Canadian River Class Destroyer Megathread

[Navy_Pete]

On a basic level, is there even the physical infrastructure; warehousing and other more niche storage facilities, transport, etc.) to support whatever a proper spares/mobilization/stockpile setup would look like?

Probably not, or at least not in the right spots. The depots are doing a lot of ongoing work to clean out old stuff that isn't need (lot of spares from equipment that has been disposed of sitting around) which is probably the downside of previous stockpiling but not really tracking what it's spares for, and disposal project being done ad hoc so didn't clean out the inventory. There was a big effort to do that with the 280 disposal, and got rid of 100s of tonnes of redundant spares (some from old steamers), but still missed things. I'm sure it's the same on army and airforce side.

But there are a lot of areas of the country with huge amounts of space so not an impossible problem.

 

[quadrapiper]

Probably not, or at least not in the right spots. The depots are doing a lot of ongoing work to clean out old stuff that isn't need (lot of spares from equipment that has been disposed of sitting around) which is probably the downside of previous stockpiling but not really tracking what it's spares for, and disposal project being done ad hoc so didn't clean out the inventory. There was a big effort to do that with the 280 disposal, and got rid of 100s of tonnes of redundant spares (some from old steamers), but still missed things. I'm sure it's the same on army and airforce side.

Not at all surprised, especially given the number of inventory management systems that steamer spare would have survived.

But there are a lot of areas of the country with huge amounts of space so not an impossible problem.

Always surprising to see how much space is left Colwood-side for Esquimalt, especially given how Dockyard feels like a seabird colony.

Sidebar: could some magic be worked and a DND harbour ferry service be brought back to life? Wonder how many hours are lost every year thanks to people having to drive back and forth for duty reasons or to book off significant work time to make appointments.

Much less practical, but much more fun than staring at tail lights in View Royal: an "outside" run connecting Work Point, the harbour, Albert Head, and Rocky Point.

 

[Halifax Tar]

On a basic level, is there even the physical infrastructure; warehousing and other more niche storage facilities, transport, etc.) to support whatever a proper spares/mobilization/stockpile setup would look like?

Just speaking for Halifax we divested of a number of warehouses in the HRM in the last 20ish years.

Having said that Irving and Thales have happily filled that gap for us.

But we are lucky that the HRM has large industrial areas and is in a building boom, so if we want too expand our warehousing square footage we could.

 

[Grimey]

Not at all surprised, especially given the number of inventory management systems that steamer spare would have survived.

Always surprising to see how much space is left Colwood-side for Esquimalt, especially given how Dockyard feels like a seabird colony.

Sidebar: could some magic be worked and a DND harbour ferry service be brought back to life? Wonder how many hours are lost every year thanks to people having to drive back and forth for duty reasons or to book off significant work time to make appointments.

Much less practical, but much more fun than staring at tail lights in View Royal: an "outside" run connecting Work Point, the harbour, Albert Head, and Rocky Point.

Losing the blue boat is the dictionary-definition of the head-shed knowing the cost of everything but the value of nothing.

 

[MJP]

Probably not, or at least not in the right spots. The depots are doing a lot of ongoing work to clean out old stuff that isn't need (lot of spares from equipment that has been disposed of sitting around) which is probably the downside of previous stockpiling but not really tracking what it's spares for, and disposal project being done ad hoc so didn't clean out the inventory. There was a big effort to do that with the 280 disposal, and got rid of 100s of tonnes of redundant spares (some from old steamers), but still missed things. I'm sure it's the same on army and airforce side.

But there are a lot of areas of the country with huge amounts of space so not an impossible problem.

It is pretty bad, at the national level half of all stock is active in some way. 45%(ish) of holdings are dormant (no movement 4 years) or uber dormant (10+ years). Some of the holdings are probably good to hold as they are hard to get and are for things that don't break often but in general most will probably never be used.

The National Disposal Project and before that the Inventory Modernization and Rationalization project made some headway in disposing of items but it was mostly low hanging fruit and dependent on EPMs and EMTs to go through the MMRs they were resp for and do the paperwork. Not surprising it was a low priority item for them so the end result of both efforts was pretty lackluster.

