The Significance of Politicization: The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Procurement Processes in Canada and Australia, 2000–2022

Abstract

When examining the acquisition of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) by most western defence departments, the close historical and military connections between these countries with the United States only go so far in terms of an explanation for why some have adopted this platform and others have not. Adoption is by no means automatic and the features of large military platform procurement processes, which are both long-term and involve very large expenditures, with their idiosyncratic nature, multiple actors and strategic policy directions, have played an important role in this area, just as they have when purchasing warships and other military equipment. In this chapter, we compare how Australia and Canada chose to operate when considering the replacement of their ageing F-18 multirole fighters. Again, this process features two very similar countries and the same weapons system, and the different outcome each has had in this case again reveals the significant factors concerning the processes which led to those decisions, and the impact of politics in explaining both the commonalities and differences in the defence procurement approaches of the two countries.

When examining the acquisition of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) by most western defence departments, the close historical and military connections between these countries with the United States only go so far in terms of an explanation for why some have adopted this platform and others have not. Adoption is by no means automatic and the features of large military platform procurement processes (Type 4), with their idiosyncratic nature, multiple actors and strategic policy directions, have played an important role in this area, just as they have when purchasing warships. In this chapter, we compare how Australia and Canada chose to operate when considering the replacement of their ageing F-18 fighters. Again, this process features two very similar countries and the different outcomes each has had reveal significant factors concerning the processes which led to them.

As with the Type 26 case discussed above, the results of procurement processes aimed at the same platform in the two countries could not have been more different: Australia had by 2023 already purchased and received a large portion of its F-35s, while Canada has only just managed to secure a deal to purchase the aircraft, in a controversial agreement, despite both countries having kickstarted the project at roughly the same time over a decade ago. Comparing these two cases supports the idea that the disparity in the procurement of major platforms is based less on the details of procurement administration than upon political factors and, again, especially upon the lack of alignment between government strategic defence policy and the (air force) service doctrine found in this case.

As one would expect, the literature on procuring and utilizing Fifth-Generation fighters forms a global discourse. How a Fifth-Generation approach to military affairs in general can be implemented is not a new topic in the discipline (Reed, 2008) and has become a foundational pillar of contemporary military thinking in the post-Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) era. At the same time, the discussion showcases how complex it is to attempt to transform the armed forces, not just because new technologies need to be introduced and others phased out, but, perhaps critically, because the use of these new tools rests on the absorption and implementation of new operational philosophies (Adamson & Snyder, 2017) both at the political and operational levels.

This is very true of fighter aircraft which are at the leading edge of defence technology development. Unlike other such technologies—including drones and anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles which are revolutionizing infantry and tank warfare—aircraft are very expensive and require economies of scale if maintenance and training costs are not to become overwhelming. That is, while one may speak of a single aircraft, just as with ships, nations deal with aircraft fleets and thus procurement in this area is also of the Type 4 nature.

The expectations placed on these aircrafts are very high (Harper, 2017), and the technology itself comes bundled with many complex and interconnected strategic, political and procurement choices. Extremely evident politically, and in terms of the media, is the often very high cost commitments and technological sophistication that is required to produce and operate these platforms. Once again, as the two cases discussed below amply demonstrate, it is very apparent that governments and armed forces need to display and maintain a continual alignment of intents regarding military doctrine and defence policy in order to ensure successful procurement in this area.

The US F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), on which we focus in this chapter, was developed not simply as a weapons platform but also as a key pillar of a future ‘netcentric’ operating concept, or integrated network for battlefield information and communication through the inclusion of advanced sensors and joint operations capability alongside the airframe itself. The JSF is intended to replace a variety of existing platforms which are ageing and lack such a capability (GAO, 2016), and it has the potential to transform many facets of how multiple service branches, and air forces in particular, understand and implement their doctrine and operations.

Designed and produced by Lockheed Martin Corporation in conventional take-off and landing (F-35A), STOVL (F-35B) and carrier-based (F-35C) configurations, the JSF was intended from inception to become the lynchpin of air warfare for US-centred alliances. It is not as advanced in some regards as the F-22 fighter, which is retained exclusively by the United States, but was designed to take on multiple roles including battlefield co-ordination which the F-22 does not, and specifically to be sold to allies on a cash purchase basis. Of the more than 3100 planned aircraft (see Table 2.1), it was expected from the outset that the United States would purchase around 2456 and the rest would be accounted for by sales to partner countries, Security Cooperative Participants and other military exports.

Purchasing the new jet fighter is not just a matter of procurement cycles, however: global political and strategic choices have been a key facet of the discourse (Chapman, 2019; Hellemeier, 2019; Vucetic, 2013). Not the least of these choices has been whether a country’s strategic and operational framework and doctrines should (and can) be adapted to Fifth-Generation platforms (Petrelli, 2020). While the race towards integrated battlefield information management (netcentric) warfare appears a given, especially after the disastrous Russian invasion of Ukraine demonstrated its relevance, the military and strategic dimensions of this choice have often been mixed with important political and economic ones (Vucetic & Rydberg, 2015), in particular for a platform like the JSF which represents a significant financial commitment and close linkages with the United States.

As a case in point, the United Kingdom, alone among the NATO Allies choosing to join the programme as a Tier-1 partner, soon discovered that the choice was less than straightforward (Antill & Ito, 2013). The development of the F-35 has had to deal with a litany of rising costs, not to mention hardware and software issues, the latest of which appears related to engine problems (GAO, 2022), one of the most expensive components of the plane and a critical asset for any fighter jet.

