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So, Noah's ark, with two of every animal on board?
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Dutch ships and designs and the possibilities for Canada
- Thread starter Karel Doorman
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The most navy answer ever...
The Asia-Pacific region has many islands, not all of them have port facilities suited to civilian RO-RO ships. Units can be flown to close staging areas in theatre and moved around the local area on Amphibs. Troops have managed to survive being moved on ships before, they will be able to manage again.
Amphibs offer flexibility that the CAF doesn't have, pretending it must always be that way is short sighted.
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That's for the government to solve on a strategic level and if they are willing to pivot. I'm content to recruit for immediate needs, crewing requirements for future fleet and sustainability. If the government deems we need new carriers or a amphib capability or whatever else then all means recruit for that as well. I'll be perfectly honest here and say we'll ever get the numbers we'll need unless there is a gutting and reinventing of recruitment.
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I'm with stoker on this one, at the current rate it odesn't matter if we build 15 CSCs, we aren't going to be able to crew them, and can't see us crewing the rest of AOPs and JSS without tying ships up. No point planning on addtional classes of ships or MCDV replacements if we can't feasibly crew the current fleet.
If we're lucky a few CPFs will self retire without hurting anyone, but I think some pretty hard choices are coming.
If we're lucky a few CPFs will self retire without hurting anyone, but I think some pretty hard choices are coming.
Rainbow1910
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One of the things not often talked about when speaking about sealift or amphibious capability is that it isn't just an investment by the Navy, it will be an investment by the Airforce and Army as well in order to get the most out of these platforms. A proper amphibious capability requires:
Navy:
Army:
Airforce:
Bringing the entire force together on a long term basis to properly procure and organize all of this seems unlikely, anything else would be a half hearted attempt. If you are going to invest in a capability, go all the way and make it worthwhile or don't bother at all. I don't see this happening at all without a major change in direction for all three services.
Navy:
- Proper escorts to defend these vessels from air, sea and undersea threats.
- The vessels themselves.
- The personnel to man the ships.
- Landing craft to ferry the equipment from ship to shore.
Army:
- Properly trained and sized units to make this investment worthwhile.
- Proper Amphibious equipment.
Airforce:
- Shipboard aviation to assist in these operations, helicopters and drones.
- Specific personnel and equipment to do these roles.
Bringing the entire force together on a long term basis to properly procure and organize all of this seems unlikely, anything else would be a half hearted attempt. If you are going to invest in a capability, go all the way and make it worthwhile or don't bother at all. I don't see this happening at all without a major change in direction for all three services.
Oldgateboatdriver
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And that is why I referred to the Canadian Army in my previous post.
An amphibious capability is first and foremost an army matter: it is putting the army where it wants to fight coming from the sea. It is a capability to carry out a land war, coming from a different direction.
Right now, I don't see, nor have I heard, anyone in the Canadian Army clamouring that they need to be able to do this, and want to get to the point where they can. Until the army decides and ask for it, it is not the place of the Navy to impose it on the other commands.
An amphibious capability is first and foremost an army matter: it is putting the army where it wants to fight coming from the sea. It is a capability to carry out a land war, coming from a different direction.
Right now, I don't see, nor have I heard, anyone in the Canadian Army clamouring that they need to be able to do this, and want to get to the point where they can. Until the army decides and ask for it, it is not the place of the Navy to impose it on the other commands.
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AOPS 6x65=390
CSC 15x210=3150
AOR 2x240=480
SSK 4x53=212
MCDV 12x47=564
Total 4796
Halifax 12x225=2700
AOPS 3x65=195
SSK 4x53=212
MCDV 12x47=564
Total 3671
Got about 20 yrs before we need to worry about the 15 CSC's but thats an extra 1000 deployable people depending on the MCDV situation
Colin Parkinson
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Start direct recruiting from the Philippines, 5 years service and they get their Canadian citizenship, make them say 5% of the crew and setup a basic training system there and further training here. You have more applicants than slots and the Filipino's already have a good rep with the USN.
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or overhaul our recruiting system with better pay and benefits including housing, less waiting time and better training facilities.
Oldgateboatdriver
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Doesn't quite work that way.
First of all, in order to have a proper deployment of, say, 1000 crew, accounting for recruiting/training/manning shore establishments of all sorts (including the fleet maintenance groups, dockyard, bases and naval HQ's) you need almost 1.8 persons ashore for each sea position. Anything lower and you start having to send crew to sea over and over again, depriving them of their proper ratio of time ashore.
