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CO of Hal relieved

That is not a risk mitigation strategy...
But we talked about it, and wrote it down....

Frequently there are 'mitigations' on paper that don't actually do anything, or don't get implemented, but god forbid you ask why the risk isn't being tracked a 'pre-mitigated' levels. Some days I hate the RCN, especially when the risk assessments take more time than the repair.

Because we are exempt from the Canada Shipping Act and self regulate, the RCN always has the option of sailing below SOLAS, as long as they accept the risk the tech side puts in. At the moment, common sense only kicks in if the RA comes out as 'intolerable' which is difficult to actually do with independent defects because of how the risk management policy is set up.

Different story when you start aggregating things, but with that many defects it's very hard to do. Even cutting it down to a slice of related defects generally get push back that the risk is assessed as too high.

Even if something terrible happens and people get hurt or killed, very little confidence of any changes as the RCN will just bury the BOI and overclassify it. Pretty shitty to document things as a CYA but when you recommend something is fixed before they go to sea, and the RCN does it anyway, not really anything else you can do (short of being a whistle blower I guess).
 
My non-operational sailing was probably more 'exciting' compared to the operational tour, but probably varies by department/trade. If I was an operator I'd want to do as much HR as possible. As an MSE type the operations were the break and recharge time after being driven into the ground in the preceeding year up to it, and honestly it was kind of boring at times to just have everything working and available, with proper support when it broke (unless the coast was being stupid and telling us we didn't need equipment essential to what we were doing, because they weren't reading our actual mission updates and thought were were doing rounds of cocktail parties in friendly waters).

FG included a few missile shoots, a lot of gunnery shoots, operating with fast air and submarines etc. Conversely spent weeks on the NATO just patrolling a box in the Med/Black sea and doing some very basic TG things with some allies. Could have been more exiting, but we had no ROEs to do boardings, and doing 'intelligence gathering' as a ship is interesting to about 10 people onboard and just tedium for the other 240.
My ”non-operational” sailing on the west coast came far closer to killing me (twice) than any of the named Ops that I did…just sayin…
 
My non-operational sailing was probably more 'exciting' compared to the operational tour, but probably varies by department/trade. If I was an operator I'd want to do as much HR as possible. As an MSE type the operations were the break and recharge time after being driven into the ground in the preceeding year up to it, and honestly it was kind of boring at times to just have everything working and available, with proper support when it broke (unless the coast was being stupid and telling us we didn't need equipment essential to what we were doing, because they weren't reading our actual mission updates and thought were were doing rounds of cocktail parties in friendly waters).

FG included a few missile shoots, a lot of gunnery shoots, operating with fast air and submarines etc. Conversely spent weeks on the NATO just patrolling a box in the Med/Black sea and doing some very basic TG things with some allies. Could have been more exiting, but we had no ROEs to do boardings, and doing 'intelligence gathering' as a ship is interesting to about 10 people onboard and just tedium for the other 240.
Half the Ship's Company generally has no idea where we are or what we are doing WRT operations.

This is literally what we are paid to do: drill and practice.

Consider yourself lucky if you go an entire career without going hot…
It's still boring 😉

Running in to Iranians was way better 😁
 
Half the Ship's Company generally has no idea where we are or what we are doing WRT operations.


It's still boring 😉

Running in to Iranians was way better 😁
Meh. The Iranians gave me waaay less grief than the Omanis.

Op Apollo joke: You know what the difference is between an Iranian P3 and a Canadian Aurora?

The Iranian P3 can be counted upon to show up on station everyday….
 
Meh. The Iranians gave me waaay less grief than the Omanis.

Op Apollo joke: You know what the difference is between an Iranian P3 and a Canadian Aurora?

The Iranian P3 can be counted upon to show up on station everyday….
Hey, it was taco Tuesday, and two for 1 margaritas at the hotel, of course they won't be on station? It's called operational planning, you plan around all the specials at the hotel. Wednesday is meat loaf night? Yep let's go on patrol
 
Meh. The Iranians gave me waaay less grief than the Omanis.

Op Apollo joke: You know what the difference is between an Iranian P3 and a Canadian Aurora?

The Iranian P3 can be counted upon to show up on station everyday….
We were supposed to have an Aurora flyby during a CoC during Op Apollo. I’m sure the Iranians had theirs on standby. Just in case. 😉
 
Meh. The Iranians gave me waaay less grief than the Omanis.
I had the opposite experience. The Omanis were great! The Iranians would hails us and ask us questions non-stop during the entirety of our Hormuz transit, questions they knew we couldn't answer, but they clogged up the air waves anyway. On our third transit through, the Omani coast guard came on and essentially told the Iranians to shut up, leave us alone, and get the fuck off the channel.
 
It doesn't matter... it just sucks as soft cargo ;)

View attachment 71798
On my last deployment we had a large map put up on the wall next to the galley, so the crew would walk by it at least thrice a day, and it showed where the ship was, where it was going next, along with blurbs and pictures describing our current operations.

HUMINT suggests it was greatly appreciated. :)
 
On my last deployment we had a large map put up on the wall next to the galley, so the crew would walk by it at least thrice a day, and it showed where the ship was, where it was going next, along with blurbs and pictures describing our current operations.

HUMINT suggests it was greatly appreciated. :)
“Keep your followers informed of the mission, the changing situation and the overall picture.”

Only on moving into a non-CAF career have I come to really appreciate the super simple wisdom that CAF managed to achieve with the ten principles of leadership we taught to 19 year olds. Disappointing that stuff like this would get missed on an operationally deployed ship. It’s way easier to give a shit if you know what you’re supposed to be giving a shit about.
 
We were supposed to have an Aurora flyby during a CoC during Op Apollo. I’m sure the Iranians had theirs on standby. Just in case. 😉
They probably would have, just for a lark.

It got to the point where we could tell which crew was out, just by the sound of the Iranian TACCO’s voice on 16…
 
On my last deployment we had a large map put up on the wall next to the galley, so the crew would walk by it at least thrice a day, and it showed where the ship was, where it was going next, along with blurbs and pictures describing our current operations.

HUMINT suggests it was greatly appreciated. :)
I've sewn similar things done on ships, and it was always appreciated by the crew.

For many occupations sailing in the South China Sea is no different than sailing in the West Coast Firing Area... As a Met Tech my job was 100% real every time we were underway, regardless of whether the helo was flying for an exercise or an operation.

Getting the bigger picture through pipes, and a map on the bulkhead makes a difference.
 
I've sewn similar things done on ships, and it was always appreciated by the crew.

For many occupations sailing in the South China Sea is no different than sailing in the West Coast Firing Area... As a Met Tech my job was 100% real every time we were underway, regardless of whether the helo was flying for an exercise or an operation.

Getting the bigger picture through pipes, and a map on the bulkhead makes a difference.
I like the monitor outside the swain's office (or a similar high traffic spot) with a ppt rotating through the mission update and other announcements. It's a great, cheap and easy way to spread some info.

Seeing as this has completely derailed, the UFC 276 card is awesome; got to see Strickland get knocked out, unfortunate that didn't get the same with O'Malley. Volk looked better than ever, the main card is going to be crazy. Cannonier is huge, but Adensaya has the speed and technique advantage.
 
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