Article content continued

Thirty-six out of the air force’s 76 CF-18s and 18 soon-to-be-delivered secondhand Australian F-18s will receive the full suite of upgrades.

The air force did not initially plan any upgrades to the CF-18s’ combat systems after 2008 because it expected to retire the last of the fleet by 2020, when a new fleet of jets was to have taken over.

Instead, thanks to how successive governments have managed — or mismanaged — the jet file over the past decade, a competition to select a new fighter for the air force is only now underway. Even then, the last CF-18 isn’t scheduled to be retired until 2032.

The air force “imagined perhaps transitioning the fighter force a little bit earlier,” Meinzinger acknowledged, which is why the need to invest in the CF-18s’ combat systems wasn’t taken — or even apparent — earlier.

“Because we anticipate flying the aircraft longer, this is why we’re doing what we’re doing to ensure we’ve got at least parity with the threats that we would see over that timeline before we can transition to the new fighter,” he added.

Photo by Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

The federal auditor general flagged concerns with the combat effectiveness of Canada’s CF-18s in a report in November 2018, warning that the planes “will become more vulnerable as advanced combat aircraft and air defence systems continue to be developed and used by other nations.”