 

[dapaterson]

DND/CAF is always eager to harvest personnel from the sustainment system with consideration of the impacts, since warehousing obsolete and unneeded equipment is a different set of budgets.

 

[Halifax Tar]

It is pretty bad, at the national level half of all stock is active in some way. 45%(ish) of holdings are dormant (no movement 4 years) or uber dormant (10+ years). Some of the holdings are probably good to hold as they are hard to get and are for things that don't break often but in general most will probably never be used.

That's the cost of military sustainment IMHO.

I agree we need to smart about what and how much we hold on too but at the end of the day we need warehousing with lots of stuff gathering dust, just in case.

 

[MJP]

That's the cost of military sustainment IMHO.

I agree we need to smart about what and how much we hold on too but at the end of the day we need warehousing with lots of stuff gathering dust, just in case.

Meh, I would agree if it's for equipment we still hold. The Venn diagram of equipment we don't hold and spare parts holdings that are dormant overlap significantly.

 

[Halifax Tar]

I don't want you to misunderstand me.

What we should be holding should only be in support of kit that's in service.

 

[Navy_Pete]

It is pretty bad, at the national level half of all stock is active in some way. 45%(ish) of holdings are dormant (no movement 4 years) or uber dormant (10+ years). Some of the holdings are probably good to hold as they are hard to get and are for things that don't break often but in general most will probably never be used.

The National Disposal Project and before that the Inventory Modernization and Rationalization project made some headway in disposing of items but it was mostly low hanging fruit and dependent on EPMs and EMTs to go through the MMRs they were resp for and do the paperwork. Not surprising it was a low priority item for them so the end result of both efforts was pretty lackluster.

There are a lot of spares bought as either insurance items or long term spares where 20-25 years is kind of expected dormancy in the Navy side, but we do that because if something like a gearbox, shafltine or propellor is down the ship is potentially out of service for years until we get a replacement. We're actually burning through or have used up a lot of those on the CPFs now, so it is really item dependent on what the expected usage rate should be.

If insurance items aren't being used that's a good thing from the TA/operational side of view.

AOPs and JSS didn't do that to any significant extent, and didn't buy things like rebuild kits or other common items needed for CM (and has a lead time) so causes havoc during acceptance trials when things break and during in service. Feel bad for Thales with the AJISS as the lack of initial provisioning (against TA SME advice) will leave them with no parts available when completely normal and expected failures happen.

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

There are a lot of spares bought as either insurance items or long term spares where 20-25 years is kind of expected dormancy in the Navy side, but we do that because if something like a gearbox, shafltine or propellor is down the ship is potentially out of service for years until we get a replacement.

I remember a small event a couple of years before we divested the Gate Vessels. PORTE St LOUIS was rigging to be taken in tow in Bedford basin and, before the Blake slip could be moused, it was accidentally hit: down to the bottom goes one of the anchors. The first time in the class 43 (by then) years history that an anchor was lost. The ships of the division were supposed to sail on a three weeks exercise a few days later.

However, we knew exactly where the five spare anchors for the class were kept by stores, and we knew the stock number, so we went to get one. Well, of course, the first thing that happens is that the stores clerk takes the paperwork, looks the item on his computer and announces that they don't have any in stock. Our answer, of course, is to bring him to the window and gently point out in the yard the exact item we were after and how he has five in hand, which don't go on any other vessels than the Gate Vessels. We are roundly told that those ones don't count as they are (get this) war stock and therefore he is not allowed to release them.

We thought that was a joke and went to his superior, but it turns out he was correct. In the end, we had to obtain authority to release one from war stocks from the Admiral in Ottawa. It all happened very quickly (24 hours) probably because of the ridiculousness of the situation and the ease with which to explain why it was needed.

Of course the nice thing here is that if the navy hadn't decided to keep these items in stock, what are the chances that we would have been able to get one after 43 years?

 

[dapaterson]

Operators often don't care to understand the supply system. War stocks are reserved to HHQs for release for valid reasons. "I am a MARS O who messed up an evolution, bail me out" is not inherently a valid demand for a controlled item.

