Boeing, Lockheed Martin leaders speak in Ottawa

By Chris Thatcher | November 21, 2016

Could the Canadian government once again be considering the sole-source purchase of a small fleet of F/A-18E Super Hornets to bridge a pending capability gap in its fighter jet fleet?

Citing unnamed industry sources, Postmedia on Friday reported “the option to buy the Super Hornets…and forgo a competition until around 2030 has again resurfaced.”

In June, the Liberal government floated a proposal to acquire an interim fleet of 20 Boeing-built Super Hornets after Harjit Sajjan, Minister of National Defence, told a defence industry trade show in May that the government could foresee a problem by the 2020s to maintain and repair its already 30-year-old fleet of CF-188 Hornets.

“The fact that they have not been replaced means we are facing a capability gap in the years ahead,” said Sajjan. “[T]his I find unacceptable and I do plan to fix.”

At the time, the proposal was criticized by industry and by opposition Members of Parliament. The government appeared to be leaning toward an open competition to replace the fighter jets, after the previous Conservative government put on hold in 2012 a plan to acquire 65 Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Striker Fighter jets.

However, the sole-source acquisition of an interim fleet of Super Hornets would allow the government to augment the Royal Canadian Air Force’s current fleet of legacy Hornets and postpone a competition for several years.

A spokeswoman for Sajjan told Postmedia on Friday that the Liberals had yet to make a decision on the program.

The speculation came as senior executives for both Boeing Military Aircraft and Lockheed Martin were in Ottawa to meet with government officials and speak at the AIAC’s Canadian Aerospace Summit.

In presentations to the annual conference, both companies reminded an audience of over 400 industry and government executives of the deep historical roots that bind their firms to Canada: Lockheed Martin’s Hudson bomber that was routed through Canada to serve the Royal Air Force in the early days of the Second World War; and Bill Boeing’s first international mail flight into the U.S. from Vancouver in 1919.

But both also used the opportunity to stress the importance of Canadian industry to their aircraft’s success, and what those jets, in turn, could mean for the Canadian economy.

Marillyn Hewson, Lockheed’s CEO and president, noted Canada’s role as a “valued partner in the development of new technologies” for the F-35 program.

“Since the beginning of the program in 2001, more than 110 Canadian companies have contributed to the development and production, bringing advanced technology and engineering work to Canada,” she said. “Today, Canadian-built components are on every F-35 produced. Canadian industry has been awarded over a billion dollars in industrial work to date, and I’m confident the F-35 will bring significant economic benefits for decades to come.”

Shelley Lavender, president of Boeing Military Aircraft, described the “iterative innovation” that has gone into the evolution of the Super Hornet and EA-18G Growler, and showed a video of Boeing’s F-18 chief test pilot Ricardo Traven, a former RCAF CF-188 pilot, vouching for the credibility and track record of Canadian industry to innovate and insert new technology.

“The Growler is the very definition of iterative innovation and it is redefining electronic warfare in the 21st century,” she said.

Lavender also emphasized the more than 560 Canadian companies that support Boeing’s commercial and defence programs, and a Doyle-Tech study that found Boeing contributes nearly $4 billion annually to the Canadian economy.