F-35 - Runaway Fighter - the fifth estate

tonight on the Fifth Estate it could yet prove the most expensive defense purchase in Canadian history the Government of Canada is committing today to acquire 65 Joint Strike Fighter f-35 lightning ii aircraft 25 billion dollars and Counting for what the military promises will be the best fighter jets available we believed that it was a fair competition that took place and that the correct aircraft was selected but there wasn't a competition not a Canadian one to mislead Canadians by saying we participated when we did not and this meets ironies is a complete fabrication distortion of the truth once Canada pressure to buy the f-35 the department did not provide Parliament with complete cost information or fully informed decision makers about the risks of this program we'll taxpayers be funding an albatross for decades to come so what is it good it's not good at anything it's a turkey tonight the story of those runaway fighters Canada and the f-35 it was a strained under July 2010 a Friday afternoon Parliament had long been in summer recess but no fewer than three cabinet ministers were brought back to make it official Canada would be buying the f-35 this aircraft is the best aircraft that we can provide our men and women in uniform the f-35 is the best choice to meet Canada's operational requirements at the best value for Canada and for Canadian taxpayers at nine billion dollars taxpayers would have to take that on faith this day was all about the sell the government that came to office promising good things for Canada's military was delivering big time good evening I'm Gillian Findlay two years later Canada's f-35 commitment is in crisis faced with skyrocketing costs and findings it misled the country the government that once so loudly trumpeted the f-35 has been forced to backtrack today the purchase is on hold perhaps that is why no government minister no current member of the military would speak to us about their plane or the process by which Canada decided to buy it and that's too bad because our story tonight raises serious questions about a procurement system seemingly run amok and a jet fighter the critics say we'll never live up to the hype there are two reasons Canada needs an air force one of them was on display last year in shorty after sortie with their coalition partners helping to force a dictator from power right since world war ii canadian jet fighters have gone to battle four times but this is their day-to-day protecting Canadian and North American airspace for either job that cf-18s at Canada bought 30 years ago are getting old writings been on the wall for more than a decade and not just in Canada already in the 90s with a generation of fighters coming to an end the United States was thinking ahead the Cold War was over and the country's long history of runaway defense costs was facing fresh scrutiny your defense tax dollars at work why they seem to go faster than they used to but not his father and the Pentagon pressure was on to do things different instead of a new fighter for each of its services the Navy the army the Air Force the u.s. decided it needed one state-of-the-art plane that could be used by all for all kinds missions above all it had to be affordable so the Americans went shopping for partners they didn't have a plane but the more countries they could convince to help develop one the more orders they would have the cheaper it would be at least that was the promise they were looking to try and do something that would would be I guess a little bit unprecedented commander Steve Lucas used a head Canada's Air Force he is the one member of the country's military willing to speak with us they were looking for the best airplane that would last a long time in the order of 40 to 50 years and be delivered at the best price and if and that essentially was the the foundation of the Joint Strike Fighter program but first they needed to choose a fighter in 1996 together with Britain the Pentagon staged a contest to companies boeing and lockheed martin ii were chosen to build flying models prototypes in 2001 a winner it is our conclusion joined in by our colleagues in the United Kingdom that the Lockheed Martin team is the winner of the Joint Strike Fighter program now the game was real even if the plane still wasn't at Lockheed Martin's factory in Fort Worth Texas they buckled down to the hard work of designing their new fighter but the PR department was way out ahead field is changing new threats new dangers a new aircraft the f-35 lightning to the world's only fifth-generation multi-role fighter it was the marketing people who first dubbed it fifth-generation not only would it be faster more agile than any fighter before it would also be what Lockheed Martin called stealthy infused with radar busting materials and outfitted with revolutionary electronics it would give pilots a 360 degree view like some la mission deity this would be a plane able to see everything but never be seen with complete interoperability for coalition operations offering performance sustainability reliability bringing lethality and stealth to the battlefield now with claims like that you think Lockheed Martin would be happy to show off its plane but after inviting us to Fort Worth the company canceled at the last minute and like the military and the politicians refused to answer any of our questions cutting through the hype separating fact from PR fiction finding an independent view of what really makes a fighter good isn't easy and sometimes leads to surprising places like the storefront in downtown Baltimore and this is a very unique way of melting records with a five-point suspension Pierre sprey is a purist when it comes to design he's an audiophile who builds his own equipment and makes his own recordings but spray has an even more impressive background an Ivy Leaguer with a reputation as a systems genius he was