F-35 jets cost to soar to $29B

This watchdog was hired by the liberals. DUH...

Forgive me for my ignorance. But isn't one of the reasons you buy from private contractors so you know the costs up front? Shouldn't Lockheed Martin be selling us a package deal and say "Ok, the planes cost X dollars up front, and for a warranty package they will run X dollars a year for X years".

Hell, we should demand no less. None of this "well it may be this price, or double or even triple". When I buy a car I know the price up front, and the maintenance costs. Buying planes should be no different.

Car salesmen always try to sell you the crappy undercoating, appearance package and disability insurance, so the cost they say isn't always the 'real' cost. How is LM going to sell any fighter jets if they give you the real cost up front?

$30 billion on procurement, maintainence, and constant upgrades for an item that's going to have an in-service life of at least 30 years (according to Page's own report)? Roughly $1 billion a year then? Big fucking deal. This is the Liberals trying to distort the issue as usual, because they know all the dumb fucks out there will skip the part that said "30 years" and start thinking that it's a demand for an immediate right-now $30 billion pay out to Lockheed-Martin.

Typical Liberal party, CBC, and Press Gallery bullshit as usual. Lying is all they know so lying is all that they ever do.

The biggest thing that worries me about the F-35 is what Page also noted;



So as the price increases, the risk is that nations scale back their purchases and the price goes up even further. Talk about a vicious catch-22.

Better yet, stop demonstrating it.

Wow! CKA classic. Can't dispute the facts so impugn the source. Do you really want a watchdog hired by the Reformacons? Like Christine, 500k payout to keep quiet, Oimet perhaps?

All sources should be questioned, and you have the same ability to question sources as do others on this site to make sure the information being used is as valid as possible. I can provide numerable examples of where men and women who barely deserve the credentials they have got media time (such as the "Liberals are smarter" thread, made by the man who "proved" beautiful people have more girls). This is how it is in the real world and otherwise when dealing with sources, including the academic and scientific communities. It is a source of contention within parliament at the moment that the person who wrote the report is not exactly unbiased and should be mentioned here as well.

Likewise, questioning sources goes well beyond bias. For example, the media fails to correctly report on such things as margin of error (there is only 75% confidence on some methods/stats used in this report, and that does not mean that the entire report has 75% confidence but far less, this is basic statistics) and also fails to note the massive amount of shortfalls noted by the writer of the report himself, save for the odd article. Therefore, both sides are making some overstatements as to the level of confidence they can have in this report in parliament, forgetting the great deal of time the PBO who wrote this took in listing the problems with any cost estimate, including his own.

As noted in the report itself, there is a remarkable lack of information to draw information from. I mean no offense, but I can see why the Conservatives are questioning some of the assumptions made after reading a good portion of the myself. Likewise, I can also see why the opposition can make some comments about the reports they have received as well. Things are far less definite than they appear to be through parliament debate and media reports in this case for all reports and for both sides.

This gentleman could very well be right and the costs may reach this level. However, that does not mean that it should be taken at face value from the get-go, as the PBO himself, who wrote this report, says. That the level of confidence in this report is generally so low and that there is a dependence on many assumptions does make any report, from this gentleman or otherwise, somewhat questionable. This should not be ignored and passed off as a typical CKA action, but taken to heart as important in all discussions to make sure you understand as much about the source as possible.

We can demand all the reports and contrary information we want. The title of this article is, however, misleading. The price has not skyrocketed, it's just forecasted to potentially have a higher mark with a specific set of assumptions made which are not agreed upon with all parties. These are the facts.

That's a good point, good arithmetic. Over the service life it's only $1b a year. I didn't think of that.

Add to that the potential $10 billion in service and parts contracts that Canadian companies could see. There's already one that's lined up a 10 yr, $1B contract dependent on Canada purchasing the F-35.

So you're arguing that the Gov't should spend $29 billion so companies can make $10 billion?
Maybe they should send every taxpayer in Canada $1000 so they can claw back $300 or more in income tax too?
No acknowledgement that even the lower $19 billion figure they bandied was unpalatable to a lot of Canadians, and if what people say is true (the F35 can't land on Arctic runways and needs in-air refueling to get there) they haven't included airbase improvements and a couple tankers still isn't included in the $29 billion figure?

Umm, they get some aircraft too.
It's not like the gov't is forking over the money JUST to get contracts for Canadian companies.
What people?

Guess Chretien should have thought ahead when he cancelled the EH-101 contract(at significant cost) to help fund this little project then eh?

Buy the new $30,000 GM/Ford special. True costs over the ten years you have it are $70,000.

Or maybe houses. Have it 30 years, bought for $500,000 real cost with insurance, interest, utilities etc, $2,000,000.

Or kids......

These figures are just made up for the economists amongst us, but you get the drift.

Still, an open ended tab on a procurement even worries me a bit.......

No. The office of Parliamentary Budget Officer was created by the Conservatives as part of their accountability overhauls, and they hired Kevin Page to fill that office.