Canadian Surface Combatant RFQ

[Underway]

Yup. And DCostS has the multi-year inflation model which rarely survives contact with reality, but they don’t certify the cost ING’s unless you use their model, then everyone gets up to go to the bathroom when the Auditer General comes by to ask you why your cost was off be so much… sigh

Funny you mention the car…I walked a few guys through a $265K Toyota Camry…once I told them that’s how the GoC costs MCPs, the lights went on. (And why you can’t say price per helicopter is $340,000,000….)

It might be a bit much but can you walk us through that Camry pricing here? I really would love the example to throw in the face of my uncle who guaranteed will be bugging me about project costs this Thanksgiving weekend. He's pro military but likes to get me going... lol

 

[Underway]

I believe the correct word is crew these days.

Correct word was always crew. Friggin army phasing getting in there again.

 

[SeaKingTacco]

It might be a bit much but can you walk us through that Camry pricing here? I really would love the example to throw in the face of my uncle who guaranteed will be bugging me about project costs this Thanksgiving weekend. He's pro military but likes to get me going... lol

In lieu of G2G, I can take a stab at it….

Purchase price, plus lets say you financed the car for 5 years.
Insurance costs for the next 10 years.
All maintenance, including tires, all fluids you buy at Canadian Tire and car washes for 10 years
All fuel costs for 10 years
Ferries, parking and tolls for 10 years.
Drivers license fees.
If you amortize the square footage of your garage, you are really doing it the GoC way…

You can see how a $35K car can get to several hundred K, fast…

 

[Good2Golf]

Yup, SKT got the all-important garage as % of house area for mortgage share… BZ! Icing on the cake would be apportioning a share of your porosity taxes as well.

 

[Halifax Tar]

We don't build big enough fleets nor do we have the export market to make building our own warships cost effective.

We should be buying off the shelf. I personally prefer American and buy into their maintenance and logistic train.

Canadian jobs be damned, our population needs to be made adapt and overcome not expect the Gov to prop them up at the expense of the the CAF.

 

[FSTO]

We don't build big enough fleets nor do we have the export market to make building our own warships cost effective.

We should be buying off the shelf. I personally prefer American and buy into their maintenance and logistic train.

Canadian jobs be damned, our population needs to be made adapt and overcome not expect the Gov to prop them up at the expense of the the CAF.

You're the logistics expert, but right now the USN is in the throes of not enough yards, not enough repair facilities, not enough ships, not enough pers, not enough of everything. In this scenario Canada is not enough of a concern to be taking up valuable yard space in place of USN needs and the result is that we'd be going around the world cap in hand (yes we already do this) to get even the simplest repair done.

We are paying the price for 50 years of bad shipbuilding decisions (build up a capacity and expertise costing Billions and then shut it down only to do it all over again 25 years later) which we are hoping that will be solved with the program of continuous shipbuilding for the RCN and CCG.

We shall see how this all turns out.

 

[Halifax Tar]

You're the logistics expert, but right now the USN is in the throes of not enough yards, not enough repair facilities, not enough ships, not enough pers, not enough of everything. In this scenario Canada is not enough of a concern to be taking up valuable yard space in place of USN needs and the result is that we'd be going around the world cap in hand (yes we already do this) to get even the simplest repair done.

We are paying the price for 50 years of bad shipbuilding decisions (build up a capacity and expertise costing Billions and then shut it down only to do it all over again 25 years later) which we are hoping that will be solved with the program of continuous shipbuilding for the RCN and CCG.

We shall see how this all turns out.

Agreed the US and the USN isn't perfect but their production output and Logistics train dwarfs ours, and that's putting it nicely. But what they are always looking to do is make cash.

And I am sure they would appreciate us actually taking defence seriously. Buy Constellations from US yards. And contract to them for spares and maintenance.

 

[SeaKingTacco]

Agreed the US and the USN isn't perfect but their production output and Logistics train dwarfs ours, and that's putting it nicely. But what they are always looking to do is make cash.

And I am sure they would appreciate us actually taking defence seriously. Buy Constellations from US yards. And contract to them for spares and maintenance.

The US will not give us yard space.

Full stop.

 

[Underway]

There's a lot here.

A healthy industry allows for expertise to flow between Fleet Maint Facility, Ottawa SME's (like Class Desk), shipyards, and industry. Allowing for that means that you get less chance of being one person deep on a problem or equipment. I firmly believe that we need a build industry to ensure we have a repair and maintenance industry as well, including those who are under gov't payroll as there is certainly a flow between those industries.

We see people leave to go to work in industry all the time and vice versa. That's one sign of a healthy industry, where there are enough jobs around that people can move within it.

I do not disagree that the project is expensive and we need to keep tabs on things to avoid corruption etc.... But frankly I don't give a crap about the total cost. I really don't. It's kinda irrelevent in the grand scheme of things and its also pretty imaginary until its spent. And saying we should have gotten this or that ship isn't going to change things. We didn't its in the past and we move forward with the decision that is made.