recruited to the Pentagon in the 60s and became a member of the legendary fighter mafia and of in-house rebels that set out to prove good fighters don't have to be expensive the seventies the airforce the apple of its I was the f-15 to engine great big fighter for its day close to fifty thousand pounds super big radar all the bells and whistles had gotten too loaded up with junk and so we went off and as kind of bureaucratic guerrillas and underground started the f-16 which was by comparison which was going to be less than half the size half the cost and much hotter was going to just wax the f-15 and it did the f16 would become the most successful fighter in US history spray also designed the a-10 the low altitude combat support plane that proved so deadly in the first Gulf War even in retirement spray keeps up with design development he studied everything he can about the f-35 and he's no fan it's inherently a terrible airplane because it's an airplane built for a dumb idea you can't start with a bad idea and get a good airplane the bad idea he says is that one plane could ever serve so many masters well to satisfy the Marines an f-35 had to be small and fact good for vertical takeoffs and landings on aircraft carriers but the extra weight slows it down and the design says prey is a hindrance in battles they put on tiny wings which helps it to take off vertically but means it can't maneuver in combat you know you need wings to create lift to turn no wing no turn and so the airplane in astonishingly unmovable so in air-to-air combat in dog fighting dog fighting it's hopeless well what about as a bomber that's compromise to set spray because of stealth it's designed really to carry the weapons internally right you can't hang weapons under the wing and still be invisible to radar you can put two big bombs inside this thing you know which is a ridiculous payload for most conventional war so if the f-35 is not a fine combat plane what about as support for troops air support that's the most laughable of all because to support troops you have to be able to get in close to maneuver to find really difficult to find camouflage targets and you have to be able to stay in the vicinity of the troops for four to six hours you have to be able to loiter in order to really give them all day cover when they need it and is hopelessly impossible with the f-35 its lucky if it can hang around for an hour or an hour and a half so what is it good at it's not good at anything what about surgery I believe that there for every individual of that nature who says there's two or three more on the other side who are saying this is going to be a very good airplane you have to remember in this partnership of ours there is the the Brits the United Kingdom Australia Norway the Netherlands Turkey all interested in the purchase of this aircraft all conducting their own examinations and all coming to the same agreement that this is the right airplane for them as well but whatever the debate about the design of the f-35 it would prove nothing compared to the fight about the secretive way Canada ended up buying the plane when we come back if there had been a real competition in 2010 would the f-35 necessarily win left no it couldn't possibly the country goes looking for a new fighter jet this is off of one of the first stops the Farnborough airshow every two years all the major aerospace companies gather to hawk their latest designs when Canada started shopping to replace its fleet of ageing CFA teams there were a number of options the Eurofighter Typhoon Boeing's upgraded f-18 the Super Hornet the Griffon built by the Swedish company Saab and the French Air Forces Rafa and then there was Lockheed Martin f-35 only a concept really when Canada made its decision in 1998 to get involved in the program in the first phase you've spent 10 million dollars just to become an observer you know you're watching what was going on on learning in 2002 Alan Williams signed the memorandum that bumped Canada to the second phase helping to develop the plane a further investment of a hundred and fifty million dollars and what we'll be buying for that money what we're really doing is providing our Canadian industry with an opportunity to participate in the program so while there was nothing immediately to benefit for the part of National Defence we strongly felt that this is going to be the biggest aerospace program for the next 30 40 50 years and we couldn't afford to have our industry sit on the side was it in any sense an agreement a commitment to buy the plane absolutely not it was essentially to do what I said to be to be there to see what was going on and most importantly to allow earnest to participate ironically Canada's aerospace industry wasn't that interested at first none of the work was guaranteed they were going to have to compete internationally but lured by government incentives Canadian businesses started bidding and winning and eventually of course they did come on board and to their credit they've done they did magnificently well what wasn't going so well though was the work down in Fort Worth Texas part of the problem was the way Lockheed Martin was building the plane rushing to production before the design and testing phases were complete that led to costly redesigns and budget overruns from the start which you think might have been an issue for Canada certainly by 2006 that year the government had to decide whether to up its commitment to the program again by then alarm bells were going off in places like the Government Accountability Office in Washington development costs for the f-35 were up eighty percent according to the GAO projected cost per plane up twenty three percent so much for affordability as for Lockheed Martin's business model the GAO called it uh NEX acute about obviously we heard those those words we we took them into account but at the same point the the promise of delivering