New Canadian Shipbuilding Strategy

[Colin Parkinson]

Sure lets get the US to build our ship because it will be faster and cheaper........

Coast Guard Reports Limited Progress on Prototype Modules for Polar Security Cutter

By Malte Humpert (gCaptain) – Just days after securing funding in the FY 2025 budget to acquire a commercial icebreaker, the U.S. Coast Guard says it has made little headway...

gcaptain.com

 

[suffolkowner]

Those MPV's will replace the 1100 Class at 4660DWT and Arctic Class 2 (PC-5ish) with a 8550DWT vessel that is PC 4.

It's a toss up whether the AOP's or the 1100 are better ice breakers, they are close in classification, but the 1100's have a ice knife, but the AOP's are newer and their hulls are in better shape.

So the CCG is going to get quite the step up in capability with the new ships, they be able to go further, carry more, break more ice. We are going from a fleet of light icebreakers to medium icebreakers. The downside is they won't be able to go into some places they currently do. The fixed hanger will be nicer than the current telescoping one.

some more detail on the CCG's MPV

Naval architect icebreaker | Aker Arctic

Aker Arctic has completed the hull form and contributed to the concept development for Canada’s sixteen new Multi-Purpose Vessels.

akerarctic.fi

 

[Cloud Cover]

US shipbuilding capacity and capability is slowing when it needs to be accelerating. Query whether China has to be looking at this and coordinating their build schedules accordingly as it appears they could very well achieve overmatch in the short term unless Korea, Japan, and perhaps Canada take up the slack. (Unlikely that Canada will.)

Navy lays out major shipbuilding delays, in rare public accounting - Breaking Defense

Ships from nine key programs are facing delays, in some cases of up to three years, according to a new Navy review.

breakingdefense.com

 

[Navy_Pete]

US shipbuilding capacity and capability is slowing when it needs to be accelerating. Query whether China has to be looking at this and coordinating their build schedules accordingly as it appears they could very well achieve overmatch in the short term unless Korea, Japan, and perhaps Canada take up the slack. (Unlikely that Canada will.)

Navy lays out major shipbuilding delays, in rare public accounting - Breaking Defense

Ships from nine key programs are facing delays, in some cases of up to three years, according to a new Navy review.

breakingdefense.com

I think we're seeing a general lagging impact of the kind of snobby attitude towards heavy industry and trades in the 80s and 90s rusting out core capabilties, as well as general raging capatalism short term thinking to 'maximize shareholder benefits' that got a lot of things off shored.

The US is better off than we are, but still the same basic issues with lack of skilled and experienced people as the workforce shrinks with retirements, while the platforms are getting more complicated than ever. Aside from weapons and sensors, the lack of crew drives increased automation, which again makes the design, build and maintenance more complicated.

Building and maintaining complex things is hard; it took 30 years to rust out, it's going to take a long time and dedicated focus to rebuild. That's really a challenge when you have muppets in charge who really only care about the whims of their donors and short term benefits.

The only reason things like NSS programs exist in numerous countries is because boffins figured this out and broke it down to simple short term benefits for the kids in short pants and glossed over strategic goals for the most part. It's there, obviously, but the actual bright and shiny selling features are the usual things like jobs in ridings and some clown cutting ribbons.

Short of some kind of benevolent dictatorship though that's just kind of what you have to do to get things done. Nothing more satisfying then spending decades building expertise to turn a detailed analysis into a summary into an executive summary into a BN into a memo into a single slide with pictures and a a bar graph.

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

Benevolent dictatorship is the Canadian system of government. each dictator lasts from 4 to 12 years, usually.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

A lot of internal work yet to be done, but a awesome and difficult job.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1778402664922972444

 

[Cloud Cover]

Alan Williams continues his crusade …

Did he deliver any ships? Honest question..

 

[dapaterson]

Alan Williams continues his crusade …

Did he deliver any ships? Honest question..

Orcas.

 

[FSTO]

Orcas.

Super complex they are not.

 

[Cloud Cover]

Are they a ship or a boat?

 

[FSTO]

Are they a ship or a boat?

They are ships that carries boats. Geez! LOL!

 

[Halifax Tar]

Alan Williams continues his crusade …

Did he deliver any ships? Honest question..

Is he wrong ? Or is it that we dislike that he is right ?

 

[Rainbow1910]

Alan Williams continues his crusade …

Did he deliver any ships? Honest question..

