Colin Parkinson
Army.ca Myth
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A video graphic of the 3D design process for the 00SV engine room block, steel to be cut shortly on this ship.
New Canadian Shipbuilding Strategy
- Thread starter GAP
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First-rate descriptive paper by Dave Perry of CGAI at Naval Association of Canada on origins and development of National Shipbuilding Strategy, as seen by insiders:
Mark
Ottawa
Mark
Ottawa
Colin Parkinson
Army.ca Myth
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We are not alone in things going sideways......
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Honestly I think things going sideways in warship procurement is generally the SOP. It's the most complicated engineering and construction endeavor that modern society can do.
You have a ship, with all the hotel and mobility services, attach to that complicated sensors, communications, and weapons. Insane when you think about it.
You have a ship, with all the hotel and mobility services, attach to that complicated sensors, communications, and weapons. Insane when you think about it.
Colin Parkinson
Army.ca Myth
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I was told recently that for Vancouver Shipyards OFSV acceptance trails Hull #1 took 4 weeks and Hull #3 only 10 days, that shows the learning curve on a new design and ship for the builder and customer.
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Is the builder getting better, or the client accepting more faults and deviations?
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Builder is getting better, trials themselves get improved (with more stuff being done alongside if possible, or done concurrently) and we're also getting more experience as a client. If there were any first of class trials those would also be cut out.
But that kind of massive learning curve at the start is typical and what was predicted about 15 years ago during NSS development. It slows down as you get better and goes to more incremental improvements, but at the very start the improvements are huge.
A good example is if you have to put together 4 ikea chairs; the first one you spend time scratching your head with the directions, second one is better and by the fourth you barely need the directions and is much faster. I guess there are way less hex keys involved with shipbuilding, but it's the same idea with learning curve. So when you switch to a table, even though it's different, your previous experience at assembling the chairs and following the directions is relevant, so it goes faster than if you had gone right to it. Same things happen between changing classes of ship; there is a productivity drop off, but it's not as bad as when you first started.
Colin Parkinson
Army.ca Myth
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Construction starts on the new Science Vessel
MilEME09
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Williams: Under this plan, Canada's new warships will never be built
DND’s position is unequivocal – and deeply flawed. The department will neither entertain a new design nor undertake a new procurement process.
ottawacitizen.com
Yet another opinion piece, though I think we would be out if our minds to restart the process. I do agree however there needs to be penalties for late delivery and delays.
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In every projects life (not just shipbuilding) there comes a time when change costs more than any deficiencies in the design/build. Perfect is the enemy of good enough. This means at some point, the CCG and RCN will just accept a ship and deal with any issues after build because its cheaper to have FMF do it or its identified as a first docked work period job (or even midlife refit job).
The politicos in power, RCN/CCG and builder will hail it a success, while the project and life cycle folks carry on in the background to fix whatever they don't like. Critics and the opposition will call it a waste or mistake. History will decide whether the ship was a success.
It's as predictable as porn.
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Yeah, I'm not buying the restarting line of reasoning. While you could argue it's a large ship and a suitable,smaller, and comparabley equipped ship similar to the Halifax Class might have been a better path to follow, I fail to see how changing paths now would save any money. Plus there is the added time lost. We've been over the cost differences on naval shipbuilding a number of times on here, enough to know that it's a bit of a fools errand
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Who knows where he got it. That's about $5 billion a year every year over the life of CSC. Even if you add in fuel, food, maintenance and salaries that is pretty extreme. Most of that comes out of different budgets then the maintenance anyway, so it's not part of the $240B pot (which he should be fully aware of as a former ADM(Mat).
Maybe if you had 15 ships fully crewed and added in all the maintenance and support costs from all the different budgets you might start sneaking up on $500M - 1B for operating costs, with some kind of mid life blip for capital upgrades. The biggest single line item is crewing, but if you have 2500-3000 sailors for the crews, we are talking maybe $200-250M? We'll probably be well below that for people anyway, so his numbers are insane.
