Canada's Naval Gap (article)

[Ex-Dragoon]

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/defense/index.jsp?plckController=Blog&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&newspaperUserId=27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7&plckPostId=Blog%3a27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post%3a87790332-c98f-4e6f-b889-dbbc18408618&plckScript=blogScript&plckElementId=blogDest



Ares
A Defense Technology Blog


Canada's Naval Gap
Posted by Paul McLeary at 3/9/2010 7:39 AM CST


Canada has a total of thirty-three warships and submarines doing everything a first-world Navy should be doing—patrolling its home coast, performing humanitarian missions in places like Haiti, and participating in the multinational Task Force 150 off the coast of Somalia and Yemen. But to hear the country’s top military officers tell it, Canada’s ships are too old, too few, and have some significant technological gaps that the country is struggling to fill.
General Walter Natynczyk, Canada’s Chief of the Defence Staff told an audience in Ottawa last week that he wants to see a fleet of fifty ships put in place over the next thirty years, and that building new ships is “my number one equipment priority,” even eclipsing the reset and refit of the country’s land forces once Canada pulls out of Afghanistan in 2011. “We need to start cutting steel on ships,” he said, pointedly reminding the audience that Canada hasn’t built a major warship since 1996, and the rest of the fleet is showing its age. Canada’s only supply ship is forty years old, and the country’s three destroyers, all launched in 1972, are “approaching the age where a birthday cake for those ships would require a permit from the fire marshal.”
Ummm ok last I checked we stll had two AORs<<my comment
Vice Admiral Dean McFadden, chief of the Maritime Staff was presumably pleased to hear his boss place so much emphasis on maritime issues, and he followed up with a pitch for a national shipbuilding program. “I’m desperately trying to get ships built in this country in a better way” he admitted, blaming the fourteen-year (and counting) gap between laying new hulls on an uneven approach to procurement. “We can’t keep doing boom / bust,” he said. “We build them, we get out of the business for a generation, we try to get back into that business and that’s a tough uphill fight.”
But even under the best scenario, McFadden said that “there’s nothing I can do about a gap that will develop in our destroyer capability. There are consequences of over a 15-year period of having decisions deferred to build. We’re trying to come to grips with the fact that there’s been a long stage of deferment. So the first of the four ships that we put in the Halifax-class modernization [Canada has twelve Halifax-class frigates] we will deliberately build into that mid-life upgrade as much as a gap-filler capability as we can. Is it a destroyer? No. Which means I need to try and get the building program started so that the gap is as short as I can make it, and in the interim we manage the fleet that we’ve got to the greatest effect.”
The frigate that comes out of that refit process will have an expanded command and control capability, but will still lack any long-range air defense missile, McFadden said, so the Navy will have to “do what we can to be able to manage the gap.” But from the sound of things—neither officer would offer any sort of timetable or budget for Naval refit— that gap won’t be filled any time soon.

 

[Sailorwest]

It may be timely to start following the concept of a continual ship building program. The current concept results in an entire generation of ships becoming outdated at the same time requiring a massive capital acquisition project. It also results in ship that were considered state of the art when they were constructed becoming antiquated all at the same time. This has been true of almost every class of ships we have constructed since the war.

 

[tree hugger]

But if you only built one ship at a time, wouldn't you end up with every ship being different including with different technologies?  We'd lack continuity between ships and would be difficult employing people ship to ship.  There is also the costco theory - why buy one, when you can buy a bunch?

 

[ekpiper]

Well, I think that the most likely and best example of continuing shipbuilding is the Arleigh Burke class destroyer of the US.  They've been in construction for 20 years, making about 2 per year.  Long production classes are generally constructed by flights with commonalities, and may be modified designs with updated electronics, different armaments, and sometimes slightly different hulls (some Halifaxes were going to be longer to accommodate some extra equipment).  Unfortunately, we don’t order 40 ships, we order maybe 16.

On the assumption that we proceed with the Canadian Single Class Surface Combatant project, my thoughts on long term construction follow.:

To me, the obvious problem is that we order a very small number of ships, so even at an acquisition of one every year, we'd at most replace the whole fleet of surface combatants in 16 years.  Since we'll have these ships ~22 years each, during a mid-life upgrade, the first half of the ships are retrofitted, while the second half have these built in during construction.  Following completion of the class, we then use those shipyards to begin construction on the auxiliary vessels (AOR, AOPS, CDV) and after ~22-26 years, start up with the next class, and sell off the only 22 year old vessels to other countries at a rate equalling construction of the new class.  This provides us with constant activity in the shipyards, constant upgrades to modern equipment, and vessels which are mostly equivalent in functionality and layout.