Even if Lockheed Martin is able to reduce the unit price to US$78M from the original US$210M (M. Stone, 2021), which is lower than the cost of an F-15 multirole fighter today, this figure is not inclusive of very high development and sustainment costs. The Government Accountability Office in the United States noted that on top of the US$400B in acquisition costs, future administrations will need to commit US$1.27T to sustain the planes throughout their life cycle (GAO, 2021). To make things worse from a planning perspective, this amount has continued to increase since 2012. As can be expected, political considerations have emerged around this issue: in March 2021 Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the Democratic chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, claimed that he would seek alternatives to the JSF, noting his commitment “to stop throwing money down that particular rat hole” (Gregg, 2021). While international events seem to have overtaken his opposition, in particular with the United States inking a deal for three additional tranches of F-35s, for a total of 375 units valued at US$30B in mid-2022 (Losey, 2022), costs are likely to remain a constant issue, especially in case of misalignment between political vision and strategic posture as opponents of the project can effectively leverage these concerns, as occured in Canada.

JSF customers are organized in multiple groups: the United States is followed by three partner tiers, which are based on the contribution that each country makes to the development costs of the F-35. The United Kingdom is the only country in Tier 1 and finances about 10% of the planes’ costs. Italy and the Netherlands, contributing just about 4%, are the Tier-2 partners, and Tier-3 partners (Australia, Canada, Denmark, Norway and lastly Turkey before its exclusion—see below) committed smaller amounts. Israel and Singapore received their fighters as members of the Security Cooperative, and everyone else qualifies under foreign military sales (see Table 4.1).

Table 4.1 Programme of record purchase commitments for JSFs

Over 865 F-35s had been delivered as of November 2022, with yearly production hovering at around 150 units. Recently, Switzerland, Finland and Germany have all finalized, or are close to finalizing, important orders for the Lightning II (Howlett et al., 2022), while the invasion of Ukraine led the Dutch government to substantially increase its order from 37 to 52 planes (Defense Brief Editorial, 2022). On 22 March 2022, Canada entered the final discussion phase for the purchase of 88 fighters and has since finalized the deal (Pugliese, 2022).

The F-35, however, while representing a unique technical capability, still has competitors offering lower costs, and thus some prospective F-35 sales have fallen through. In July 2022 Spain officially inked a €2B deal to replace its F-18s with Eurofighter Typhoons, and in December 2021, the United Arab Emirates government, which was discussing a deal for 50 JSFs, temporarily shelved it and instead ordered 80 Dassault Rafales for a total value of €17B, even if the Emirates noted that these two contracts are not mutually exclusive and that the Rafales are only a part of the UAE’s military modernization programme (Reuters, 2021). These setbacks may be partially offset by the Greek government’s request to acquire 20 fighters to equip one of its squadrons, with a possible option for a second squadron (Reuters, 2022), and by the decision in July 2022 of the Czech government to launch formal negotiation to purchase 24 F-35As to replace its Saab Gripens (Adamowski, 2022). Turkey, while excluded from the group of countries that would receive the F-35 after it acquired the S-400 (SA-21) Triumf surface-to-air missile (SAM) system from Russia, is currently leveraging the Russian invasion of Ukraine to support the argument that it should still be allowed to receive the fighters (Altun, 2022; Tennant, 2022).

On the other hand, even if costs are not paramount, some key NATO partners are not involved in the development of the JSF: France, Germany and Spain have been working on their own Next Generation Fighter (NGF) aircraft. This programme is supposed to develop a Sixth-Generation Fighter, but introduction of the aircraft has now been pushed to around 2050, with Airbus delaying progress given that the programme leadership went to Dassault (Charpentreau, 2022). Despite this, Germany, as mentioned above, has committed to purchasing F-35s for the Luftwaffe in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The United Kingdom is also currently working on its own Future Combat Air System (FCAS), the Tempest fighter, for which a demonstrator is set to fly within five years (Ministry of Defence, 2022). British progress is indeed drawing attention from other key F-35 customers, such as Japan (Bartlett-Imadegawa, 2022), and Italy’s Leonardo, the latter having signed a cooperation agreement with BAE Systems to work on various systems for the new fighter. Notwithstanding these recent obstacles, the F-35 now has a global presence and Lockheed Martin continues to connect with interested countries.

In the literature on the F-35, the commercial success of the fighter has generally been analysed strictly in grand strategic terms, often interpreting it as a result of close bilateral military relations between the United States and its allies (Tago & Vucetic, 2013), or as a logical response to increased threats from rival powers such as Russia and the PRC which require many countries to acquire greater and more up-to-date military capacity (Chapman, 2019; Charles & Sinnewe, 2015; Kawasaki, 2021; Zaffran & Erwes, 2015). Some armed forces, it is argued, have struggled to align their strategic doctrines with JSF platform procurement (Migone et al., 2022) and have chosen alternative aircraft as a result.

These macro-level concerns can also be seen to intersect with more micro-level ones, as concerns around costs have led some partners to scale back the number of units they originally planned to acquire. Strategic concerns still matter, however, as acquisition of planes like the Russian Su-57, which may have originally been seen as an alternative in some countries in eastern Europe, is no longer politically acceptable for US alliance partners (Karnozov, 2020), compounding general questions about the feasibility of the programme (Martin, 2020).