Conveniently he now offers procurement advice from his company. Seems like a pretty blatant pull for work as a consultant, but this is the kind of BS that wastes a lot of peoples time in ballparking real costs over the life of the ship, and trying to predict the price of marine diesel in 30 years, or figure out how much the disposal costs will be in 2070 whatever before the ship is even designed. His consulting group address is a gmail contact, so seems like a pretty desparate cry for work. Betting his 'consulting group' is him, and maybe another random winger he can call in to take notes.
Hopefully the BGHs and MPs recognize this and fire his letter into the trash, but some arseclown will probably jump on this and use it as another opportunity to try and derail the project. I absolutely hate this kind of stuff, and that it gets published with zero fact checking.
Brad Sallows
Army.ca Legend
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Someone always gets fu<ked?
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With all due respect, Alan Williams is so full of 
his eyes are brown.
Something in the range of $5B per ship, over full their life-cycle, is consistent with what the government was told in the late 1980s/very early '90s when the first guesstimate for the replacement fleet was made back when the Halifax class frigates were just starting to be delivered. In fact, allowing for inflation, it is probably a bit low.
A 25 ship fleet was deemed affordable then, to a Liberal government that was intent on cutting the deficit/debt, and it is affordable now, to one that spends like a drunken sailor. That some politicians ~ and their running dogs, like Alan Williams, if I can quote a Chinese diplomat ~ say it is not is a matter of their partisan opinions, nothing more.
The costs ought not to be surprising. I've been told, by people who I believe actually know what's going on, that:
1. The $(US)1.2 billion per ship that he says the US will pay is the "sail away" cost, not the life-cycle cost; and
2. The Fincantieri $30B 'offer' was nothing but a public elations gesture aimed at muddying the waters when they knew that they were not going to be selected and bowed out in an attempt to save face.
his eyes are brown.Something in the range of $5B per ship, over full their life-cycle, is consistent with what the government was told in the late 1980s/very early '90s when the first guesstimate for the replacement fleet was made back when the Halifax class frigates were just starting to be delivered. In fact, allowing for inflation, it is probably a bit low.
A 25 ship fleet was deemed affordable then, to a Liberal government that was intent on cutting the deficit/debt, and it is affordable now, to one that spends like a drunken sailor. That some politicians ~ and their running dogs, like Alan Williams, if I can quote a Chinese diplomat ~ say it is not is a matter of their partisan opinions, nothing more.
The costs ought not to be surprising. I've been told, by people who I believe actually know what's going on, that:
1. The $(US)1.2 billion per ship that he says the US will pay is the "sail away" cost, not the life-cycle cost; and
2. The Fincantieri $30B 'offer' was nothing but a public elations gesture aimed at muddying the waters when they knew that they were not going to be selected and bowed out in an attempt to save face.
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The $1.2 billion is just the construction and some procurement costs. The US do not include things like ammo or communications in their calculations because that is Government Furnished Equipment and comes from a different budget. Like many things US military the true cost is obfuscated behind layers of bureaucracy.
The recent auditors' report into ship costs costed out the Fincantieri bid with full life cycle costs and saved a massive 4 billion or so. So yeah, their bid was political and didn't include life cycle properly either.
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The USN provides the entire combat suite and weapon systems as GSM so isn't part of the build cost. Their price is just for build, all the propulsion and hotel equipment, and some basic electronics for things like navigation radar and propulsion control system, and all the wiring and hookups for the provided equipment. That delta is the multi-billion dollar gap.
The CSC budget is about 50% for the ships, with a 25% contingency and the rest is for ammo, training, infrastructure, IP, spares, etc. None of those were in the Fincantieri bid, and also didn't meet all the other NSS requirements around things like the IRBs, which drive a lot of restrictions. Every delay we get adds a whack to the project in inflation costs, so gets worse any time we take a pause to look at stuff like this (again).
“Mr. Williams has worked as a consultant for various companies involved in the Canadian Surface Combatant project. These include Alion, Leonardo DRS, Leonardo Defence Systems, and Raytheon.”
Lockheed Martin won the competition for the Canadian Surface Combatants. Alion was a failed bidder. The Canadian Surface Combatants will use SPY-7 from Lockheed Martin. The Canadian Surface Combatants will not use AN/SPY-6 from Raytheon.
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Also from the guy who physically signed Canada up to the F-35 JSF Program, yet years later tried to convince many that “it didn’t mean we had to buy the aircraft itself...”
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