OTTAWA - Canada's new multi-billion dollar stealth fighters are expected to arrive without the built-in ability to communicate from the country's most northerly regions.
A series of briefings given to the country's top air force commander last year showed that the F-35's radio and satellite communications gear may not be as capable as that of the current CF-18s.
Military aircraft operating in the high Arctic rely almost exclusively on satellite communications, where a pilot's signal is beamed into space and bounced back down to a ground station.
The F-35 Lightning will eventually have that the ability, but the software will not be available in the initial production run.
A senior Lockheed Martin official says it is expected to be added to the aircrafts when production reaches its fourth phase in 2019, but that is not guaranteed because research is still underway.
The official says the solution hasn't been nailed down and a lot of work is being done to fix the problem.