However, costs, and the strategic importance of US alliances, are not the only factors which have driven F-35 acquisition decisions. Here too, as in the Type 26 case, service doctrine and its degree of alignment with government defence policy can be seen to have been an important variable affecting successful procurement. Once again recent Canadian and Australian experiences with this same platform decision, and their very different results, are telling.

In this chapter we compare the Australian and Canadian trajectories towards procuring the JSF to investigate the significance of these different aspects of military procurement. As noted above, the results have been polar opposites—with Australia already having the plane in hand while Canada remains years away from operational deployment—and in trying to understand why this is the case, answers again can be seen to range beyond the details and nuances of complex procurement processes and industrial offset packages, to structural issues linked to conflicts between Air Force doctrine and defence policy goals (Collins, 2021). The details of the two cases are set out below.

4.1 The Australian F-35 Procurement Case

As noted above, Australia, while being a Tier-3 partner—the same as Canada in the F-35 programme—as of November 2022 had already received 54 F-35As, and the entire original contract of 72 aircraft of the first tranche of the country’s purchase is expected to be delivered by 2023, potentially to be followed by another 28 fighters in a second tranche (Thorn, 2022). Canada, instead, has only just entered the initial stages of negotiation for its planned purchase of 88 F-35A aircraft. How do we explain this variable outcome?

The answer requires a historical investigation, beginning in the mid-1960s when Australia overtook Canada in terms of the percentage of GDP it budgeted for defence. As we have seen in the Type 26 frigate case, since the Second World War Australia has had a defence strategy that has favoured close ties with the United States (Henry, 2020), and this was an important factor in directing its procurement towards the F-35. It follows the established trend of the RAAF acquiring US-designed and built F-111s and F-18s in the 1970s and 1990s and attempting to purchase the F-22 (Defense Industry Daily, 2010). But this in itself is not enough to explain the discrepant decisions since the same variable is found in the Canadian case.

The difference between the two countries’ strategic posture can be found, however, in the Australian need to operate as a middle power in the Pacific theatre alongside the United States, where a resurgent PRC is the major pacing challenge, whereas maintenance of some independence from its overpowering neighbour is more of a concern for Canada. Australia, in its complex role as a regional power in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific-Indian Ocean region, needs to balance autonomy in its defence policy approach with the necessity of responding to the activities of both global and regional hegemons such as China and Indonesia (Lee, 2020). As a result of these geographical realities and strategic approaches, and on the basis of close cooperation against the Japanese in the Second World War, Australian and American forces have traditionally achieved a high level of interoperability. This integration has been underscored by the military role played by Australia in US-led interventions abroad including in Vietnam and more recently in Afghanistan and Iraq (Frühling, 2018).

As we saw in the case of the Navy, Australian defence policy has traditionally brought together local, regional and global defence dimensions (Cheeseman, 1991) within the scope of a dominant strategic vison. Australia preferred a forward defence approach until the mid-1960s (Cheeseman, 1991; Reynolds, 1999) when, beginning with the Vietnam War, the notion of defence self-reliance became increasingly important. Australian military and political leaders alike have recognized that in the event of conflict, Allied forces and supplies may not easily or quickly arrive in Australia: consider the potential complexity of supplies reaching Australia from North America or Europe if the country were at war with Indonesia or the PRC (Department of Defence, 1976, 1987; Frühling, 2014).

This strategic situation has led to two cognate policy approaches that reverberate to this day upon Australia’s force structure and defence choices. First, as discussed above, it was decided that Australia needed a maritime defence-in-depth approach that could employ overlapping sea, air and land assets. These assets would then need to maintain a constant technological edge against regional competitors to contain potential threats. And who better than the United States to ensure this edge? A good example of this scaffolded partnership is the long-standing operation of US bombers in the Pacific country, which recently culminated in the agreement to position six US nuclear-capable B-52s at the Tindall Air Base during the dry season (Booth, 2022). The second approach is related to ensuring that Australia prioritizes its defence industry, with significant capacity to produce, service, maintain and arm its vehicles, aircraft and vessels, built into the domestic sphere (Department of Defence, 2009; Frühling, 2014), and achieving some degree of defence autarky that could mitigate some of the geostrategic risks Australia faces.

None of this is true for Canada, relative to the intensity of the geostrategic situation faced by Australia: the PRC does represent a threat for Ottawa, but given the proximity of Canada to the United States, the Chinese threat is much more distant and less centred on direct military challenges than is the case in Australia. Furthermore, access to military hardware is extremely unlikely to ever be an issue given the long land border and multiple transportation links Canada shares with the United States. However, on the political side, Canadian governments are wary of becoming too ‘cozily’ associated with US operations and political dynamics, and so are more likely to commit to domestic solutions to avoid accusations of relinquishing Canadian sovereignty by becoming overly reliant on supplies and platforms linked too closely to its powerful southern neighbour.

As we have seen in the case of the Australian frigate programme, ADF doctrine, force structure and government defence policy form closely connected and self-supporting pillars, thus ensuring effective procurement and an active domestic defence industry. This argument is often reiterated and developed in formal policy documents including the First Principles Review: Creating One Industry (Department of Defence, 2015) and in the subsequent follow-up defence white paper of 2016 (Department of Defence, 2016b). In the same year, the Department of Defence’s (2016a) defence industry policy statement stressed the very central place held by that industrial sector if Australia’s self-reliance policy is to succeed. In 2019 the government once again reiterated this relevance, not just in terms of building a skilled workforce but also in terms of delivering critical innovation as the country took on very large new defence investment projects (Department of Defence, 2019).

