Canadian River Class Destroyer Megathread

[OldSolduer]

Once upon a time, we had to cross-deck two of our RADAR techs over to a USN Frigate that was sailing in company with us on a NATO deployment. Their "SPS-49 RADAR Tech" was sent home sick so they were unable to trouble-shoot or repair a fault on it. Our guys were sent over, fixed it in an hour or two and came back. We had the SPS-49 as well, so it worked out well.

I ended up chatting with a USN "SONAR" Tech once upon a time in Puerto Rico. He was actually an AN/SQR-19 Towed Array Tech. That's all he fixed.

As a RCN SONAR Tech (NET(A)) I was responsible for fixing:

• Hull Mounted SONAR
• Towed Array SONAR
• Sonobouy System
• OPS room Displays
• CCS Computers, Data Bus, etc
• Gyro Compass
• Nav Distribution System
• Speed Log
• Echo Sounder
• Bathythermograph
• Compass Repeaters
• SHINNADS (Digital Nav System)
• etc...

He was responsible for a single one of those systems - and there was no redundancy if he was sick/etc. Their Technical department was larger than ours, but each tech fixed one thing.

Our NET(A) Department had 5 techs (we were overborne by 1) but all of us had skill/experience with the above systems and were capable of fixing most anything that came up.

That said, this was under the NET/NWT construct - I spent over 32 months in the Training System between my QL3 and my QL5 courses. That same training is practically halved in the interests of getting maintainers out to the fleet faster, and there is a much greater emphasis on training in-situ while on ships in the fleet with the W Eng Tech program.

As a result, there is much less knowledgebase, and after 14 years of W Eng Tech, the number of former NET/NWTs is tiny, and I suspect the Navy has discovered that there is a linkage between training technicians versus training maintainers.

American Army are similar. One soldier, one job.

Not much versatility.

 

[Retired AF Guy]

American Army are similar. One soldier, one job.

Not much versatility.

I was told the same thing when I joined the Canadian Armyu and that was back in the mid-70's.

 

[Navy_Pete]

Wasn’t positive, at all….

We (the Air Force) tried to warn them after we amalgamated and then were forced to de-amalgamate our 500 series technicians…

The Royal Navy also specifically told us not to do what we did, because they had and it didn't work, but we knew better somehow.

@dapaterson I think the mobilisation mindset they use really only works if you can rapidly mobilize, which they kind of can if they bring a lot of their mothballed ships back into service.

With how long big ships take to build, and the complexity of modern weapon systems, I don't think that really works for anyone in practice, so having a mix of highly trained people, with some very basic trained people and a lot of small, simpler ships is more realistic, and what some our our allies like the Swedes seem to do.

The operators don't like to admit it, but if you can actually automate most of the detect to engage sequence, if you are willing to accept you'll miss some detection, and may splash some friendlies, but some ways to reduce training there.

For other trades we've already really scaled back on the maintenance side of things, without being smart enough to augment with extra shore support, but more common in small ships to have essentially juniour maintainers running the machinery plant, with a lot of automation and no real combat survivability, so a lot of it depends on your expectations. Cheap ships that people can operate with limited training can still put a lot of effective munitions down range, and probably also harder to target a group of them then one big expensive ship. I think the Iranians have a lot of small boats like that, where it's essentially a jacked up RHIB with a few anti ship missiles, but they have a whack of them they can get to run in at one time. Much simpler as well if you are just doing coastal defence/local area denial vice force projection, so really all depends what you want the Navy to be able to do independently.

 

[AmmoTech90]

I'm not sure if other trades had mobilization MOCs/MOSIDs but Ammo Tech did/has. I would require an expansion of trainers, but the lesson plans and course structures were there. We would have three trades, one focused on guided weapons, and...I believe one focused on storage and inspection, and a third focused on lab work and disposal. Details on the division of tasks may be fuzzy, but the process was there. We couldn't have the mobilization structure in place during peace time because there wasn't the establishment.

There are many problems with the training system, but complaining that we don't train 3 times as many people as we do is pointless when we don't have billets to put those people. Planning to train three times as many people is what is possible.