Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, Ms. Leslie.
General Lawson, as you said, given its importance to the next generation, I'm going to turn briefly to the F-35. You suggested that the contracts aren't wired because they're done blindly without reference to aircraft, yet our experience with the fixed-wing SAR, of course, was that only one plane met the requirements, and they appeared to have been designed to meet that plane, so we had to go back to the drawing board.
In the case of the F-35, of course, the statement of requirements wasn't written until June of 2010, after several years of discussion, mostly with Lockheed Martin, and one or two meetings with the other competitors. Of course, only one plane met the requirements. They specifically discovered that a particular helmet design that was unique to the F-35 was part of that, so a lot of people are concerned because that took place there too, and the contract was awarded six weeks later.
But if, as you say, all options are truly going to be on the table, then surely the comparisons between what we were told by other manufacturers.... Stealth is important, but it's one of many factors in what's called survivability. As a pilot, you would know that. Speed, interceptor capability, stealth, how low you can fly, manoeuvrability, etc.—for many of these aspects they claim superiority. So if the options are truly going to be on the table, isn't there really a requirement to re-evaluate what your needs are in comparison to what's available today, and also to consider whether or not there could be, for example, a two-fleet option? If they're all going to be on the table, that has to be on the table too. Is that really what's going to happen?