Peacetime losses
We criticised the Minister of Defence for failing to take account of peacetime losses in calculating the deployability of the JSFs.
The Minister stated that, in arriving at the figure of 37 aircraft, no account was taken of peacetime losses “as it is impossible to predict when and how such losses will occur”. However, the conclusion we drew in our audit was that the Minister could already have known that the JPO based its own figures on a peacetime loss rate of almost 25%.
The JPO calculated peacetime losses
The JPO arrived at the above figure on the basis of the design specifications, which assume that there will be two types of peacetime losses:
- losses caused by teething problems, which are assumed to result in the loss of 4 of the 37 aircraft;
- losses caused by human error and ‘peacetime wear and tear’: these are assumed to result in the loss of 5 additional aircraft out of the total of 37 aircraft.
In other words, the design specifications for the JSF assume that 9 of the 37 aircraft will be lost as peacetime losses during the service life of the JSF. The majority of these losses are expected to occur during the first few years in which the JSF is in service.
Peacetime losses
By way of comparison, 39 of the 213 F-16s bought by the Netherlands have been lost. Twenty-one of these were lost during the first seven years after the F-16s were taken into service (situation as at 31 December 2014).
Minister should be clear about the consequences of peacetime losses
Given that the Minister is assuming that four of the 37 JSFs will be permanently available for deployment on missions, it is clear that any loss will have an immediate impact on the deployability of the aircraft. We believe that the Minister should be clear about the limited nature of the options and also about the likely financial consequences of peacetime losses, the extent of which may already be estimated.