on the best aircraft that would last for 50 years and and be cheapest was it was still something that was in our minds you still thought it was going to be the cheapest even though the cost estimates were up to 80% there has never been a defense procurement program that was not behind to one extent or another or over-budget to one another extent that is that is a feature of of those kinds of programs I so was it a reason for us to get scared and run absolutely not and in 2006 Canada did not have a cut and run government at least not when it came to the military thank you merci beaucoup tonight friends our great country has voted for change Canada's Armed Forces welcome Stephen Harper to office with a long shopping list including new equipment bogged down in Afghanistan it was no time to quibble about price defense analyst Stephen staples runs an Ottawa thing I think that the military planners in the Department of National Defense are you know somewhat detached from reality sometimes the reality in 2006 was at Lockheed Martin still hadn't even test flown its plane but Canadian pilots were falling in love with it nonetheless spending months in Fort Worth learning all about the end 35i plane top down in combats in New Orleans when you have the military wanting it the corporations and industry want it the United States government wants to sell it to you and you have a base of voters who support the conservative government who are predisposed to liking things for the military that's a powerful combination of factors that that is pushing for there 35 but no matter how many cheerleaders according to Canadian law any decision to buy the f-35 would require a competition unless there was a compelling reason not to have one in 2006 the harper government went ahead and committed to that next phase coughing up another half a billion dollars in large part on an Air Force assurance that it had surveyed all the alternative jet fighters and still believed the f-35 was going to be the best that's what the aforesaid but a look through that survey questions how it could have reached that conclusion time and again it shows officials unable to get critical data at Eurofighter the UK government prohibited the release of some information at Boeing they got information only at an unclassified level it's the same in Sweden and in France but that didn't stop this briefing note to the minister three months later recommending the f-35 as having the best available capabilities and offering the lowest per aircraft cost the same month that recommendation was made Steve Lucas the head of the Air Force was in Fort Worth himself checking out the f-35 at a time when your own analysis was saying look at we don't have all the information on the others how could you then write to the minister saying we've done an analysis and were convinced the f-35 is the best with a stage we were at at that point in time not only did we do the glossy brochure examination but we also went to each of the countries spoke to each of them and so yes indeed it does say at the bottom more information is needed but I guess I guess I would characterize that as this is an appropriate level of examination for where we were at at that point in time knowing that there would be subsequent examination a more detailed examination as we develop the statement of it was there subsequent examination do you know to the best of my knowledge yes and I had confidence that that would happen in the in the force in the future in other words Canada could still change its mind about the f-35 but as the years wore on the government was more and more convinced we will be making more sound investments in major fleets that will provide the Canadian Forces with 65 next generation fighter aircraft to replace our cf-18s the keyword is next generation at Lockheed Martin code four-step virtually undetectable to an enemy that cannot hide it had been one of the company's biggest selling points from the beginning the f-35 s greatest advantage is something no one ever sees stealth design they never outright said the plane would be invisible to radar but corporate executives weren't shy about leaving that impression stealth means that you the adversary cannot see you it gives you that first look first shot first kill if you will before an adversary even knows you're out there stealth means that your fighter pilots come back every single time the first thing to know about stealth is that it's a scam you know it simply doesn't work you know radars they were built in 1942 could detect every stealth airplane in the world today a NATO war plane has apparently been shot down over Yugoslavia as evidence Pierre sprey points to what he believes happened in Bosnia another lockheed built plane also billed as radar evading fell victim to serbian defenses they were well aware that they were being invaded by stealthy airplanes and they figured out how to shoot it down that's what everybody's going to do who thinks they might be bombed by a stealthy airplane isn't the only skeptic as recently as this summer the head of the u.s. Navy acknowledged that promises of stealth are probably over bloom so you're telling me it's a bad airplane it can't do dogfights it can't protect troops on the ground it's a lousy bomber and despite everything that the manufacturers saying it's it's not stealth wrote what is very gently correct so what is the point of this plane the point is to spend money that is the mission of the airplane is for the US Congress to send money to Lockheed that's the real mission of the airplane but it wasn't just the US by mid decade eight countries had signed on to the Joint Strike Fighter program and Israel was being wound but each year those reports from the Government Accountability Office were more insistent goals were not being met cost estimates were not accurate but a business model that depended on international sales it appeared Lockheed Martin