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July 31, 2020 | Local, Aerospace

Companies highlight jobs, economic spinoffs as fighter-jet competition closes

OTTAWA — Fighter-jet makers are leading with promises of jobs and other economic spinoffs as they make their final pitches for why Canada should buy their planes to replace the military's aging CF-18 fleet.

Friday marks the deadline for U.S. aerospace companies Lockheed Martin and Boeing, as well as Swedish firm Saab, to submit their bids in the current fighter-jet competition, which will see Canada spend up to $19 billion on 88 new planes.

The closing of the competition marks a major milestone in Canada's decade-long effort to buy new fighter jets for the Royal Canadian Air Force, which has been plagued by government mismanagement and political controversy.

While the combat capability of each of the three competing planes — Lockheed Martin's F-35, Boeing's Super Hornet and Saab's Gripen — will be the main focus as the government evaluates each bid, there will also be a lot of focus on the economic benefits of buying each plane.

To that end, Lockheed Martin commissioned a report in February that found up to 4,200 jobs will be created or sustained each year if Canada buys its F-35 stealth fighter, which the company equated to more than 150,000 new jobs over the life of the plane.

The analysis provided to The Canadian Press, which was compiled by Toronto-based OMX, also predicted the Canadian economy will see roughly $15 billion in additional activity between now and 2058 if the F-35 is selected to succeed the CF-18 as Canada's primary fighter jet.

That is in addition to the $2 billion in economic benefits that Canada has already received since 2007 as one of nine partner countries in the development of the F-35, which lets Canadian companies compete for work associated with the stealth fighter.

Canada has contributed US$541 million since 1997 to be a partner in the F-35 program.

"Lockheed Martin has prepared a comprehensive proposal," the company said in a statement on Thursday.

"The F-35 is the most capable, best-value fighter to strengthen defence, enhance ally partnerships and contribute to economic growth in Canada with significant, long-term industrial opportunities."

Lockheed Martin isn't the first to toot its own horn on the potential economic benefits of its fighter.

Boeing last month released its own commissioned report showing its existing operations in Canada created $5.3 billion in economic spinoffs last year and supported 20,000 jobs. Boeing says the numbers will go up if the Super Hornet wins, though it has not revealed its exact estimates.

The emphasis on jobs and money — rather than combat capability — comes as Canada's economy has been battered by the COVID-19 pandemic, forcing the federal government to spend tens of billions in financial support for Canadians.

Defence analyst David Perry of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute said it makes sense for companies to highlight the potential economic benefits of their bids. He said it helps to make the cost more palatable to the public and is also important in determining the winner.

"In any competition like this, you're always looking for any potential partial point that you can get," Perry said.

"Companies, if they're going to invest this significant time and significant amount of money preparing a bid like this, then they don't leave anything to chance. You make sure you try to wring every single last partial point you can get out of your proposal."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 30, 2020.

Lee Berthiaume, The Canadian Press

On the same subject

  • Hacker Community to Take on DARPA Hardware Defenses at DEF CON 2019

    August 5, 2019 | Local, Security

    Hacker Community to Take on DARPA Hardware Defenses at DEF CON 2019

    This month, DARPA will bring a demonstration version of a secure voting ballot box equipped with hardware defenses in development on the System Security Integrated Through Hardware and Firmware (SSITH) program to the DEF CON 2019 Voting Machine Hacking Village (Voting Village). The SSITH program is developing methodologies and design tools that enable the use of hardware advances to protect systems against software exploitation of hardware vulnerabilities. To evaluate progress on the program, DARPA is incorporating the secure processors researchers are developing into a secure voting ballot box and turning the system loose for public assessment by thousands of hackers and DEF CON community members. Many of today's hardware defenses cover very specific instances or vulnerabilities, leaving much open to attack or compromise. Instead of tackling individual instances, SSITH researchers are building defenses that address classes of vulnerabilities. In particular, SSITH is tackling seven vulnerabilities classes identified by the NIST Common Weakness Enumeration Specification (CWE), which span exploitation of permissions and privilege in the system architectures, memory errors, information leakage, and code injection. “There are a whole set of cyber vulnerabilities that happen in electronic systems that are at their core due to hardware vulnerabilities – or vulnerabilities that hardware could block,” said Dr. Linton Salmon, the program manager leading SSITH. “Current efforts to provide electronic security largely rely on robust software development and integration, utilizing an endless cycle of developing and deploying patches to the software firewall without addressing the underlying hardware vulnerability. 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By changing the construct every 50 milliseconds, attackers do not have enough time to find those weaknesses or develop an accurate representation of the system as a whole. To evaluate the hardware security concepts in development on the SSITH program, DARPA – working with Galois – is pursuing a voting system evaluation effort to provide a demonstration system that facilitates open challenges. The program elected to use a voting system as its demonstration platform to provide researchers with an accessible application that can be evaluated in an open forum. Further, the topic of election system security has become an increasingly critical area of concern for the hacker and security community, as well as the United States more broadly. “DARPA focuses on creating technologies to enhance national defense, and election system security falls within that remit. Eroding trust in the election process is a threat to the very fabric of our democracy,” noted Salmon. While protecting democracy is a critical national defense issue, SSITH is not trying to solve all issues with election system security nor is it working to provide a specific solution to use during elections. “We expect the voting booth demonstrator to provide tools, concepts, and ideas that the election enterprise can use to increase security, however, our true aim is to improve security for all electronic systems. This includes election equipment, but also defense systems, commercial devices, and beyond,” said Salmon. During DEF CON 2019, the SSITH voting system demonstrator will consist of a set of RISC-V processors that the research teams will modify to include their SSITH security features. These processors will be mounted on field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and incorporated into a secure ballot box. Hackers will have access to the system via an Ethernet port as well as a USB port, through which they can load software or other attacks to challenge the SSITH hardware. Since SSITH's research is still in the early stages, only two prototype versions of the 15 processors in development will be available for evaluation. “At this year's Voting Village, hackers may find issues with the processors and quite frankly we would consider that a success. We want to be transparent about the technologies we are creating and find any problems in these venues before the technology is placed in another venue where a compromise could be more dangerous,” said Salmon. Following DEF CON 2019, the voting system evaluation effort will go on a university roadshow where additional cybersecurity experts will have an opportunity to further analyze and hack the technology. In 2020, DARPA plans to return to DEF CON with an entire voting system, which will incorporate fixes to the issues discovered during the previous year's evaluation efforts. The 2020 demonstrator will use the STAR-Vote system architecture, which is a documented, open source architecture that includes a system of microprocessors for the voting booth, ballot box, and other components. It also includes a verifiable paper ballot, providing both digital and physical representations of the votes cast within the booth. “While the 2020 demonstrator will provide a better representation of the full attack surface, the exercise will not result in a deployable voting system. To aid in the advancement of secure election equipment as well as electronic systems more broadly, the hardware design approaches and techniques developed during the SSITH program will be made available to the community as open-source items,” concluded Salmon. https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2019-08-01

  • Used Australian F-18s heading to Canada will be a mix of single and dual seat aircraft

    January 10, 2019 | Local, Aerospace

    Used Australian F-18s heading to Canada will be a mix of single and dual seat aircraft

    DAVID PUGLIESE, OTTAWA CITIZEN The Canadian Forces is preparing to take possession by the spring of the first of 25 used Australian F-18 fighter jets. Eighteen of the Australian aircraft will be flying while another seven will be used for testing and spare parts. The Department of National Defence has provided more details on the types of aircraft Canada is acquiring. “The requested mix is 12 A-model (single seat) and 6 B-model (dual seat) aircraft; however, this is subject to adjustment,” said Department of National Defence spokesman Dan Le Bouthillier. The final mix will be dependent on a number of considerations, including the condition and availability of aircraft, he added. The dual seat aircraft will be used for training, Le Bouthillier noted. The additional fighter jets will be used to augment operations and training. One of the first things that will be done to the used Australian F-18s that Canada is purchasing is that the aircraft will be outfitted with different ejection seats and software. The first two F-18s that Canada is buying from Australia will arrive sometime in the spring and will be sent to Cold Lake, Alta, Pat Finn, assistant deputy minister for materiel at the Department of National Defence said. “They land, they (the Australians) will remove their software and we'll install our software,” Finn explained in an interview. Also to be installed are ejection seats and a lighting system that is used on the CF-18s. “Ultimately the intent is the 18 aircraft are indistinguishable from our 76 aircraft,” Finn said. Canada has finalized its deal to buy the 25 used fighter jets from Australia, https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/used-australian-f-18s-heading-to-canada-will-be-a-mix-of-single-and-dual-seat-aircraft

  • Vancouver Island company to advance aerospace innovation and firefighting technology

    October 12, 2018 | Local, Aerospace, Security

    Vancouver Island company to advance aerospace innovation and firefighting technology

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