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

I agree.

But the fact that none had been needed in the 43 preceding years and that everybody knew the MCDV's were being built and the GV thus only had two to three years of service left, and that in any event, there was no way Gate Vessels were ever going to be involved in any war by that point of their life (remember all the gate handling equipment had been striped more than 20 years before and the vessels heavily modified to serve as training platforms) certainly made the approval easy.

 

[Navy_Pete]

Operators often don't care to understand the supply system. War stocks are reserved to HHQs for release for valid reasons. "I am a MARS O who messed up an evolution, bail me out" is not inherently a valid demand for a controlled item.

Which sometimes is the only reason folks in MEPM hear about major system issues. More than once the fix was known and could have been provided months earlier if it had been reported as per normal (even an email would have done the trick).

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

Messing up an evolution happens, but its an incident: It is no foreseen nor "planned" for. However, a systems or machinery issue that is building up is not such an incident, and if it wasn't properly planned for in time by the powers that be once informed, then to me, that is negligence.

 

[Good2Golf]

I remember a small event a couple of years before we divested the Gate Vessels. PORTE St LOUIS was rigging to be taken in tow in Bedford basin and, before the Blake slip could be moused, it was accidentally hit: down to the bottom goes one of the anchors. The first time in the class 43 (by then) years history that an anchor was lost. The ships of the division were supposed to sail on a three weeks exercise a few days later.

However, we knew exactly where the five spare anchors for the class were kept by stores, and we knew the stock number, so we went to get one. Well, of course, the first thing that happens is that the stores clerk takes the paperwork, looks the item on his computer and announces that they don't have any in stock. Our answer, of course, is to bring him to the window and gently point out in the yard the exact item we were after and how he has five in hand, which don't go on any other vessels than the Gate Vessels. We are roundly told that those ones don't count as they are (get this) war stock and therefore he is not allowed to release them.

We thought that was a joke and went to his superior, but it turns out he was correct. In the end, we had to obtain authority to release one from war stocks from the Admiral in Ottawa. It all happened very quickly (24 hours) probably because of the ridiculousness of the situation and the ease with which to explain why it was needed.

Of course the nice thing here is that if the navy hadn't decided to keep these items in stock, what are the chances that we would have been able to get one after 43 years?

Operators often don't care to understand the supply system. War stocks are reserved to HHQs for release for valid reasons. "I am a MARS O who messed up an evolution, bail me out" is not inherently a valid demand for a controlled item.

When the ‘war’ in war stock is WWII, one has to wonder why it was still considered war stock…

 

[dapaterson]

When the ‘war’ in war stock is WWII, one has to wonder why it was still considered war stock…

Almost as if you need sufficient support staff to keep things up to date...

 

[Good2Golf]

Almost as if you need sufficient support staff to keep things up to date...

Look, Administration is only on the list of military principles of war to keep support staff from nagging operators about putting it on the list…

 

[Halifax Tar]

Operators often don't care to understand the supply system. War stocks are reserved to HHQs for release for valid reasons. "I am a MARS O who messed up an evolution, bail me out" is not inherently a valid demand for a controlled item.

So fucking well said...

 

[MJP]

Operators often don't care to understand the supply system. War stocks are reserved to HHQs for release for valid reasons. "I am a MARS O who messed up an evolution, bail me out" is not inherently a valid demand for a controlled item.

There is that. But there is also deliberate overuse of control mechanisms for no reason. Lots of materiel needs release authority but if it is blindly given 95+ percentage of the time what use is it? All it does is prevent materiel from getting into folks hands in a timely manner. Use controls properly for the exceptions not blindly making everything under a release item because it is easier than managing the stock properly.

Proper Op Stock in Op stock accounts with solid rationale and annual/bi-annual reviews should be part of the process. Seen more than a few conversations of "why is this in Op Stock" because no one did actually saved the rationale. Did a review a few years back of items in a depot sitting in Op Stock accounts where we contacted every SM/TA where there was no record of why and in about half the cases they didn't even know nor could the environment the equipment belonged too articulate a reason.