was going to need help keeping foreign partners onside when Sultan's think fo strongly of acceptability take what happened in Norway in 2008 it looked like the f-35 might lose that country's competition to the Swedish plane the Griffith enter the State Department diplomatic cables made public by WikiLeaks show US officials led an aggressive campaign to convince the Norwegians warning them not to damage their long-term interests plotting to skew the competition by withholding critical us-made technology the Swedes needed for their plane to compete when Norway did decide to go with the f-35 another cable documents the extensive coordinated effort that led to the decision encouraging US embassies in other countries including Canada to quote use the same strategy it didn't always work by 2010 British reports suggested the government there was considering scaling back its order by half a few months later the Dutch parliament voted to cancel altogether even in the US defence friendly politicians for asking tough questions how much over cost is this program going to be and what will be the delay so the American people will know the taxpayers are a little tired of this by the spring of 2010 independent cost projections for the f-35 had doubled what caused these huge errors in these estimates so with all of that it could not have been welcome news when just two months later publicly reassuring Canadians about a competition I just want to be very clear on the record that the the reference to the next generation of fighter aircraft that does not preclude competition an open transparent one when we come back open and transparent but what was happening behind the scenes I mean how naive does it do the leaders think we are do they really think we're that stupid that we're not going to be able to see what was done [ __ ] use a followed Canada's decision to join the f-35 program one promise was always clear to buy the plane the governor a fair and open competition as minister said as much in the House of Commons as late as May to this next generation fighter will be again an open competitive transparent process that will see us receive the best capability so how do you explain this big announcement just seven weeks later in July the Government of Canada is delivering on that promise committing today to acquire 65 Joint Strike Fighter f-35 lightning ii aircraft acquiring them as a sole source deal without a competition his explanation for the flip-flop there was a competitive process that process took place sometime ago it was a very competitive and in fact a rigorous process that was decided in favor of the f-35 lightning ii Lockheed Martin's vice president Tom Burbidge was on hand to back him up there was a very intense competition which included building prototype airplanes and conducting a flying competition in the endgame Canada was it was an important member and part of that competitive downselect but hang on let's rewind a decade it is our conclusion joined in by our colleagues from the United Kingdom that the Lockheed Martin team is the winner of the Joint Strike Fighter program what they were now calling Canada's competition was that fly off in 2001 between just two companies with planes that were mock-ups hardly more than models more importantly it was the Pentagon that ran the show back then with the only partner at hat the United Kingdom the facts are absolutely clear only the US and the UK defined the requirements and made the selection of Canada was simply an observer in 2001 says Alan Williams he should know he was there this was an aircraft whose requirements were specified by the United States and United Kingdom and they selected it the aircraft that Beth met their needs so for us to simply say to mislead Canadians by saying we participated when we did not and this meets IRA needs is a complete fabrication distortion of the truth which begs the question why why after promising a fair and transparent selection for so long did the government so quickly change its mind if there had been a real competition in 2010 if they had carried through with the promise that they made would the f-35 necessarily win that no it couldn't possibly it would show up on radars it wouldn't be able to generate a sortie rate that had amounted to a hill of beans it wouldn't have the loiter on the battlefield it wouldn't have the range it wouldn't have the payload Winslow wheeler spent 30 years on Capitol Hill analyzing military procurements is it fair to say then in 2010 that Lockheed Martin and and maybe the Pentagon did not want there to be a competition because they didn't oh absolutely they less than they want isn't a real empirical comparison using real airplanes and scenarios constructed by people not friendly to any of the participants so what happened what's Canada pressure to drop its competition did the government cave to please the Americans don't forget that in the lead-up to that 2010 announcement things were not going well for the f-35 defense analyst Stephen staples it wasn't performing so well it was late the cost were running out international investors and potential buyers and governments were getting worried about you know what's going on with this so who the two closest allies on this Canada and Israel and those were the two really key countries I think that could give some good news and in 2010 Lockheed Martin was desperate for good news about the f-35 and Canada gave it indeed they did and at a time they didn't have to when Canada sign those memorandums it said it wouldn't make a decision about buying the f-35 till 2012 two years later so why the rush was all to protect Canadian industry the minister said every day that we wait we lose opportunities to access the global supply chain for our industry and our aerospace industry deserves that not true not true I mean were we in danger of losing anything at that note no we were part of the program as long as