The Honourable Robert NicholsonMinister of National Defence
National Defence Headquarters
Maj.General George R. Pearkes Building
Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0K2
Dear Bob,
Time once again to give you
the benefit of more uncalled for advice. Honestly, Bob, it’s worth every penny
you’re paying for it.
This whole fighter jet
business is coming to a boil again; it seems as if it’s getting harder and
harder to make it go away. The whole “lets have a panel review the retched
business” idea was good for a while, but it’s beginning to wear thin. Some less
then charitable types, and were talking NDP here Bob, are even beginning to say
that the whole thing was a scam just to ensure that by the time the study was
done there wouldn’t be any other candidates besides the F-35 available.
Its time to beg, borrow or
steal a new idea, of course “steal” is such an unfortunate term. I personally
prefer “appropriation”.
I probably don’t need to tell
you this Bob, but when appropriating someone else's idea it’s best to steal
from some one smarter then ones self. In this case it’s Doug Allen at Best Fighter for Canada. It
really is a great site and it could be a real advantage to someone in your
position, surrounded by all sorts of conflicting, and conflicted, advice ( lets
not even think about substituting the word ‘weasels’ here) to have a sane
outside source of information.
The basic idea here is to
split the fighter buy into two parts. The truth is, those F-35’s are going to
cost an arm and a leg. To make things worse, at this point you have to buy them
early on in the production run when both cost and risk are highest. You need an
out, one that you can sell politically, so here’s the pitch.
Every thirty years or so Canada has to
buy a new fleet of fighters. Every thirty years or so some poor government gets
stuck with telling the taxpayers how much more it’s going to cost them to buy
fewer fighters then the last time. The solution is to split the buy and purchase
half the fighters every fifteen or so years. That way the average age of your
fighters is never too high, and the numbers you have to take to the public
don’t hurt as much.
OK, let’s be honest here, it
still hurts, but after some of the figures people are throwing around (who
really believes anyone knows how much “x” number of fighters will cost over 45+
years) anything will sound better.
In this case what you need to
do is announce that after reviewing the results of your review, you have
decided to buy 40 Super Hornets. At the same time retire around 37 of your
highest time current Hornet fleet. You can point out to people that gives
you a total of 80 fighters in service, more then the current number, proving once again
that Conservatives care more about Defence then anyone else.
At the same time you announce
that somewhere down the road, in ten or fifteen years, when the F-35 has proven
itself, and at its cheapest production point, you will buy roughly (you can
hedge here, it’s not as if you will be
answering questions as Minister of National Defence in fifteen years) 40 F-35’s
to upgrade the fighter fleet.
This really is a workable
idea Bob. It’s true that Doug Allen suggested buying Gripens, which is a better
idea, but its more complicated then buying Super Hornets which means that
Super Hornets will be an easier idea to sell to the public, if only because it
seems simpler.
To put it in Doug Allen’s
words;
“Splitting a fighter buy would, at the very least,
give the appearance of a compromise. It
would also have the effect of reducing the "sticker shock". A "$5 billion" fighter program
sounds more reasonable than a $9 billion one...
Even if it is for half the number of jets”.
Best of all, with a staggered buy, there's a very good
chance your political party will have its day to criticize a future government
on their fighter purchase.
Now I know that straight
ahead chaps like you and I don’t go in for that sort of cynical thinking Bob,
but you know, it just might work. And besides, Flaherty is going to love this
one. Talk about balancing the budget and paying the deficit! Just try to hold
on to some of the money not being spent on fighters for other Defence projects,
after all those WW1 commemoration events are going to cost a bundle.
Remember Bob, we’re all
pulling for you.
J.G.Murray