---

As for buying Constellations, USN made that look cheap because a) they are using the Burke project money for the masts, as its a Burke mast going on that ship, b) ammo/missile different budget (including warehousing costs and ammo storage upgrades), c) no infrastructure attached to that budget like in Canada (jetty upgrades, new ammo jetting in BC etc...), d) radar/comms different budget, e) no new training facilities required (more infrastructure) f)Aegis different budget g) rebuilding Canadian industry cost

If we went to the US to buy it would be much more expensive than what the US says they are paying. And we would still have to come up with the money for infrastructure improvements, ammo, training facilities in different projects.

---

I expect that there might be a re-evaluation of the surface fleet requirements similar to what Australia is doing within the next 10 years. The Australian re-eval is due to AUKUS and the impact of the nuke boats on the budget and particularly crewing.

IF the expected submarine purchase that's rumoured goes through the RCN is going to have to do a similar exercise. I can't see us crewing 12 frigate/destroyers, 6-12 submarines, 2 JSS, Asterix, 6 AOPS and 12 MCDV's (and whatever is supposed to replace them) in the near to mid term.

 

[Kirkhill]

Nine is probably as many as we will be able to man anyway.

 

[Navy_Pete]

We don't build big enough fleets nor do we have the export market to make building our own warships cost effective.

We should be buying off the shelf. I personally prefer American and buy into their maintenance and logistic train.

Canadian jobs be damned, our population needs to be made adapt and overcome not expect the Gov to prop them up at the expense of the the CAF.

The issue with USN ships is they are designed for USN crews and their training/quals, so generally means more sailors with different roles. Selecting the AEGIS system is a good example, as basically needs a totally different combat operator setup as well as CSE support, which is going to be interesting to see.

RN, RAN, RNZN have generally direct and nearly identical trades (except for the HT bit, which they specifically told us to keep but we knew better), and most EU ships are similar enough it's a non issue. The T26 design is really well done, and it looks like a very capable ship at what it was designed for, but we slapped an AEGIS system on it and made other changes that basically turns it into a massively different ship that hugely impacts how we will crew it, so ourselves and the Aussies will basically be operating a different platform as the RN, even if it looks the same from the outside.

If they had waived the build in Canada requirement 15 years ago, we could have simply gotten it built in an EU/UK yard in partnership, taken delivery, and run with it. Even if we did final fit up of some things in Canada, no reason why the cable runs and all the other really expensive things to do once it's all put together is done somewhere else and we just drop in the cabinets and hook it up. Anyway that was a decision made a long time ago so a bit late to completely change tack without massive and really expensive delays.

 

[KevinB]

I think the Canadian shipbuilding program is a good idea. I think that Canada needs to maintain some degree of domestic manufacturing of major capital equipment.

I disagree with @SeaKingTacco that we in the US won’t give yard space, but only partially, as the only way the RCN would get ships was a JV with the USN. That would have to have been exercised much earlier.
A lot of US yards had closed due to lack of work, so we don’t have the ability that we did in the 80’s and 90’s.

Hey we do have a bunch of LCS you could have though.

One just needs to accept the cost of the NSS requirements is being amortized into the ships being built those facilities.

 

[KevinB]

So no takers for the LCS then ?

 

[dapaterson]

So no takers for the LCS then ?

We'll trade a bunch of LSVWs, straight up.

 

[KevinB]

We'll trade a bunch of LSVWs, straight up.

Maybe we could get a deal and give them both to the Russians

 

[FSTO]

So no takers for the LCS then ?

 

[Navy_Pete]

Maybe we could get a deal and give them both to the Russians

We have a running joke where we will leak some details on our obsolete mechanical systems to the Russians in a sneaky attempt to further undermine their readiness by having them adopt version of it as well, to realize it hasn't been made since the 90s and there isn't enough details or drawings anywhere to backwards engineer it.

Or they can also experience the joys of blue screens of death when your old windows 98 server running on a virtual machine crashes.

 

[Spencer100]

Maybe we could get a deal and give them both to the Russians

Well the Russians already have a supplier of that piece of kit!

Meet the Naijing (Fiat JV) NJ2045.......The PLA already got one!

we've already got one monty python - Search Videos

www.bing.com

NJ2045/2046 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[YZT580]

We don't build big enough fleets nor do we have the export market to make building our own warships cost effective.

We should be buying off the shelf. I personally prefer American and buy into their maintenance and logistic train.

Canadian jobs be damned, our population needs to be made adapt and overcome not expect the Gov to prop them up at the expense of the the CAF.

JUST stop trying to Canadianize the design. Every design modification costs millions and most of them seem to be to cater to LockMart's wims.

 

[Spencer100]

JUST stop trying to Canadianize the design. Every design modification costs millions and most of them seem to be to cater to LockMart's wims.

Yes but the case of the CSC most the changes seem to make sense. We took a top of the line base design (many in the UK say their ship is under armed) and changed it for needs of program. The program was one class of ship to replace two and do the work of topline combatant. The USNI piece makes this sound like the correct plan because of the two ocean nature of the RCN.

The Future Canadian Surface Combatant

Canada’s next warship will be operationally focused, value conscious, and technology enabled.

www.usni.org

But I could also be a case of we only get to do this once every 40 years so we better throw everything in.