Cabinet needs to take responsibility for cleaning up the fighter procurement mess
"With the release of the two-phased RFP on Tuesday, it is evident that the government continues to ‘game’ the procurement process by delaying the critical security and interoperability issues until after the election to maintain the pretence of an equitable process."
The attempt to purchase a new fighter just keeps getting messier and messier with suppliers threatening to pull out of the competition at one time or another.
This, of course, is all part of the strategy in shaping the request for proposal (RFP) for companies seeking to gain advantages and is a direct result of the government compelling a competition at all costs. Instead of focusing on the military requirement, government insistence on leveraging defence equipment purchases to create jobs and economic growth has become the path to a winning bid. In the last month, all four competitors have threatened to walk away knowing the consequential political fallout in an election year.
Purchasing a fleet of fighter aircraft is a complex process with many variables and the government has a duty to ensure the billions of procurement dollars required are properly spent. Although the goal is to produce an objective assessment, the interplay between the four dimensions involved in military procurement (military, technological, economic, and political) defies simple analysis. The desire to maximize economic offsets has put operational primacy, the purpose of purchasing fighter aircraft in the first place, into question and led to the current manoeuvring to influence the final RFP.
The fighters being offered represent two significant divisions. The first division is technological/sustainability, namely between fourth- and fifth-generation fighter aircraft and revolves around long-term sustainment costs and future technological adaptability. The second division is commercial/security, specifically European (Eurofighter/Gripen) versus American (F-35/Super Hornet) fighters and enmeshes national security compliance with the government’s desire for tailorable economic packages. The specifics of these divisions are important as they impact each of the four dimensions.
The government’s choice to ensure a competitive process with more than three bidders resulted in modifications to the assessment of mandatory criteria in critical operational functions in order to ensure the European platforms could qualify. This benefitted economic interests, however, the initial application of the Industrial and Technological Benefits (ITB) policy appeared to undermine the primacy of military needs and marginalized the F-35. This led to the spectre of the Liberal government’s promise that “We will not buy the F-35 stealth fighter-bomber” becoming a reality through other policy means.
Consequent changes to the draft RFP to ensure the F-35 was not disadvantaged by the ITB policy resulted in the other three companies challenging the operational requirements as they perceived their advantages in the economic offset criteria disappearing, but the ITB policy still remains problematic.
With the release of the two-phased RFP yesterday, it is evident that the government continues to ‘game’ the procurement process by delaying the critical security and interoperability issues until after the election to maintain the pretence of an equitable process. There is however a way to regain control of this procurement and that is to return to the formula used in procuring the CF-18 — an objective evaluation of the platforms and a subjective decision by cabinet.
Assessment of the military and technological requirements are straightforward given the clear direction that the government provided in the defence policy statement. It is not for the suppliers to question the stated criteria but to reply with their platform capabilities. The economic dimension in the objective assessment needs to focus solely on the life-cycle costs and the platform cost/capability benefit.
The ITB economic offset assessment is subject to politicization and meddling with the stated military and technological criteria. All competitors need to state their value proposition in global terms during objective evaluation, but only two finalists should be asked to prepare a complete bid for subjective selection by those responsible and accountable to the public — cabinet.
Canadians do need a substantive return on the $20 billion allocated for the future fighter purchase, but our national security and relationship with the U.S. in both geostrategic and technological terms is fundamental. It is up to cabinet to make a subjective decision on Canada’s future fighter based on evidence supplied by an objective evaluation and subjective economic returns, not a bureaucratic formula that they can hide behind.
Alan Stephenson is a fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, holds a PhD from Carleton University, and is a veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces with 3,600 fighter hours flying third generation CF-104 Starfighters and fourth generation CF-18 Hornets. He has held senior appointments in National Defence Headquarters, NATO and NORAD.
https://ipolitics.ca/2019/07/25/cabinet-needs-to-take-responsibility-for-cleaning-up-the-fighter-procurement-mess/
It’s downright embarrassing.