Beside its policy statements, the federal government of Australia is engaged in fostering the development of a favourable environment for domestic industry, having taken on a variety of practical initiatives ranging from developing closer academia-industry connections, commitment to reducing the administrative burdens of procurement processes themselves, and generally has worked to rationalize the defence industry sector and support its efforts to export products. Between 2018 and 2021, for example, the Australian government operated the Sovereign Industrial Capability Priority Grants Program through what is now the Office of Defence Industry Support, making important contributions to the sector by supporting various industrial priorities.

At a general level, a cross-platform multi-year investment plan (see Fig. 4.1) has represented a core Australian defence strategic policy approach (Department of Defence, 2016c). Starting from the three 2016 documents, the strategic plan went on to develop, as we saw in the preceding chapter, the Naval Shipbuilding Plan (NSP) and progressively continued the process of alignment between new defence procurement, domestic industrial output and capacity, and strategic defence policy (Department of Defence, 2017). Canberra, in its 2018 Defence Industrial Capability Plan (Department of Defence, 2018), reiterated that it sought to build a strong and sustainable Australian defence industry and expected that foreign companies wanting to sell military hardware to Australia would make substantial investments in the country’s economy.

Fig. 4.1

Australian defence industry policy agenda. (Source: Department of Defence (2018, p. 14))

Effectively, Australian governments leveraged the procurement cycles designed to modernize and recapitalize the Australian armed forces to increase the level of development of the domestic defence industry and to combine this with the general concern for macro-force interoperability with the United States. This approach has been particularly evident when we look at the RAAF and the F-35 decision.

In the case of the acquisition of the JSF, the blending of meso- and macro-level concerns that we described above is very evident. Multiple Australian governments supported local industry in their bids to support the development of the F-35, and there is a clear expectation of large returns for Australian companies over the life cycle of the aircraft and through the construction of the F-35 support infrastructure, which on its own is worth billions (Chapman, 2019).

Australia started to become interested in the F-35 in the late 1990s (Defence Acquisition Organisation, 1999). The aircraft was a good match with the country’s defence policy discussed above (Department of Defence, 2000) since the RAAF needs to project its air combat capability in a potentially contested environment, and—in more prosaic terms—was facing the end of operational life for both its F-18s and F-111s. A figure of up to 100 aircraft, meant to replace these aircraft, also aligned with the expectation of significant domestic industrial benefits (Department of Defence, 2000).

From the very beginning it was evident that Australia intended to retain effective aerospace capabilities that would allow the country to remain aligned with larger regional and global actors unlike, for example, New Zealand which lost this capability in the 1990s (Owen et al., 2000). The government of Australia started the AIR 6000 project in late 2001, which was tasked with developing the F-35 acquisition programme. AIR 6000 framed the acquisition as a complex system-of-systems problem, where multiple actors were in play, alongside multiple stakeholders’ subjective preferences and uncertainty, which needed to be managed and aligned with the needs of the ADF (Staker, 2001). In June 2002 Australia joined the formal JSF development programme as a Tier-3 partner; from there things moved very quickly and in October all necessary agreements had been signed, which marked the end of the research phase of the procurement process.

In sum, the new aircraft aligned well with Australia’s strategic and industrial priorities. By joining the partnership agreement at the Tier-3 level, Australia contributed between 1% and 2% to the development costs of the fighter (Chapman, 2019) but also ensured that domestic companies would now be considered for the lucrative contracts that would surround the development, construction and maintenance of the aircraft (which they did quite successfully). The Australian government thus aligned its goals of supporting and strengthening the local aerospace industry within the lens of increased defence self-reliance.

However relevant they may have been, nevertheless, industrial benefits were not the only reason that led to the choice of the F-35. The JSF was to replace two different types of aircraft: the F-18, which is a multirole attack fighter, and the F-111, which instead—while having a multirole designation—was, in the Australian context, focused on long-range strike and electronic warfare roles. The F-35 was billed as being able to cover all of these roles, which made it the obvious successor, especially considering that at the same time the Australians had been unable to convince the US Congress to authorize the sale of F-22s to their Pacific ally. RAAF doctrine over this period is set out in Table 4.2 below.

Table 4.2 Australian RAAF doctrine 1970–2022

Under these conditions the macro- and meso-level aspects of government defence policy and service doctrine were also well aligned towards supporting the F-35 as the future aircraft platform of the RAAF, an important condition for the success of such large-scale military procurement (Migone et al., 2022; Howlett et al., 2023).

By 2006, the Australian government had signed a Memorandum of Agreement and committed to spend AUS$90B on the F-35. Despite increasing costs, the Defence Department never wavered (Chapman, 2019) in regard to this spending commitment. With both the administration and service supporting the acquisition of the JSF, even the election of the Labor government, and a review of both Australia’s air combat capability requirements (Department of Defence, 2008) and of its strategic defence approach (Department of Defence, 2009) that followed, did not result in a shift.

To be sure, there were internal discussions and questions were raised about this procurement project: alongside the concerns regarding increased costs (Davies, 2008), the strategic validity of selecting the JSF and its tactical value when the RAAF had to replace dedicated air superiority assets also came up, but the project continued on schedule throughout this discussion (Chapman, 2019). On 17 July 2015, the Department of Environment and Energy published the approval decision for the flying operations of the F-35A and the first F-35A aircraft was accepted into Australian service in 2018. The first F-35A squadron, No. 3 Squadron, became operational in 2021. All 72 aircraft are expected to be fully operational by 2023 (Australian Air Force, n.d.).