Second, we currently do not have the crewing you are representing. The HAL's and MCDV are not fully manned and even then they are not all crewed. The submarines can only put one real operational crew together right now, if pushed came to shove, they might bundle up a second one. Since the objective is to man the fleet as you mention above in the end state of the CSC's entry into service, then it is more than 1000 extra crew that you have to qualify, plus the then multiplication I mention above to maintain proper sea/shore ratio.
Finally, even if what you indicate was the case, it is not the way to look at it. All crewing issues come down to a breakdown of various trades and their criticality. If everyone was up to scratch in levels but the MarEng Techs were at 50 %, you still couldn't operate all the ships even if you wanted to. So each trade as to be looked at in isolation, and right now, the technical trades are definitely the ones hurting the most.
Colin Parkinson
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Good luck with that.......
But seriously you can do both simultaneously. New housing means densifying the current housing stock, meaning you have to rehouse a lot of people while doing so, or maximising the land usage on current bases. Also means a major upgrade of sewer, water, electrical systems and waste treatment plants. Plus improvements to roads and parking.
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Thats why I said deployable personnel, but the point is well made. I was going to multiply by 2. Is this issue the worst in the RCN or equivalent in all the services?
Begs the question of why not slow down and get the ship in order. If you have various ships that have severe corrosion issues maybe they need a complete reworking or need to be paid off. No easy solutions I guess
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Or accept that the bodies aren't there and stop manning ships for the Battle of Trafalgar.
On direct comparison the RCN is overmanning both the AOPS and the CSC.
Oldgateboatdriver
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The last time an admiral decided he would park the MCDV's to use their crew somewhere else, there was political hell to pay in Ottawa and it was politically reversed even though (1) the admiral was correct in his decision and (2) parking ships in harbour to properly man the ones that are left is a time honoured tradition of the Navy.
Official Ottawa doesn't like parking ships because it shines a light on their failure to properly man the fleet they themselves decided we should have.
Official Ottawa doesn't like parking ships because it shines a light on their failure to properly man the fleet they themselves decided we should have.
Oldgateboatdriver
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On direct comparison with what?
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AOPS - with the original STX design (45 All Ranks IIRC) and the Svalbard from whence it came.
CSC - with RN and RAN crewing of the same class and with other navies operating ships of similar tonnages in similar roles.
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That's theoretical, guess how many crews we actually have? Hint, a lot less then 3671 people. The CPFs being in the ditch for so long is masking it, but even with 2 year cycles with about 1/3 of the fleet in at any one point we are still sailing some with miniumum crews because that's all we have.
Trades are also important; 20 bosuns don't matter is you are short 20 martechs, and that trade is at pretty low numbers, and still losing people faster then they can recruit. People are getting promoted as soon as they hit the promotion zone, so the level of institutional experience is falling off a cliff as well. And similarly a bunch of Snr NCMs and officers doesn't make up for critical shortage on watchkeepers and jr maintainers. And NTOG, Air dets, and all the other random add on assets don't do anything for core crew required to get from A to B.
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That's not how crewing works, but our current forecast of CSC crewing is comparable to the RAN setup that also has AEGIS. That is driving massive amounts of watchkeepers and maintainers. AOPS basic crew is the same as Svalrbard; the extras are to do additional things (which the Svalrbard also does).
The ships are designed to have a certain amount of crew to properly operate, and the crew numbers are tabletopped to see if they can do what we expect in the CONOPs.
Things are already pretty automated, so that cuts down a lot of people, but also means we have to maintain the automation and remote control, which we are currently not great at due to the cost and time, as well as scheduling enough time for maintenance.
You also need somewhere to train people, so given how much we rely on recruitment because of how brutal our retention is, a lot of the extras are trainees (to the point on some ships where it's being questioned if they are actually safe).
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So we should be looking harder at taking some of the Halifax's down for some deep maintenance while dealing with these issues? Is HMCS Winnipeg in really bad shape? Is it indicative of the class?
Maybe we shouldnt get too excited about CSC #13,#14#15
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Deep maintenance is why they are getting 2 -3 year DWP cycles (which isn't even getting to everything). Each individual ship seems to be in bad shape in it's own unique way, but even the ones in 'good shape' are beaten up.
Operating ships at high ops tempo, with not enough time alongside or resources for proper repairs, as well as sailing without enough maintainers to do much is beating the hell out of them as well, with a lot of bandaid solutions and 'accepting the risk'. We've been robbing Peter to pay Paul for 30 years and now Peter and Paul are both broke and busted. The plan to get the current 12 CPFs out to CSC delivery makes Pollyanna look like a pessimist, as it's totally divorced from reality and not even close to funded or resourced.
New ships will be great, but if we don't give our proverbial nuts a tug and try and do less with the less we have, we'll just break the sailors to the point where it won't matter how many they want to build as we won't have people to crew them.