Prime Minister Mark Carney has asked for a review of Canada’s plan to purchase F-35 fighter jets. The deal with Lockheed Martin and the U.S. government is for 88 planes at a cost of about US$85m each. That is $19b CDN. The contract hasn't been cancelled, and Canada is legally committed to buying 16 F-35s. The rest of the fleet could consist of planes from European vendors, like the Saab (Gripen), which are built in Sweden and placed second in the competition. If Canada cancels the F-35 deal, it could turn to the Future Combat Air System (FCAS), a European joint fighter project led by France, Germany, and Spain.
The issue cited against the deal is that Canada will never be able to fully control the highly automated aircraft. Lockheed Martin has consistently refused to give its complete 'source code' to foreign clients, including Canada. The core programming of all the aircraft’s functions consists of at least 8 million lines of code. Every F-35 flight requires access to that code.
A month ago an F-35 fell out of the sky in Alaska. Last year an F-35b smashed itself into the tarmac in Texas. A google search reveals a long string of highly expensive crashes involving the aircraft.
Portugal announced two days ago that it may not be replacing its F-16 fighter jets with F-35s because of Donald Trump. With the dramatic realignment taking place under Trump there are fears the U.S. government could decide to block access to critical software and spare parts required to make the F-35 operational. Turkey has also opted to pass on the F-35 in favour of Eurofighter jets to replace their F-15s.
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