The Australian JSF procurement success, like the Canadian failure outlined below, demonstrates once again that when there is an alignment between policy and doctrine, micro-level concerns around costs and procurement process details cannot undermine the whole procurement process. Significantly, Australia managed to articulate and maintain this alignment over a 20 year period and, as a result, the F-35 procurement proceeded largely unproblematically. However, as we show below, once again this was not the case in the Canadian experience with the F-35’s.

4.2 The Canadian F-35 Procurement Case

Unlike Australia, the trajectory of Canadian F-35 procurement is largely negative. In Australia both the armed forces and various governments focused on the continuity of military capability, including cooperation and interoperability with the United States, and the RAAF’s service doctrine matched the government’s defence policy. In this environment, sustaining the large procurement commitments connected to the early stages of the F-35 development became possible even in the face of mounting costs. None of these conditions were present in Canada, however, and the JSF quickly joined the pantheon of procurement boondoggles experienced by the country (Migone et al., 2022; Staker & Moon, 2000).

As demonstrated in the Type 26 frigate case, Canada’s recent approach to military affairs has been conflict-riddled, and government priorities have often clashed with service doctrine and force structure desires. Conflict has emerged with the Canadian Army over the procurement of small arms, with the RCN over purchases of frigates, helicopters, fleet support ships and even for the purchase of icebreaker and offshore patrol vessels for the country’s Coast Guard. The RCAF has been no exception and these disputes were manifest in the F-35 case.

While Canada is undoubtedly aligned with North Atlantic and, in general, western strategy, its governments have had an independent approach when they found American policy to not align with domestic national concerns (Vucetic, 2006). This has often put the country at odds with other Commonwealth countries (Fawn, 2008) and in particular with Australia (O’Connor & Vucetic, 2010), the latter, as we have seen, having exhibited unusually strong support for US military interventions (Cox & O’Connor, 2012). Despite its Alliance commitments in NATO and NORAD, Canada cannot boast of the high levels of integration with the US military typical in the Australian case. Politically there are also differences between the two neighbours: while Canada did in fact commit a substantial amount of blood and treasure to the intervention in Afghanistan, Libya and the anti-Islamic State campaign, when NATO provided an ‘organizational umbrella’ to these operations, it refused—unlike Australia—to participate in either the Vietnam War or the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

This more autonomous approach is due in part to differing political stances in Canada and the United States but also, much like in Australia, because of the complex set of interlocking strategic interests in which the country is enmeshed. From this perspective, Canada must consider and align various priorities such as continental defence, its responsibilities as a NATO member, what has become an increasingly apparent need to project influence—at least economically—into the Asia-Pacific and ASEAN region, and the emergence of multiple challenges in the Arctic theatre where traditional rivals like Russia and the PRC have been more active and even encroaching upon Canadian sovereignty, but where the United States and the United Kingdom are also committed to international access through what are arguably Canadian internal waters.

While Canadian foreign and defence policy retains a commitment to liberal internationalism at its core, defence spending as a component of GDP has consistently been declining (McKay, 2018), and only recently did Canada begin to promote any kind of strategic focus on the Pacific and the Arctic (Nossal, 2018). Unlike the RCN, which did not have the equipment required for an Arctic presence of any kind during the Cold War, given the proximity of the USSR to Canada and the role of the Canadian Arctic as a flight path for Soviet bombers and missiles, the RCAF did always have an Arctic focus and a strong presence in the north (Johnson, 2021; Lajeunesse & Lackenbauer, 2017). In the post-Cold War era this threat at first declined but has since been heightened in recent years due to the resurgence of Russia as a threat and the increased interest of the PRC in the region (Huebert, 2019).

If Australia needs only to think about defence-in-depth on its northern border, Canada has the same problem, but across three points of the compass. This makes RCAF doctrine a key part of Canadian defence, but, unlike Australia, this effort takes place against the backdrop of stagnant military spending and ageing force assets. These considerations are especially relevant when the procurement process is connected to complex and very expensive military platforms like the F-35 or when new assets are commissioned which, like the AOPVs, are inadequate in themselves to counter serious military threats in the Arctic from Russia and the PRC—or any other nation for that matter (Migone et al., 2022).

In recent decades, as we have seen, in Canada the attempts at replacing equipment for the RCN and RCAF have generally been desultory, delayed and disputed. This case has already been made for the RCN where all stakeholders have to show for well over 20 years of process are three AOPVs—and no steel has even been cut to replace either the country’s ageing Halifax-class frigates or Victoria-class submarines (Migone et al., 2022). The same is true of the attempts to replace the ageing fleet of Canadian CF-18s, which have dragged on for over a decade and produced a rather large set of issues but no aircraft to date.

This is telling since, like in Australia, around 2000 as Canada was modernizing its existing CF-18 fleet for the first time, the Liberal government of Paul Martin also chose to join the F-35 programme as a Tier-3 partner. Like Australia, this was intended to trade Canadian firm access to the potential contracts in the development of the JSF in return for a relatively small government contribution to fighter development costs.

This was a logical choice: the RCAF had firmly indicated that it saw the JSF as the preferred choice for its next generation fighter, and, interestingly, all federal governments since this date have kept their commitment to support these development costs, allowing Canadian companies to compete for various contracts related to the F-35, even while the procurement process for the plane itself has floundered. However, unlike what we saw in the Australian case, this build-up of domestic arms manufacturing capacity does not form a core aspect of Canadian defence policy but rather is more opportunistic in nature.

