My dad knew a guy in Lahr who was one jump shy of his jump wings from the CF-104. This was pointed out once in the mess by a drunk RCR officer after the said pilot got a skin to skin kill on a Cessna. Apparently that didn’t go over well with the members of the squadron who were present in the mess at that time.
RUMINT of Canada wanting more C-17's
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Built 1984, currently at VDC getting a bit of a refit
Oldgateboatdriver
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Good ol' JPT. She is still around then! Toured her many years ago. Nice vessel.
I’m not surprised as governments have not been keen to spend on CCGS same as the CAF as they haven’t seen any voting advantage. Look at Louis St.Laurent may be replaced in 6 or 7 years. I just expect that none government ships to be replaced sooner as they become less efficient and maintenance heavy.Built 1984, currently at VDC getting a bit of a refit
quadrapiper
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She's a silent indictment of BCF's practices.They are about 20 years old. For merchant ships, and ferries in particular, it's not even mid-life yet.
Look at this young spry who plies her route in B.C. and Washington state. She was "old" when I joined the Navy and is still going strong:
MV Coho - Wikipedia
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quadrapiper
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KevinB
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Seeing what got done for the C-5M modernization effort - the entire airframe got digital models made - so it would be a vastly easier line to re-open than aircraft that where not done with digital modeling (and surprisingly enough a lot of modern stuff was not).
Is it surprising, though?
A lot of "modern stuff" was designed in the late 70's, 80's and 90's & has just been updated/modernized over the decades.
That's actually so damn cool, that it's still in service today
Imagine how many people have sat in the very same seats as the heroes that fought a physical manifestation of literal evil (in conditions that even the Russian-Ukranian war can't quite match) and haven't even known it
(Also a testimate to the workmanship of the era & any subsequent refits that not only is she still in service, but seems to be looking pretty good too in that pic!)
KevinB
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I was really shocked when I found out that the UH-60 had just been converted over to digital production in the last 2 years.
You mean the place where the Army decided to build right at the end of the runway, rendering a whole bunch of existing infrastructure investment useless for future air operations?
There's a reason that MOB West for the tankers is looking at Edmonton International and not CFB Edmonton.
Exactly. If the complaint is about why there isn't a bunch of air hubs all over the place, some of the folks really need to go back to basic training and learn the basic principles again. Economy of effort being one of them.
Nobody said it was a replacement for the C-17. But there's a shorter list of things that can only be moved by the C-17 and even shorter list from that list of things which actually get moved by C-17 in real life. How often do you think we move large armoured vehicles by air?
Unless our national level doctrine changes substantially, we don't resource our air mobility to do things like what the Americans do. For example, they plan to airlift a Stryker brigade in 96 hrs. That requires a whackload of C-17s. Put that down somewhere in our doctrine and the RCAF will plan for it. But till that happens, the majority of cargo that gets moved by the RCAF is bulk cargo, which can mostly be moved intertheater by 330, 130J or C17. For us, even if the C-17 fleet doubled, every effort would be made to avoid putting too much routine reliance on the C-17.
The reason to double the C-17 fleet size to 10-11 frames is that it lets us template against some things that the RAF and USAF do tactically with their C-17s. But we're most certainly not going to buying more C-17s just to move Leopards between Gagetown and Latvia on a routine swap.
Yeah. But unless you want ineffective personnel, there's no way to get around the training system by a steady ramp. That ramp is actually being worked on. But it's going to take a few years. In the meantime buying more aircraft doesn't actually help. It's resources you could be using on training instead of spending on hangar queens.
Doubling a fleet will do that and even out the workload. Going to like 20 C-17s is a whole other matter. All you end up doing is creating a larger maintenance burden relative to the YFR you're generating. There's a cost to even keeping aircraft parked.
KevinB
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20 C-17 would allow for a Light BattleGroup to be moved within a reasonable time frame, and provide the ability to move the BN sized GRTF worldwide in 72hrs while also allowing for other operations to continue.
Of course the requirement would need to come from the Army and funds allocated from the Army to support something like that.
*Irrelevant anyway as Boeing isn’t willing to re-open the line without a 80+ airframe order either. Short of us seeking to replace a lot of airframe in the 256 ish we hold, there isn’t the global demand for that many. Airbus is much more likely to come up with a design at this point as few want to spend money on American kit that can be replicated in Europe.
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And, as with the RoRo shipping requirement I would subsidize the purchase and operation of the C17s by civilian carriers to open access to the Canadian north.
Enhance the civil fleets and engage willing crew in the reserves.
Enhance the civil fleets and engage willing crew in the reserves.
Or, just to step outside the conventional resourcing/tasking box ... how about dual-use lifters - alternating between RCAF in the spring and winter, and a national fire-fighting airtanker fleet in the summer and fall ??
