The estimated cost of the incoming Canada fleet of advanced stealth fighters has exploded by almost 50% in just a few years, the auditor general Karen Hogan said in a new report on Tuesday.
The Fighter Jet audit was one of the eight deposited in the House of Commons by Hogan and the environment commissioner Jerry Demarco. The reports report problematic supply contracts, a backwards in requests for First Nations status and a delay in reducing the quantity of federal offices.
A survey conducted by the auditor general concluded that the costs associated with the F-35 Advanced Fighter Jet program operated more dollars more than initial estimates.
And this warns that the program is plagued by delays and critical deficits – including a lack of qualified pilots.
The report landed in the midst of an active examination ordered by Prime Minister Mark Carney to examine the possible alternatives at the F-35. He ordered the exam in response to the trade war of US President Donald Trump with Canada.
National Defense said that in 2022, the basic price of the F-35 would be $ 19 billion. Two years later, the number increased to $ 27.7 billion. This estimate does not include figures for infrastructure improvements or weapons.
The report indicates that the estimates of the Department in 2022 were based on obsolete data from 2019 – despite the availability of better estimates showing “that plane costs had already increased considerably”.
The audit indicates that the problems associated with the world pandemic – such as the inflation on the run, the increase in costs for installations and ammunition and volatile exchange rates – have pushed the high price.
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The office of the Minister of Defense, David McGuinty, sent a written declaration to the media which blamed the increase in the costs of “external economic conditions motivated by the COVID-19 pandemic, including the global disturbances of the supply chain, the shortages of labor and the increase in inflation and exchange rates”.
“In combination with increased global tensions and related impacts on availability and demand for materials, we would not have been able to deliver the full scope of this project as part of our previous budget,” he said in the press release.
But Hogan also warned on Tuesday that the program is faced with “significant risks that could compromise the introductory introduction of the new fleet”.
She said the department successfully identified the risks but had not planned to mitigate them.
Construction of two new hunting hunter installations – in Cold Lake, Alberta, and Bagotville, Qué. – is late three years late. The report indicates that the installations will only be ready at least 2031, because the ministry must “redo important elements” of its design.
The ministry began planning the new facilities in 2020 before the government had settled on the F-35. The plane is delivered with important infrastructure safety requirements.
“The costs to develop a provisional solution to support new jets will further increase infrastructure expenses,” warned the report.
He said the ministry had produced an emergency plan to operate the plane from temporary installations, but the plan did not fail because it was incomplete and offered “no proposed action or an estimate of costs”.
Canada is also still below qualified drivers to control the advanced plane – although it was warned about this in 2018.
The report indicates that the F-35 program has no measures to minimize potential risks and that the ministry has not produced robust emergency plans. He notes that the ministry has identified cost -effects in inflation and currency fluctuations as potential risks to be monitored, but plans to follow these risks have never been approved by those responsible.
The Liberal government announced in 2017 that it planned to buy 88 new fighter planes. He signed a contract with Lockheed Martin for the F-35 in 2023.
Modern jets are needed to replace the aging CF-18 fleet of Canada, which is approaching the end of its life in service.
Hunting planes should be delivered between 2026 and 2032. Over the next two years, the first eight will be sent to an American air base in Arizona, where Canadian pilots will be trained to fly them. The rest will be delivered to Canada from 2028.
The report indicates that the joint office of the Fighter Fighter program has carried out various assessments that discovered “important problems”, such as “insufficient engineering staff of the department to serve support equipment for the CF-18 HORNET and the CF-35A during the transition.”
The audit said that at the end of the last financial year in March, the national defense affected $ 935 million for the US government for the first four jets and related articles necessary to produce eight other planes. He says that around $ 197 million have already been paid.
In addition to this, national defense spent an additional $ 516 million on the project, including 270 million dollars in infrastructure costs.
& Copy 2025 the Canadian press