The initial desire of the RCAF to acquire the JSF had strong bipartisan support in Canada, and even when the Conservative Party replaced the Liberals in Ottawa, the DND continued with the procurement process by signing a Memorandum of Agreement that committed Canada to spend over half a billion dollars in development costs and to begin a contracting process aimed at acquiring the F-35. On the RCAF doctrine over the study period, see Table 4.3.

Table 4.3 RCAF doctrine

The purchase of the F-35 became strategically embedded in the Harper Conservative’s Canada First Defence Strategy white paper of 2008. There, significantly, it was said to be expected to enhance Canada’s continental defence role and to reinforce its international expeditionary capacity rather than cement Canada’s alliance with the United States (Department of National Defence, 2008).

On the basis of this service and government policy alignment, the procurement project was initially budgeted for C$9B and was welcomed by General Deschamps, who was at the time the RCAF’s Chief of the Air Staff (CAS), when he noted that the expense of procuring the JSF would compare with those that had been expended on the CF-18 (Deschamps, 2010), a statement that would later come back to haunt the government.

Soon after 2008, however, unlike in Australia where the F-35 programme continued to move forward, in Canada the airframe procurement process began to unravel. Like elsewhere around the globe (Chapman, 2019) the federal government now had to re-balance rapidly escalating development costs against the financial fallout and budget crisis associated with the Global Financial Crisis. Frequent and more intense questions about what role a multi-platform, limited range, fighter like the F-35 could play in terms of Canada’s vast trans-continental air defence started to be asked and, soon enough, the press and the political opposition started to wonder whether or not the initial enthusiasm with which the JSF had been welcomed was in fact fully warranted.

The Department of National Defence nevertheless stuck by its initial statement that only the F-35 could effectively replace the CF-18, and in July 2010 the Conservative government seemed to stand by this policy as it modified the procurement regulations to allow the process to proceed single-sourced, skipping the bid phase entirely and proceeding directly to tender.

Cost projections soon increased, however, and as the initial C$9B topped C$16B, the Conservatives came under attack from the opposition parties, especially the Liberals, regarding their contracting choices (Chapman, 2019). Criticism of the F-35 procurement process was not limited to the political side alone: the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) (2011a) again played a key role, issuing a scathing report in which it noted that the real costs of the programme would be close to C$30B and furthermore predicted a delay in the delivery of the JSF of at least five years in addition to much higher upgrade costs than the DND had initially assumed.

The bad news was not restricted to a condemnation of poor financial forecasting: in a separate report, the Budget Office also noted that DND had failed to provide an effective way for the PBO to assess either its financial methodology or its risk-management strategy. Not only that, but it also noted that the government had presented cost estimates for only 20-, rather than the full 30-, year period over which DND had budgeted the fighter’s lifespan (Parliamentary Budget Officer, 2011b).

The political situation so deteriorated that the minority Conservative government was defeated on 25 March 2011 in a non-confidence vote, at least partially generated by what was emerging as a potential financial debacle centred on the F-35 (Nossal, 2012). Although in May that year the Conservatives won a new majority, strengthening their position in parliament, this did not accelerate the acquisition of the F-35. Rather, the Office of the Auditor General (OAG) added its voice to the litany of problems that had already emerged before the election, citing more issues with the procurement process in its 2012 report. Alongside stressing that the financial information presented was incomplete, the report stressed that both DND and Public Works and Government Services Canada (the department that was responsible for the contracting side of the project) had failed in their procedural duties. DND had been sloppy and quite late in providing documentation and information the Auditor General deemed critical to the success of the contract, while Public Works had accepted the sole-sourced bid without having in hand all of the backing documentation that it was required to obtain under Canadian rules.

The Conservative government, similar to how it approached the shipbuilding issue, tried to address these challenges by setting up an ad hoc unit within Public Works and Government Services Canada, which was called the National Fighter Procurement Secretariat (NFPS) to better manage the details of procurement process around the JSF, while at the same time ordering that the process itself should undergo various reviews.

Among the latter was an independent report to the Treasury Board Secretariat, commissioned with the consulting company KPMG, to examine the proposed JSF procurement from 2010 to 2052, which was delivered in November 2012 (KPMG, 2012). The report, predictably, confirmed that costs would be much higher than what the DND had argued, likely reaching C$45B (although the report noted that some future expenses could not be estimated, so that the final figures would remain uncertain). The report put forward a series of recommendations targeting the project’s life cycle costing and financial management within DND, indirectly confirming that earlier steps in that direction had not been as efficient and effective as they could have been.

This disarray ultimately led the Canadian F-35 procurement programme to be challenged along three axes: first, because of its cost, then because of the procurement process itself and how the platform was selected without bids, and finally by a debate about whether the JSF would actually align with the RCAF’s needs (McKillip & McKillip, 2014; Staples, 2011).

These concerns delayed the ability of the RCAF to replace the CF-18s in its fleet, and planes that were supposed to start being phased out at the beginning of the 21st century were instead updated to extend their service life to 2020. A new Liberal government elected in 2015 made its opposition to the F-35s clear. In opposition, Liberal leader Justin Trudeau had made the issue into a prominent plank in the Liberals’ election platform stating, “We will not buy the F-35 fighter jet,” and that if elected a cheaper alternative would be found. Trudeau condemned the programme and the role of the Harper Conservative government in putting it forward. “The Conservative government never actually justified or explained why they felt Canada needed a Fifth-Generation fighter,” Trudeau said in 2015. “They just talked about it like it was obvious. It was obvious, as we saw through the entire process, that they were particularly, and some might say unreasonably or unhealthily, attached to the F-35 aircraft” (Passifiume, 2022).

