In Canada there are five stages of military equipment acquisition.
They are Identification, Options analysis, Definition, Implementation and Closeout.
The CF-18 Replacement project is currently in Phase
2, Options analysis. In this second stage, the project team prepares a
preliminary statement of operational requirement and a complete business case
analysis of the options that would meet the identified capability requirement.
In this case the operational requirement is driven
by the mandate that Canada requires a fighter aircraft to contribute to the
safety and security of Canadians and protect the sovereignty of one of the
largest expanses of airspace in the world. It has been established that the
primary role for our current fighter force, the CF-18 fleet, is to
protect Canadian sovereignty.
Currently the CF-18 fleet maintains a constant state
of alert, ready to respond immediately to potential threats along Canada’s
200,000 km of coastline. The aircraft are also used to provide air policing
during significant events in Canada.
The fighter fleet also gives the Government foreign
policy options in a complex global security environment. A fighter element is often
the fastest-responding capability available for dealing with international
security events.
It can be argued that the most important role for
our current fighter fleet in defence of Canadian sovereignty is through their
participation in NORAD. Canada has a
bi-national obligation under the North American Aerospace Defense (NORAD)
treaty with the United States to help defend North American airspace. The government asserts that “No other CAF asset, alone or in combination, can
substitute for the critical role of an airborne interceptor.”
However NORAD is changing. If participation in NORAD
is driving the operational requirement for our new fighter fleet then, as
changes in that organization change the nature and degree of Canada’s
participation, those requirements may change.
Dr. Andrea Charron and Dr. James Fergusson of the Centre
for Defence and Security Studies at the University of Manitoba writing for the
Canadian Global Affairs Institute in a paper entitled “Beyond NORAD and Modernization to North American Defence Evolution”
write that: The modernization side of the
Evolution of North American Defense (EVONAD) is focused naturally on the next
generation of the North Warning System (NWS). However, modernization entails
more than the simple replacement of the aging ground-based radars. The ‘new’
NWS will require the capability to identify and track air-breathing threats far
farther from North America and may well need to be able to identify maritime
threats as well. This cannot be achieved simply using ground-based sensors so
some mix of ground, air, space and sea-based sensors, will be required. In
addition the NWS will likely move farther north, and contribute to a layered
system of sensors. Including potentially down the coastlines of North America”
In the study the authors point out that if long
range air-breathing cruise missiles are determined to be a threat worthy of the
attention of an Evolved NORAD then there is more than one option available to
deal with these weapons. The missiles can be tracked and attacked or the launch
platforms themselves can be targeted by defensive forces or some combination of
both techniques may be used to counter the threat.
Obviously the choices made in this situation will
influence the selection of sensors, missiles and aircraft needed to achieve the
desired goals. What is also clear is that to achieve the effects desired the
aircraft and sensors ‘must be capable of sharing weapons quality sensor data
across airborne, surface and land-based platforms.’ ‘Automated sensor
cross-cueing will have to enable collaborative detection, identification and
engagement of targets at long range in a contested environment.’ As well ‘an
integrated fire-control policy will have to guide engagement with other
services, the evolution of older platforms, the acquisition of new platforms
and the development of associated doctrine and operational concepts across all
services.’
The above is quoted liberally from the Australian
Air Force’s Plan JERICHO which outlines that services plan to ‘Harness the Combat Potential of a Fully
Integrated Force’. The primary focus of Plan Jericho is to maximize their Air
Force’s delivery of joint air and space power effects.There
does not appear to be an equivalent of Plan JERICHO, a long term plan to integrate all platforms
which can be used to influence the delivery of air and space power effects, being used by the RCAF to inform
NORAD is in a state of flux and the use to which we
will be putting all our aerospace assets in the future is in doubt. Our Forces have no plan to integrate all
land, air and sea platforms. Perhaps most important, unlike the goals of Plan
JERICHO, there is no understanding that strategic planning should be synchronized
with both capability development and with the capability management process.
The public and the government have become fixated on
the soap opera which the selection of a new fighter fleet has become but in the
final analysis, without knowing how and where these aircraft will be used and
without knowing how they will integrate with other sensors and platforms, the
choices becomes moot and there is almost no chance of selecting the right aircraft.
Canada
announces plan to replace fighter jet fleet
The
five stages of military equipment acquisition
The
Role of Canada's CF-18 Fighter Fleet
Beyond
NORAD and Modernization to North American Defence Evolution
by
Dr. Andrea Charron and Dr. James Fergusson
Plan
Plan JERICHO Program of Work