The financial benefit is quite large:

- we have efficiently running shipyards with skilled workers, saving money on training by the shipyards, and thus cost of the vessels.
- we sell the older vessels at a good price, since they are only ~22-26 years old, with technology ~11-15 years old.
- we don't waste money on refitting EVERY vessel in the fleet.
- anything being modified in the later flight of vessels will be bought at full quantity and crews will have experience in mounting them.
- increase in shipbuilding economies = more jobs, the one thing everyone wants

Please bear in mind that I am not an engineer, nor any kind of Naval Officer (yet).  My thoughts might be complete rubbish, but from my knowledge and research this seems like a reasonable strategy.  Anyone’s comments on this would be very much appreciated.

ekpiper

 

[gcclarke]

I would just like to point out that the whole "Costco" comparison is completely invalid. Buying in bulk at Costco works quite well. When you buy 100 of something, it's cheaper per unit than buying 1! But this is because you're one person buying 100 out of hundreds of thousands of people buying tens of millions. It's only true because of a reduction in some costs (middle-men, transportation, packaging), without any reduction in other costs, such as the actual cost of manufacturing.

Manufacturing costs only go down when you mass produce. In a naval context, this is done by building expertise in the people doing the building. If you order a load of 12 ships, then the first ones will be more expensive, and the later ones will get progressively cheaper. And then the project ends, and everyone finds new employment, and you're out of luck when 10 years down the road you want some more ships. If, instead, you want 1-2 ships per year, the company building those ships can get very very very good at building ships, as well as being able to provide a sustainable base of employment for whichever Canadian city the shipyard awarded the contract is based within.

 

[Acer Syrup]

On the assumption that we proceed with the Canadian Single Class Surface Combatant project, my thoughts on long term construction follow.:

Your thoughts seem to be pretty much in line with DND. http://www.forces.gc.ca/site/pri/2/ship-navale-eng.asp

I'm no naval officer (maybe some day) and I don't know how dire the situation really is, but I think its great that they are planning for the long term. Yep may have to wait a little bit longer and maybe even without for a bit. But it might take that to build back up from the "decade of darkness" and do it right.

This PDF has a lot of info http://www.forces.gc.ca/site/pri/2/pdf/brief-eng.pdf


I do think it is interesting that the German ship builder that built the BC Ferries has a prototype of the JSS thats never been built. "A look at we made" scenario. "How convenient of us"

Was the JSS a canadian idea or is that a naval standard class?

http://www.fsg-ship.de/  (It's under "Our Products" and then "Combat Support Vessels

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

In the article, the journalist talks about a "technological gap" while the comments of the CDS seem to imply only a "capability gap". Then, the CDS goes on to indicate that he envisions a "50 ship" Navy emerging in the next 30 years.

I believe the CDS to be wrong on both counts (Sorry, Sir!), though I wish it was not so .

First of all, there is a technological gap slowly opening between ourselves and our US/European allies. It may not matter much in terms of our capacity to "fight" the current "enemy" but it does make it slowly more and more difficult in terms of interoperability with our allies. This gap needs to be addressed also. As for the "capability" one, it is self inflicted in great part and can only be remedied fully by ourselves. This is because we use the AAW destroyers as command and control ships. Our allies usually do not combine these functions: The US Arleigh Burke or British Daring class are great AAW platforms, but they do not have command and control capability as we apply the concept in Canada. Such function is exercised from their carriers or amphibs. The French, German or Spanish (and thus Australian) designs have the same limitation. The Danish Navy has the Absalon class command and support ships, but they are definitely not area air defence ships .Thus, we could easily find a match on the market for a AAW destroyer or a command ship design for construction in Canada, but there are no combination available.

As for the "50 ship" Navy, I just cannot see it happening, short of war. First of all, when England is going down to 23 surface escorts from 30 and the Americans are retiring two Perry class frigates for each  Burke destroyer coming in commission (and seem to have no replacement plans for the frigates), it is very hard to see how we could justify to the Canadian public more than the 15 "Single class Surface Combatant" currently contemplated. Where will the other 35 ships come from, unless you count the Orca's and buy a lot more of them? Even if we "dreamed" a little and saw the following coming to fruition as an "ideal" Canadian Navy, it is still short of 50:

- 2 Amphibious ships
- 4 AOR's
- 15 SCSC in various combination
- 6 SSK
- 8 AOPS
- 8 MCM of some sort

Total: 43

Acer Syrup's link to the PDF seems to bear that: it only shows about 25 new construct for the Navy in the next 30 yrs window.

