Continental Defence Corvette

[Oldgateboatdriver]

that is a lot of thinking,

I know. I'm exhausted!

 

[Czech_pivo]

A lot will depend on CONOPS for those ships, which must start with some thinking about how the RCN envisage use of those vessels, and how "expendable" they see them. Twenty of them on top of 15 RCD and 12 SSK requires a lot of personnel, even if all three streams will be building up over time.

So hear me out: Personally, I think a bit in more European way than North American for them. Think about the two UK carriers: all the cabins are built up for 12 sailors, but only 8 sailors are assigned to any cabin. It's the same for all rank levels (except CO, ), because the RN knows that, in wartime, they will likely have to boost the number of sailors by about 50%. Similarly, most of the continental Europe navies sail with reduced crew for their training, train mostly by day and go down to minimal watch levels at night, unless they are carrying out a specific night training exercise.That way, their manning can be lower and if and when they deploy to a full scale ex or operation, they draw extra personnel from shore or the other training vessels to fill up the ranks as required.

You could do the same for the CDC's. The RCD's would remain the front line vessels, manned near full, ready to deploy, but in peacetime, the CDC's, particularly by using a lot of automation and accepting the consequences should things go wrong, would be manned to 50-60% of their wartime expected manning, concentrating on training - mostly during the day "a la European" - and generating the maritime pictures and showing the flag. That would help in letting people have a reasonable shore/ship time ratio. Should things begin to heat up or a need for deployment/war arise, you would draw from shore personnel and reserves to fill up the rank.

I could see such increased manning working like this: Say you have ten CDC per coast, at "full" manning, that gives you five crew. I could see three of the ten CDC going immediately to full manning by using personnel from the other seven CDC's. The remaining seven CDC would then draw on personnel on shore rotation to fill back their numbers to the 50-60% level and then, fill the remaining positions with trained reservists. In such a scenario, you would basically have the reg force provide 50-60% of the wartime manning at all time - during peace - then increase it's contribution to 65-75% in wartime/time of increased tension, and the reserve contribute between 25-35 % of manning in time of increased tension.

The only thing left for something like that to work would be for the reg force to understand and agree to the fact that, at first and for a short while, there would be a lowering of standards until the reservists can work themselves up to speed.

Question -in time of war, how many, if any, of the crew from the AOPS’s could be used on the CDC’s? In wartime I’m assuming that the AOPS’s would be tie up a berth, no?

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

Question -in time of war, how many, if any, of the crew from the AOPS’s could be used on the CDC’s? In wartime I’m assuming that the AOPS’s would be tie up a berth, no?

Your assumption is probably correct. But with the CDC's crew being about 90 to 100 in peacetime in my scenario, and about 180 to 200 in wartime, the AOPS would probably just back-fill the reg force needed for my scenario to work out, not much more.

 

[Lumber]

Question -in time of war, how many, if any, of the crew from the AOPS’s could be used on the CDC’s? In wartime I’m assuming that the AOPS’s would be tie up a berth, no?

Honestly, I don't think many. Some are platform agnostic, like cooks, admins, storesies. Some can be cross trained quite quickly, like bosns. But MARTECHs and WENG Techs, those guys are trained on the equipment on board, so they could probably transfer over but they'd effectively be under training for a while once they got there.

 

[Furniture]

Honestly, I don't think many. Some are platform agnostic, like cooks, admins, storesies. Some can be cross trained quite quickly, like bosns. But MARTECHs and WENG Techs, those guys are trained on the equipment on board, so they could probably transfer over but they'd effectively be under training for a while once they got there.

So two of six departments?

 

[Stoker]

Currently the intended crewing for the CSC is 100 max. 20 training bunks, 15 to 20 payload specialists and around 55 to 60 crew. Been to meetings on this and the consensus of concept of crewing depends on the combat systems and employment of the ship with factors such as survivability and maintenance. To get away with so few crew you'll need heavy automation however if you get hit the DC response wouldn't be the same, and maintenance would be an issue. The thinking on what normal would look like would need to change.