you're part of the program you're part of the program the mo use are very explicit on that and there was no reason to presume that if we didn't announce on July 16th you know this guy was gonna fall besides what about protecting Canadian taxpayers of all the things that Minister said that day the one that would haunt them the most is what they said about the price together with infrastructure training simulators weapons and other items our investment is valued at approximately nine billion dollars nine billion dollars for sixty-five planes usually those kinds of government quotes are for total costs the price of buying the planes plus the costs of sustaining them over their lifetime that's the total cost of the program which is much more than an airplane it's an infrastructure its facilities its its other things it's the cost you know through life cost it's the cost of the airplane program but that's not what the government's own estimates showed one month earlier a leaked cabinet document revealed the purchase price of the f-35 s was indeed nearly nine billion dollars but look at the smaller print at the bottom the costs of sustaining and operating the plane are estimated at sixteen and a half billion dollars making the true cost of Canada's f-35 commitment more than 25 billion dollars the numbers were right there in their own cabinet document but try getting any of the ministers to acknowledge them of course we have some estimates but the actual the actual aircraft is not in production yet what's the a thank you thank you sir you are given one question that's now - well I'm not going to state specifically what the per unit cost is because as I've indicated the nine billion dollar cost is 465 aircraft including all the onboard equipment and weapon systems so you can do the math when you do the math it works out to a hundred and thirty-eight million dollars a plane but again they were vague about what that actually covered clearly no one wanted to answer the questions not even the guy making the play well can you break it down for us then the cost of the plane the cost of these other features weapons and that that the defense minister mentioned no I can't do it here in front of the you know I mean why would why would we take the time to do that in the weeks and months Apollo the f-35 was a hot dog an election was coming and the Harper government hit the road promoting the f-35 as a job creator venial rewriting history in 1997 Canada signed on to an international consortium to develop the Lockheed Martin lightning 2 it did so after after I repeat an exhaustive consideration of the alternatives for a cftc f-18 replacement at the end of this decade after an exhaustive consideration it's hard to know what the prime minister meant by that there had been that Air Force survey of alternatives to the f-35 in 2006 when it admitted was missing critical information so did they get the information sources tell us they did but not in the way you might expect it didn't come directly from Lockheed Martin's competitors companies like Boeing and Saab but from the Joint Strike Fighter Office itself the very people who had the greatest interest in selling Canada the f-35 I'm a spectator at that point in time former head of the Air Force Steve Lucas won't comment on decisions made after he retired but he doesn't hide the fact that like many others in the military it seems he was never keen on a competition in the first place to hold a true competition you would actually have to step back from being a partner nation you would actually have to get out of the partnership to be part of a canadian-style competition what would have been the risk because I've looked at the mo use and I know that it says quite specifically that member countries are first of all not obliged to buy the absolutely correct and second of all are perfectly free to undergo their own process and choosing them whatever they want to do well as soon as you step outside you are no longer a partner so therefore you're at the back of the bus as far as as it comes to delivery of the aircraft you're probably going to end up paying more money the when it comes to the on the industry side your industry is now probably only going to be looking at providing bits and pieces for 60 five aircraft or or the offsets for that which may explain why the military took so long sharing exactly what it needed in a new fighter normally that gets laid out in something called the statement of operational requirements it's what the military gives the public works department which then has a responsibility to source the best deal we know the military wrote its SOR but we also now know it never passed it on to public works not until after the cabinet had made its decision and to this day the details have never been made public if you don't put out your statement of requirements until after you've made the commitment to get into the program and buy this thing what is that what are you surprised surprised you know somehow only this one aircraft that you P determined meets these requirements I mean how naive does it the leaders think we are do they really think we're that stupid that we're not going to be able to see what was done you decide on the campaign trail Stephen Harper assured voters the f-35 would never be as expensive as the independent auditors projected even suggesting Canada had a special deal guaranteeing the front's a lot of the developmental costs you're reading in the United States the contract we sign shelters us from any increase in those kinds of costs so we're very very confident of our cost estimates you also pretend that you have some contract and will you either produce the f-35 contract you're talking about or admit that it doesn't exist the end of this decade we're going to need Terry let me ask me a question Terry let me answer the question at the end of this decade we are going to need replacement airplanes this