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The military has bought itself an extra five years by announcing a plan to extend the life-span of the current CF-18 fighters.

But that’s one long delivery window.

There may be some upside to pushing back the replacement program. By 2025, it will be much clearer whether the F35 actually works – the U.S. will start flying the aircraft this year.

Canada might also save money on each F35 aircraft, if it is in full production by the time its order lands – the price is around $100-million per aircraft in 2016/18 but is projected to fall to unit price of a mere $85-million.

But those small blessings do not detract from the fact that the whole F35 episode was, in Tom Mulcair’s words, “a combination of arrogance and incompetence” that voters should bear in mind when they enter the polling booth in October.

Punting it down the road will simply store up problems for whichever shade of government is set to inherit the blame.

Inflation is going to push that to the point of unaffordability

For one thing, the Conservatives maintain no decision has been taken on the contract. But by 2020, the options may well be limited. The Europeans have already warned that the Eurofighter Typhoon might be out of production if no new contracts come through, while Boeing’s Super Hornet may also have stopped production by then. This would likely see the F35 win by default.

Another major concern is the capital funding for the project, which has been static at $9-billion for 65 aircraft. As with the $33-billion National Shipbuilding strategy, escalating costs and delays are eating into budgets. “Inflation is going to push that to the point of unaffordability,” said David Perry, senior analyst at the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute. Throw in a 20% depreciation in the value of the Canadian dollar and you have a project that is inevitably going to need to be re-financed by billions, even if there is some relief on the price per unit.