \u201cThe cheapest way they could go might be the Gripen, but frankly the biggest potential winner from the election is the Super Hornet,\u201d says Richard Aboulafia, vice president of analysis at aerospace and defense consultants Teal Group. \u201cIt fits into their existing fleet, it\u2019s a relatively low-cost option, and it has two engines which Canada has historically preferred.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

A 60-plus aircraft order for its Super Hornet\u2014the latest variant of the F\/A-18 and current workhorse fighter for the U.S. Navy\u2014would be a significant boon to Boeing\u2019s defense business. With the U.S. Navy slated to replace its Super Hornets with the new F-35C, Boeing\u00a0 <\/span> has aggressively sought new orders that would keep its St. Louis production line open beyond 2017, when it\u2019s current orders run out.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBoth Dassault and Boing have seen some new life breathed into the Rafale and the F-18,\u201d Byron Callan, an analyst with Capital Alpha Partners, says. \u201cAnd a 60-airplane opportunity is certainly in the bigger-than-a-breadbox category.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The other great unknown surrounding a potential withdrawal from the F-35 program is its impact on Canadian industry. In shopping the F-35 to partner nations, Lockheed Martin sweetened development deals with so-called \u201coffsets,\u201d or arrangements to produce certain components of each partner nations\u2019 F-35s within that country. <\/span><\/p>\n

The offer of skilled, high-tech jobs and revenue for manufacturing firms made the F-35 an easier political sell. It\u2019s now unclear exactly how much a Canadian withdrawal from the program will impact Canadian industry. It\u2019s possible that whatever companies compete for the F-35s replacement might dangle similar deals in front of Canadian subcontractors to make their aircraft more competitive, Callan says. However, it\u2019s too soon to tally the economic impact on Canadian subcontractors if that F-35-related business evaporates<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Canada\u2019s Justin Trudeau says he\u2019ll cancel plans to buy the troubled Fighter F-35 Joint Strike Fighter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-123347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Current_Affairs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=123347"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":123351,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123347\/revisions\/123351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=123347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=123347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=123347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}