is something the federal government has been working on for 15 years so I think our I think our position is is clear here I think our position is clear here or not it didn't seem to matter in 2011 the Harper government was returned to power this time with the majority for the story of the f-35 wasn't over yet when we come back the department did not provide Parliament with complete cost information or fully informed decision makers about the risks of this program by spring 2012 Canada had been part of the f-35 program for more than a decade had declared itself a buyer of the plane for nearly two years why is this government hell-bent on blowing the budget on a plane that everyone else is walking absolutely untrue there even as the criticisms mounted the government stood firm until one day in March Julian Fantino the newly appointed junior defence minister was sent out with a clarification this means that we have not signed any contract to purchase aircraft we have not ordered aircraft through the partnership and even if we signed as planned we will not be making any payments on a new aircraft for several more years in short all options are on the table it was as if that big announcement back in 2010 had never happened when you see a contract wasn't signed why did the PM say a contract was son as if the minister knew something was up three weeks later Canada's Auditor General made it public dropping a bomb on the government and its f-35 program the department did not provide Parliament with complete cost information or fully informed decision makers about the risks of this program we looked at the does not only did Michael Ferguson blame the government for fudging the numbers he turned on the military brats accusing them of Mis leading the politicians with cries that tale was indeed wagging the dog the Harper government did the only thing it could it froze the f-35 budget took it out of the hands of the military and promised an independent review of Canada's options whether that will now include a real competition the government won't say but former air chief Steve Lucas says that would truly be a waste of money because everyone knows the f-35 is the best this will be a great airplane so you keep telling me but I I'm also listening to lots of people who have well big reservations about that I think certainly as chief of the Air Force of Staff I represented the people who are actually going to fly these airplanes okay the people who did the study in Canada were people who are very good friends of those who are ultimately going to fly these aircraft they aren't doing it for anything other than a belief that this is the best aircraft you don't get any prizes for finishing second in an air-to-air combat nobody wants to put their friends their colleagues into an airplane in a situation where they're going to call it second best if they have a choice with so much money in so many years invested in the f-35 program there are a lot of people with a lot at stake but there are also some inescapable facts Lockheed Martin is years behind schedule of the 60,000 tests needed to declare the f-35 battle ready only 30% have been completed unaccompanied still exist thousands of Fighters will be built but to date only 33 planes have rolled off the assembly line all of them test models or training platforms last week even the Pentagon seemed to finally be running out of patience the new program manager told reporters the relationship with Lockheed Martin is the worst he's ever seen that he had no more tolerance for bailing the company out and only reasonable confidence the company could deliver former Pentagon design expert Pierre sprey isn't surprised I guarantee you by the time all the failings of the f-35 have come to light now if Canada is still buying it they'll be paying 200 million dollars plus 200 million dollars plus because among other things of course the quantity the promised quantity will never happen right you know nations will drop out lots of people won't have the money to pay for it both abroad and the US is going to cut back keep on cutting back the by as the buy cuts back the cost will go up and up as for Lockheed Martin it says as far as its concerned the Canadian government's order 465 f-35s still stands an away fighter has not run away yet now as we told you over the course of preparing our story tonight we've requested dozens of interviews with virtually every senior government and military official involved in the f-35 program we're going to leave you now with a list of those who refuse to talk to us take a look but don't go away the Fifth Estate will return after the break you

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Keywords: The Fifth Estate (Award-Winning Work), Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II (Aircraft Model), F-35, CBC Television (TV Network), CBC News (Website Owner), Documentary (TV Genre), News (TV Genre), Gillian Findlay

Id: RwA4RaaJSeI

Length: 42min 27sec (2547 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 02 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/another_matt]

"...so what is the point of this plane?"

"The point is to spend money. That is the mission of the airplane."

[u/saucedog]

So why not implement an auditor's office that has the ability to see this stuff and examine risk ahead of time? That's the whole problem with this scenario across all countries involved. The former head of the Canadian air force said it himself -- all military projects either run over time or budget. If the weapons industry has demonstrably shown that it can't get the business side of their projects in order that's *at least * transparent to the auditor's office ahead of time, why should anyone trust the reliability of the weapons they build?

It's a nasty thing seeing politicians drum up military for election support. I feel sorry you guys (and Australia) got stuck with a zombie government like ours.