Wouldn't it be great if Canada's fighter planes — the CF-18 — could be deployed to Afghanistan where they might be able to play a supporting role to the 2,500-odd Canadian troops there? You're right, it would. But, sadly, Canada's CF-18s are shut out of any theatre of war where our allies are are operating because Canada's fighter jets simply don't have the right gear.
If you want to put your fighters into the same theatre as U.S. and U.K. forces, your fighters must — and I underline, must — be equipped with what I'll call “smart bomb” technology. Remember in Gulf War I when we saw video of a missile zeroing in on a target and then explode? Well, that's smart bomb stuff. The U.S. have it. The U.K. has it. Even the French have it. (That's why they were able to deploy Mirage fighters into Afghanistan recently to support NATO troops there.) But Canada's fighter jets don't have it.
We know we need it, mind you. Five years ago, Canada's Air Force generals started the ball rolling to put these systems on our fighter jets.
But now, as my colleague Graham Richardson reports tonight, we seem to be a ways off from getting it.
Bureaucrats at Public Works and Government Services Canada awarded a $150-million contract to upgrade our fighter jets so that they would have this capability to Lockheed Martin. This will be Lockheed Martin's first contract to upgrade CF-18s with this capability.
Meanwhile, Northrup Grumman, which also bid on the Canadian contract and have done lots of these upgrades, is appealing the PWGSC decision and, so far, is doing very well with that appeal.
Northrup, I might add, has won this contract against the same competitors in six other countries — including the U.S. and Australia — versus the same competitors but couldn't do it in Canada.
So, to recap: In 2009, Canada's ground forces combat configuration in Afghanistan almost certainly will end. If the government is thinking about sending Canadian fighter jets post-2009 over there to help, forget about it. They can't go until they get the mandatory piece of kit that just about every other one of our allies has. And the work of getting that kick has been delayed by some bureaucratic bungling.
Oh — and here's the kicker: Canadian taxpayers have already forked over $140-million for the smart bombs that we can't yet fire because our planes haven't got the smart bomb firing system installed yet.
That's only partially correct, David. We have had the second-generation AN/AAS-38B NITE Hawk laser targeting pods for precision-guided munitions since 1998. And we used them over Serbia in 1999.
But as in every other aspect of life, technology is not static. The old target pods are not good enough to operate the third-gen bomb guidance hardware at the level of precision desired. That is why a brand-new targeting pod (the Advanced Multi-Role Infrared Sensor, or AMIRS) is required. And where the next-gen pods really shine is not targeting, per se, but ISR — intelligence, surveillance and reconnaisance. A good ISR pod turns an ordinary pointy-nosed turn-and-burn fighter into an intelligence platform not unlike a Predator UAV. Giving us the ability to snoop and shoot as the situation requires.
Meanwhile we still have the ability to drop bombs with less-precise precision guidance using the old pods.
And you may be interested to know that the LockMart Sniper XR pod is being tested by USAF, RAF and RN on a variety of platforms. It's a little disingenuous to suggest that the die is already cast and everyone is selecting Litening III. The aviation arms of most of our major allies, including the US and the UK, use a mixture of Litening and Sniper pods, depending on the avionics and interface capabilities of the various airframes that they fly.
Not every pointy-nosed-fighter has compatible mounting, targeting and data transfer methods. A mix of pod types is necessary for a fleet with many different platforms. We can get away with one because we've only got one type of ground attack fighter.
It's not as cut and dried as you make it out to be.
LockMart has a much larger canadian opperation. thats why the goverment goes with them
Further to the last comment; The 7 years of life in our CF-18 fleet would be eliminated with one tour in Afghanistan. Do you have the money or an aircraft to replace them?