Thank you, Mr. Chair.
To answer the question without speculating—and, of course, a lot of this has to do with speculation about what the future may hold—first of all, I'd just like to put into context the issue of cost. Of course, much ink has flowed over the cost of aircraft, both in the U.S. and abroad. It's a complex program that has three different variants of the aircraft. The U.S. tends to measure their costs based on the summary of those three cost lines and they include all the research development. That's part of the reason why one always tends to see differences in the costs when the U.S. talks about its costs versus what we expect our costs to be.
All that is to say that when we procure the aircraft, the strategy is to procure the aircraft at the best production time, which is high rate production. Right now, as you pointed out, we have a slow rate, of 30 airplanes in a year versus 300 to 400 a year. So the cost will be higher if you buy in the low rate year. Our plan is to purchase the aircraft when it's at its peak production and, therefore, the best value for our dollars.
As to the number of aircraft, as I expressed previously to your colleague, 65 is based on our analysis of what we can generate as far as capabilities and the capacity to deliver on the defence missions that we have currently. We stand behind that. That was our recommendation to government. Government has accepted that, and that's what is in the Canada First defence strategy.
Beyond that, we will execute the mission with the number of platforms that government buys for us. Ultimately, that's government's decision.