P.S. Acer: JSS is a Canadian idea. There is a ship called JSS that was developed and is being built by the Dutch, but it falls well short of the Canadian requirements for its JSS in terms of troop transport and fuel re-supply capability. The Dutch did not need those since they have separate amphibious warfare ships and AORs .

Interestingly, there is a concept of ship production that could provide a continuous build program for shipyard, management of capability and technological gap and a "50 ship" navy of sort: Overbuilding with ships in reserve.

In such a scheme, you aim at, say, maintaining a 50 ship fleet with an average life of , say 25 yrs, but operate only, say 30 ship at any time. The other 20 ships are held in a reserve fleet until disposal at the end of their 25th year of service.  For instance, the fleet would welcome a new surface combatant every year (good for shipbuilders) that is up to date in technology. There would be no  "mid-life" as this ship would remain in service for 15 yrs only, then be put in reserve for 10, after which, being 25 years out of date technologically, we could dispose of it by scraping or reselling to  lower tech nations with regional need for such ship. A great advantage of such scheme is that you always have ships in the fleet that are current and fully technologically interoperable with allies, but, if a hot war develops, you also have a capability for a quick influx of ships for the rapidly expanding crews to meet the fighting requirements of the fleet before the shipbuilding pace picks up the slack.

Those are just my  thoughts. Comments? Plan of action to get to our political masters? 

 

 

[Grizzly]

While I obviously can't say what the CDS was referring to when he mentioned building 50 ships in 30 years, I do remember reading that the national shipbuilding strategy will take into account the requirements of the Canadian Coast Guard as well. Of the 40 or so large vessels in the CCG, over half have been in service for over 25 years, and the remainder have been in service for at least 15. So in addition to the navy's requirements for 20 to 25 ships, you also have to consider the CCG needing 30 to 40 as well. That kind of demand will task our current domestic ship building capability to the limit, and in some cases as has been mentioned will require new capabilities to be created from scratch.

http://www.ccg-gcc.gc.ca/e0007662#a3_1

 

[Acer Syrup]

While I obviously can't say what the CDS was referring to when he mentioned building 50 ships in 30 years, I do remember reading that the national shipbuilding strategy will take into account the requirements of the Canadian Coast Guard as well. Of the 40 or so large vessels in the CCG, over half have been in service for over 25 years, and the remainder have been in service for at least 15. So in addition to the navy's requirements for 20 to 25 ships, you also have to consider the CCG needing 30 to 40 as well. That kind of demand will task our current domestic ship building capability to the limit, and in some cases as has been mentioned will require new capabilities to be created from scratch.

http://www.ccg-gcc.gc.ca/e0007662#a3_1

I agree also... The announcement made in July was for 24-26 Naval Vessels and 29 (planned) CCG vessels. So more then 50 vessels in 30 years (as my link suggested) would be inline with what the CDS said. His whoops or the reporters, who will ever know? So, tie goes to the CDS.. haha.

Also they announced 70 <1000 tonnes vessels for both the CF and CCG.

I always thought the JSS was a Canadian idea, but I did read about (as you say, dutch) another vessel being called a JSS. Still think that it is interesting that the germans have a plan already to go.... life of a defence contractor.

 

[RC]

I can speak to the technological gap at the platform level in Canada.

There is one naval architecture and marine engineering firm in Canada that can realistically claim to have successfully taken ships over ~70m from concept through to construction in the past decade.  There are a handful that have done some concepts and some half measures or have disconnected offshore offices with experience, but realistically, they are many years of practical experience away from real competence (hopefully none of them will read this and get ruffled feathers, but that's the blunt truth).

The one firm will work on OPVs, AORs, or other auxiliary type vessels, but is extremely unlikely to work on frigates or destroyers because the program is too long, it will ruin commercial business, and they are experienced enough to know that they don't understand the risks.  That leaves us with a hodge podge of largely inexperienced people to take on the design of the most complex ships.  That is a technology gap that will take some serious work to fill and will almost certainly involve major faceplants as the civvies oversell their capabilities without recognizing their own limits.

We'll manage.  We have before, but it hasn't and it won't come cheap.

In my opinion, this is a problem that we do need to solve and a problem that as a nation we can't let happen again.