Canada’s top parliamentary watchdog has released a scathing report regarding the purchase of second-hand F/A-18 Hornet fighter jets from Australia and broader plans to modernize the country’s air combat capabilities. The core complaints are that the new aircraft will still be obsolete after costly upgrades and that the service doesn’t have the manpower to fly and maintain the CF-18 Hornets it already has in service anyway. This, in turn, means that the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) will still almost certainly lack the necessary resources to adequately meet its North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) commitments simultaneously for years to come.
The Office of the Auditor General of Canada, which reports directly to the country’s House of Commons and is analogous to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), released its report on Oct. 20, 2019. This comes less than three months after the U.S. government signed off on Australia’s sale of 25 F/A-18A/B aircraft to the Canadians. Of these, the RCAF will induct 18 aircraft into its fighter force and use the remaining seven as non-flying sources of spare parts. -- More....
