It's a lot more than twice the length of the MORESBY/ANTICOSTI. It is actually, at 14,000 gross tons to MOR/ANT's 2,000, 7 times bigger. It is in fact almost the same length as a HAL but more than three times their size. In other words, this thing is huge and would only be exceeded in size by the new AOR's.
Why the offer at this time though?
Because this is Cecon's second hull, stopped at about 80 % completion.
Davie got a contract from Cecon a few years back to build three deep sea construction vessels. Highly specialized ships built to support remote construction on the sea bed for the oil and gas industry. The first one, m/v Cecon Pride, was completed and delivered in 2015 - you see a picture at the bottom of the last page of the pamphlet.
With the price of oil dropping off like fallen leaves last year, Cecon put a stop or delay order on the last two - not required at this time. So Davie find's itself holding on to a three quarter's complete deep sea construction vessel, already paid for, until Cecon re-starts the program. Perfect timing to propose doing minimal modifications to turn this vessel into a multi-purpose naval vessel, if successful buy it back from Cecon, pocket the money and still have a contract in hand for two more when Cecon re-opens the line.
Again: Smart on the part of Davie, IMHO.
By the way, Chief, Quest is actually the only one vessel it could not replace. Quest has all sorts of special treatment for noise reduction to make her able to work various acoustic equipment, which this thing does not have and would make the research useless or at least very difficult.
I see a few difficulties with the proposal in the current environment in Canada: It covers responsibilities split amongst more than one Department - and in some department (Transport, not to name it
) across different divisions - that are each their own little empires, so it would raise serious questions of "ownership", if you may.
Also, are we really in need of these capabilities at this time? I'll explore that from their list below:
The MRNSV adopts a missionized-payload approach to provide
a multi-role platform for navies and coast guards to perform a
wide variety of functions including:
> Border Patrol and Search & Rescue
It could be useful for the Coast Guard as supplementary asset in that function, but many resources already exist.
> Humanitarian and Disaster Relief (HaDR)
At 16 knots, it would take a lot of time to deploy - and which coast would you select for basing? Moreover, how frequently would it be required? Such a ship would have been useful for the Swissair disaster, but how often can we expect such thing. We had a nice deep sea diving support capability with CORMORANT before, but in a tight budget environment, she was decommissioned instead of refitted because the overall requirement did not justify the expense.
> Forward Ship Maintenance and Repair
I could see that, but again, how often would we need such capability?
> Submarine Rescue
We have not had a specific submarine rescue capability since CORMORANT was retired in 1997. There has been no pressure to replace that capability and I don't think there will be any in the future unless we greatly increase the number of submarines we operate.
> Scientific Research
I could see that, especially in the Arctic, but it is not a naval responsibility nor our area of expertise. That belong in the old Oceans and Fisheries purview (whatever they are called these days).
> Coastal Resupply
Not sure what they mean here. I don't see fuelling masts, so we are not talking RAS. If they mean re-supplying coastal towns, I think that is a TC responsibility. If they mean they could go to coastal bays and harbours, take frigates and destroyers alongside and resupply them in fuel and food, etc., I could see that being useful, but really only for Arctic deployment. Such vessel could certainly provide a great support function to the AOPS when deployed up North by combining the shop/coastal supply functions and linking St John's with Inuvik in that capacity and would reduce the pressure to build infrastructure in the North.
> Training (target launch and CQC)
Can't see that one, we already have coastal CFAV's that are much smaller, more economical to run and have only a handful of personnel required to carry that function. The ship proposed here would be overkill.
I note that there is one possible use for such ship that is not mentioned or even hinted at (and here I know I will please my friend Chris): Such ship would make one hell of a nice forward deployed offshore base for special forces. :nod:
