National Defence Committee on Dec. 7th, 2010

[Andrea Nappi]

It is correct, but I may add one element. When we talk about industrial return, we have to differentiate between what we call “direct offset”—that is, on the program—or “indirect offset”, which could be in any other industrial area: defence outside the Eurofighter program or elsewhere. And the 100% will cover all elements.

[Ken Dryden, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

Right.

There are two other areas I want to talk about—I asked about one of these, but there wasn't the time for you to answer—concerning the appropriateness of this aircraft for Canada's purposes and the fact that the nature of the need for the U.K. or Germany would be different, because it's more point to point, whereas Canada's need is over a larger area.

How would you respond concerning the appropriateness of the airplane?

[Christian Worning]

Certainly one element that I would look at is the element of safety in a two-engine design.

The other element is that because of the layout of the aircraft, we are looking at an airplane that has about the same internal fuel fraction as an F-22, in its air defence role when the airplane is clean. If we put extra fuel tanks on the airplane—they are supersonic fuel tanks, and the airplane will fly at Mach 1.8 with three tanks—we're now looking at the same fuel fraction as an F-35.

So I don't think you would see any big differences in the spectrum or the ranges and endurance that we could cover.

[Ken Dryden, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

I want to go back to the stealthiness. You were making the distinction that in fact the questions that were asked were about how stealthy this airplane is and that what you were saying is that stealth is part of survivability.

I'd like to hear again why in fact the stealthiness is not all that we should be worried about, and that in fact it is the overall survivability that is the real issue.

[Christian Worning]

That is certainly what we believe. As I said, stealth is one of the contributing factors that you have, but there are other things you need to look at.

We believe that the amount of stealth we are looking at in the F-35 design will delay detection but will not prevent it, and that at the point of detection you will then need other means to ensure survivability of the platform.

[Ken Dryden, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you very much.

I will give the floor to our last member. Mr. Hawn.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to pick up on a couple of those things.

Mr. Worning, how much internal fuel does the Eurofighter hold?

[Christian Worning]

Well, it's 30%, but it's about five tonnes.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

The ballpark...10,000 pounds? Okay.

Mach 1.8 with three tanks...for how long?

[Christian Worning]

I have done above Mach 1.6 for a total of 15 minutes with three tanks on, but that was with heavy manoeuvring in between.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

And then, obviously, when you plug in the burner it doesn't last very long. We know that.

We want to talk about cost for just a second here as well. The cost comparison, I believe, Mr. Nappi, you referred to is your assessment of what you're hearing through the media--the cost of the F-35, which is a U.S. aircraft, not our aircraft. The cost we're talking about is $70 million to $75 million per aircraft in 2016 dollars.

Are you saying you could beat that price in 2016 dollars?

[Andrea Nappi]

What price?

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Between $70 million and $75 million U.S., in 2016 dollars.

[Andrea Nappi]

I haven't said that, but--

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

No, I'm telling you that. That's the price it would have to be.

[Andrea Nappi]

No, the number you said before was much higher than this.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

That's the price you would have to beat. Can you beat that price, in 2016 dollars?

[Andrea Nappi]

I cannot confirm it now, but we can work on it.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Fine, I'll accept your answer.

When we talk about final assembly in Canada, you talked about it being economically attractive. I'd have a hard time, as a Canadian company building a factory, to do final assembly on 65 airplanes and then close the doors. I don't think that's very economically feasible.

How do you square that?

[Andrea Nappi]

You don't finish your activity on the aircraft once you have completed assembly of the 65 aircraft. You will have maintenance overall and scheduled maintenance at 400 and 800 hours, with that interval. That will require basically the same tooling and the same industrial capabilities that are required to manufacture the aircraft. Also, for the insertion of new capabilities, this normally comes as a software load, but most likely they require some hardware changes as well, and you need to be prepared for that.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Mr. Worning, can you talk about the structure of the aircraft a little bit? What kinds of advanced materials are we talking about with the Eurofighter?

[Christian Worning]

It has a very high amount of composites. The CFC is, in weight, over 50% of the airplane. It's about 90% of the surface of the airplane.

When you talk about the structure, it's important to know that the safety factor that is required for European certification is a factor of three. For the 6,000 guaranteed and inspection-free hours that we have given to our customers, the airplane needed to be tested for 18,000 hours. Using the American system, that would be equivalent to 9,000 flying hours, with the usage spectrum that has been specified, which is very high.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

In the manufacture of the aircraft, obviously it started to be manufactured quite a long time ago, with respect to the advanced materials--I'm getting to stealth here--with the way the aircraft was manufactured, the panels, the seams, and so on. There have been a lot of developments in the last five or ten years, long after the Eurofighter started to be built.

Has Eurofighter been able to take advantage of any of those advanced methodologies of materials, blending, and so on, with respect to enhancing stealth?

[Andrea Nappi]

We have designed the Eurofighter with a number of radar cross-section reducing measures. We have locally inserted some material, some shaping to reduce the front radar cross-section of the aircraft.

We can do more. We have provisions for adding additional material; however, this would significantly penalize the performance of the aircraft. In the equation, we were referring before to survivability being the product of the capability of not being detected and the capability to survive or to escape once you have been detected. We reckon our design has been optimized to achieve the best possible survivability.