On attaining office, the Liberals announced they would hold an open competition, excluding the F-35, to pick a more suitable aircraft but then waffled on whether or not the JSF would in fact be excluded. In June 2016, the media reported multiple sources indicating that the Liberals had decided to buy Boeing’s F/A-18E/F Super Hornet as an ‘interim’ fighter, after Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan warned that the country continued to face an immediate military capability gap. The F-18E/Fs would be retained until a new competition could be held on a Fifth-Generation aircraft. Minister of Public Services and Procurement Judy Foote subsequently indicated that a full competition would be held for a new fighter and that the new process would likely take five years.

Showing its disarray, the Liberal government, however, then decided not to buy an interim fleet of Super Hornets in retaliation for Boeing launching a trade action against Canada over subsidies the government paid to Bombardier to produce its C-series of airliners in Canada. Instead, ultimately Canada was forced to buy 25 of the used RAAF F/A-18s (Brewster, 2017) being phased out by its own successful F-35 purchases, which were subsequently delivered between January 2019 and May 2021 (McLaughlin, 2021), just in order to keep its fleet flying.

The competition for new planes at the time was expected to see a contract award in 2019 and first deliveries in 2025. In July 2019 the federal government released a formal request for proposals to purchase 88 new fighters. In a face-saving gesture the request invited Airbus, Boeing, Saab and Lockheed Martin to submit proposals for their Eurofighter Typhoon, F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, Gripen and JSF (Howlett et al., 2022).

Dassault, however, announced it would not place a bid for the competition in November 2018, citing cost and development issues with properly integrating the aircraft to the NORAD and Five Eyes requirements as being too high, in addition to the high cost of integrating American weapon systems. Similarly, Airbus withdrew the Eurofighter Typhoon from the competition in August 2019, citing the same reasons as Dassault, leaving only the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, F-35 and the Gripen E as potential contenders. Finally, in November 2021, Boeing was informed that the Super Hornet bid did not in fact meet Canada’s requirements, leaving the F-35A Lightning II and the Saab 39 Gripen E as the two remaining candidates in the competition.

Faced with this potential choice, on 28 March 2022 the Liberal Government reversed course completely and announced for the second time that the competition had placed the F-35A first and that it planned to buy 88 of them, effectively having wasted seven years and setting things back to where they had been under the Conservatives prior to 2015 (Brewster, 2022). By now, however, after a seven-year delay, a large number of other countries were lined up to receive their F-35s and Canada is likely to face additional increased wait times before any deliveries. As of the time of writing, therefore, like in the case of the CSC frigates, not a single new Fifth-Generation plane has been acquired, with any potential delivery many years off in the future, despite over 20 years of planning.

4.3 Comparison of the Australian and Canadian F-35 Procurement Processes and Outcomes

As in the frigate case, the comparison of Australian successes with Canadian procurement failures is telling. Unlike in the Australian case, where the focus was on maintaining the country’s special connection with the United States and the perceived need to build a domestic armaments industry that would support the country’s strategic outlook were instrumental in answering any questions raised about the appropriateness of the JSF, mounting criticism of the F-35 process and costs in Canada after 2010 marked the beginning of a period of increased scrutiny based on annual reports from DND (Department of National Defence, 2013b, 2014), externally commissioned reviews of the aircraft (Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton, 2013), and what potential alternatives were in place (Sanson and Associates, 2013). All of these issues challenged the initial RCAF and government agreement that the F-35 was what Canada needed.

Throughout this procurement crisis, the RCAF maintained that the F-35 was necessary for the Canadian defence system, especially if the country wanted to retain a combat advantage (Department of National Defence, 2013a) over potential adversaries. However, this strategic doctrine argument required continued federal government support and alignment if it was to be implemented and this was not forthcoming in Canada as it had been in Australia. The alignment evaporated after the 2015 federal election, when a Liberal government led by Justin Trudeau was elected on a platform which included scrapping the F-35 deal.

The new Liberal leader had openly campaigned against the very expensive F-35 project (CBC News, 2015), promising to reverse the Conservative decision, and soon after his victory Trudeau indeed proceeded to launch a competition to replace the soon-to-be obsolescent CF-18s, a competition that was designed not to select the very expensive F-35. The Prime Minister had even argued that with the money saved by not purchasing the Fifth-Generation fighter, the government could tackle the replacement of the rapidly ageing main vessels in RCN—an ironic commitment considering how little progress has also been made on that front, as we have seen (Migone et al., 2022).

By 2017, at the same time as Australia could look forward to, and plan for, the imminent delivery of its first F-35s, the government in Ottawa instead had just launched an ill-fated ‘Future Fighter Capability Project’ which was supposed to facilitate the procurement of new Canadian fighters through an open-bidding process. With estimated costs between C$15B and C$19B the project was expected to begin replacing the CF-18s no earlier than 2025. When the Rafale and Typhoon options quickly bowed out and, unexpectedly, the Canadian government excluded Boeing from the competition in late-2021—on the hoary grounds that its industrial offset package was insufficient—this alternative strategy was in complete disarray (CBC News, 2021). Canada was back to square one: would Ottawa select the lower-cost, Fourth-Generation, multirole Gripen, from (then) a non-NATO country, as the backbone of its air force for the next four decades (Hunter, 2021), or would it circle back to the F-35, which the Liberal government had originally expressly campaigned against?¹

This deadlock was only broken a few months later when, completing a six-year-long U-turn, the Liberal government finally entered negotiations to buy the same 88 planes that had originally been planned for (Brewster, 2022). While some in the press reported that such long delays may in fact have saved some money in operational costs because many systems on the JSF have now reached maturity (Berthiaume, 2022), time was once again of the essence and Canada requested that its first nine fully operational jets be delivered no later than 2027, already five years beyond the first deliveries to Australia, although there is no guarantee and some scepticism about whether or not this will occur (Pugliese, 2022; Editorial Board, 2022).

The Australian and Canadian F-35 cases thus again both reveal the policy and political dynamics that surround large-scale military procurement and add an important dimension to this field and to that concerned with the procurement of large systems in general. The different outcomes we explored above stress that processes of modernization like the ones that are usually attached to procuring major weapons systems not only require alignment between government priorities and military strategy and doctrine, but that this alignment must continue throughout the lengthy period required for the purchase to be finalized and the systems delivered (Auditor General of Canada, 2020; Collins, 2015).

Retaining this alignment is easier if there are long-term cross-party (bipartisan) commitments to a shared strategic vision. This alignment is evident in both the Australian frigate and F-35 cases, where the country’s defence strategy is set in a fairly straightforward political-military-economic environment: Australia has a close economic and political interrelationship with the PRC which is unstable and potentially threatening, while Canada’s only realistic threat comes from its close neighbour and long-time ally the United States.

Australia needs to balance multiple military goals across what is a very broad geographical, political and strategic theatre, and this is usually done by trying to balance self-reliance with close military ties to the United States. Within these parameters, the air defence doctrine of the RAAF was consistently linked to the purchase of the F-35 as ‘the right tool for the job’ and as an American product that would fit the broader Australian geostrategic posture. The government was aligned with this approach using the F-35 procurement programme as an investment opportunity for Australian companies. With this level of agreement, procurement itself never quite became a significant electoral or political issue and the programme successfully navigated questions of rising costs and platform capability.

For the past 20 years, Canada, on the other hand, has struggled with procurement to replace its ageing CF-18s: starting with the non-competitive tender for the F-35 that—once costs ballooned—fell victim to political and electoral objections, which appeared so strong as to convince most observers that the RCAF would end up receiving more Boeing CF-18s.²

From a military strategy perspective Canada needs to consider more layers of action than Australia: Primary among these is maintaining the country’s role in NORAD and its position within NATO while balancing—mostly for internal political calculations—a more autonomous position vis-à-vis the United States than is the case with Australia.

Both the doctrine and force structure plans of the RCAF clearly pointed to the F-35 as the one aircraft that would ensure success, and early on the Conservative government was interested in fast-tracking its purchase. However, the politicization of the procurement decision resulted in more and more questions and objections surrounding what the RCAF was doing and that, in turn, derailed the original process leading to a complete reboot of the bid. The latter closely replicated earlier conflicts and controversies, many of which revolved around costs and industrial benefits, but now appears to be close to a positive solution that has settled—once more—on the F-35, but after close to a decade of delay. Thus, unlike Australia, Canada only inched forward in replacing its fighter fleet. A logic of close alignment with the United States (Tago & Vucetic, 2013) and an interest in a self-reliant military industry were key factors for multiple Australian governments, while RCAF doctrine and Canadian government defence priorities were unable to stay aligned in the face of electoral and partisan challenges.

This misalignment was not limited to Fifth-Generation platforms, with all of the uncertainties and questions that they entail. When some of the CF-18s were showing evident strain and a back-up plan was devised to purchase re-conditioned F-18s (ironically, from Australia), the same dynamics resurfaced. The Auditor General raised deep concerns about whether the RCAF would be able to maintain its NATO and NORAD operational goals simply through an extension of the life cycle of the CF-18 to 2035 (Auditor General of Canada, 2018). Not someone to pull punches, the Auditor General also pointed to the haemorrhage the RCAF was experiencing in terms of pilots and other key personnel, something that dated back to the Harper government, but that neither they nor the new Liberal government seemed able to reverse (Brewster, 2020).

Recent Canadian military procurement projects for major vessels and new aircraft thus can be seen to have wholly failed to either achieve or maintain a solid alignment between political vision and military doctrine about the nature of Canada’s defence goals and the hardware needed to implement those goals (Migone et al., 2022). This is just as evident in the F-35 case as it is for the RCN’s CSC programme, where a misalignment of defence policy and naval doctrine failed to create the alignment needed for procurement so that after almost 20 years of effort not a single frigate hull has been delivered (Migone et al., 2022). A very similar situation is apparent in the case of the F-35 where increasing financial requirements weakened the alignment required for programme success and led to a ten-year delay (Migone et al., 2022).

The Australian F-35 case, likewise, bears out the importance of this alignment, but by showcasing its role in leading to a much more successful deployment compared to Canada. In Australia, defence policy and service doctrine matched and this match was maintained so that the procurement of multiple large-scale weapon systems was possible. The relatively low impact that politicization has had on the Australian debate is a very important factor here; that is, alignment may be a necessary but not sufficient condition for success. In the early stages of the Canadian F-35 procurement process an alignment was in place but mounting costs, the impact of various independent reports about the way in which the programme was managed, and ultimately the electoralization of the decision led to failure despite the fact that everyone agreed that the F-18 had to be replaced.