I largely ignored his article when I read the CDR edition awhile ago, but I went back and looked at it. Yeah, it is about what you would expect. Whining about the government preselecting Irving as a shipyard makes little sense considering the fact that either Seaspan or Irving were going to be selected for the CSC program, it is impossible to have an "open, fair and transparent competition" when one out of two Canadian major shipyards had to be selected for this program. Of course he is also going off about not picking an "operational design" and us integrating systems we wanted, largely because he is continually sour that his favored design didn't get to win the competition, blissfully unaware than FREMM or any of the other designs would have been shown the same treatment.

CDR: So, given these facts, how would you suggest the Government move forward from here?

WILLIAMS: The Government could build 3 ships under the current process and 12 through an open, fair and transparent process that addresses the flaws I mentioned above. Such an approach would cut the cuts (costs?) by 1/2 to 2/3 and still maintain the existing schedule.

The fact that he can suggest cutting the CSC program at this point after building 3 ships and reopening the program to likely another shipyard, partners and a different design should really showcase his bias on this subject. Such a suggestion is utterly nonsensical and would result in a huge loss in time, effort and money in order to just make the whole process of getting ships take longer.

 

[SeaKingTacco]

Honestly, he is now worse than Hellyer and his flying saucer shit.

Look around the globe.

Is anyone, ANYONE at all bringing a warship project in on time and on budget?

Restarting NSP would save zero dollars; collapse the frigate fleet altogether without a viable replacement as they self divest and leave us with no Navy, at all.

 

[FSTO]

Honestly, he is now worse than Hellyer and his flying saucer shit.

That’s a high bar to clear, but Williams has easily cleared it.
Save us 2/3 of the cost? Sure. Build only three and then kill the entire program.

 

[Cloud Cover]

Save us 2/3 of the cost? Sure. Build only three and then kill the entire program.

You had to put almost certain eventuality that in writing, eh?

Meanwhile, the RCN and NSP folks read this plain but true article about how long it takes to build ships in the UK and USN (a long time), and the Canadian lads are shouting Hold My .

The Royal and US Navies seem unable to replace the ships of 20 years ago

Both services still look quite familiar to anyone who served in the 2000s

www.telegraph.co.uk

 

[suffolkowner]

Seaspan Shipyards Unveils Digital Model of Canada’s Heavy Polar Icebreaker - Seaspan

May 29, 2024 – Ottawa, ON – Today at CANSEC, Canada’s leading defence & security tradeshow, Seaspan’s Vancouver Shipyards presented its progress towards completing the functional design on the first heavy Polar Icebreaker in Canada in over 60 years. Functional Design of the vessel is now more...

www.seaspan.com

May 29, 2024 – Ottawa, ON – Today at CANSEC, Canada’s leading defence & security tradeshow, Seaspan’s Vancouver Shipyards presented its progress towards completing the functional design on the first heavy Polar Icebreaker in Canada in over 60 years. Functional Design of the vessel is now more than 70 per cent complete and 3D modelling of the vessel is well advanced, setting the stage for Seaspan to cut steel on the flagship of the Canadian Coast Guard’s icebreaking fleet before the end of the year.

 

[Cloud Cover]

Uh oh! Hopefully our CSC T26 design does not push the weight limits such as the Constellation class…

Constellation Frigate 'Unplanned Weight Growth' Could Limit Service Life, Says GAO - USNI News

Due to Navy design decisions, the service’s next-generation guided-missile frigate might not have the weight margin for required modernization to meet its expected service life, according to a government watchdog report released Wednesday. The “unplanned weight growth” of ten percent or more...

news.usni.org

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Science vessel coming along

 

[Navy_Pete]

Is he wrong ? Or is it that we dislike that he is right ?

His lobbying group was part of one of the failed CSC bids. I would not be surprised that they are getting paid for public lobbying like this with him as the talking head.

He's also really uniformed and out of date, it's a really complex project generally with really complex internal government additional requirements on top of that. He tends to massively oversell the cost over runs and massively undersell the complexity of his proposed alternative (which would cost far more than he is predicting, if we applied the same cost projections as CSC).

Countries with a lot more ship building experience, with experienced yards are in the same boat as us, so it's not a unique to Canada's NSS.

He's a pompous assclown IMHO who is trying to pitch a a really shitty alternative as some kind of silver bullet in a hidden sales pitch as an industry shill, and never backs up his claims with actual figures or detailed cost estimates, which is probably because he has no idea on that level of detail.