Canadian warships collide en route to Hawaii during exercise | CTV News

Well there goes 33% of the destroyer fleet.

The poor old Protecteur! I remember her when she was young! She's steaming (literally) her last miles right now, anyway. As for the Algonquin, we have no spares for her, really. Only two other 280s survive. There were/are never enough of these ships to do a real job, anyway. This is the story of our token navy.

BTW, What is that sticking out of the gash on the Algonquin's hanger? I hope that they didn't mangle one of our few precious, operable Sea Kings!

its good to see the navagators were navigating...

... and the watches are watching ...

Don't blame the guys too much. It's damn hard to concentrate on steering the boat when Gunnair is screaming in the ear of the kid at the wheel about where the missing strawberries went.

Gunny is strictly harbour patrol. They said this was the result of a towing exercise with Protecteur. I don't know about that, as my first thought was a RAS, possibly refueling gone wrong.

Harbour patrol? So that's where all those misplaced barrels of captured hash oil disappeared to.........

he's been using them as a ruminant lubricant

They probably let the third officer of the watch take the con for the towing approach and by the looks of it, he did a bang up job.

But honestly I've been through 3 collisions at sea and it really ruins your day.

Both the Iroquois' and Halifaxes are suppoed to be replaced by this;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Cla ... nt_Project

The problem is that the Navy is expensive as hell to replace hulls, unlike the Army, where you can buy 100 tanks for a couple hundred million. Replacing the fleet is going to cost the equivalent of almost two years of the entire defence budget - replacing the two AORs alone is going to cost almost $3 billion.

That's one of Canada's defence problems - the two arms most useful for maintaining our sovereignty (navy and air force) cost a fortune to equip. Either people are going to have to pay a lot more in taxes or they're going to have to do their job with less ships and planes.

Once we get to a certain point (hell we may already be there) less ships and less planes means the "job" isn't getting done.

Which is why a redefinition of The Job, that Canada's been avoiding for at least three decades, has to happen before we move forward in a proper direction. Why exactly do we need to project naval strength to the far reaches of the world when the most we do over "there" is fill a very minor support role? Can helicopters and fast patrol boats successfully take over, at a fraction of the cost, from what traditional frigates and destroyers do off our own shores? I'm not saying I support one of anything over the other but it's still a conversation that has to be had.

Once we get to a certain point (hell we may already be there) less ships and less planes means the "job" isn't getting done.

I suppose, but in the 21st century, you don't need to station a ship every few miles along your coastline - drones, satellites, sensor networks and so on can do a lot of the mundane patrol stuff that we used to use ships and planes for.

Personally, I'd like a bigger navy and air force, but with costs being what they are - and most Canadians not wanting to pay higher taxes (or give up social programs instead) - we're not left with much choice really.

I think Canada needs another White Paper on defence to properly define what future roles will be.

Are we going to try and stay a blue water navy, capable of extended operations away from home? Or are we going to just build ships to patrol our coastlines and say forget it when our allies come calling looking for assistance on the other side of the world? Whichever route we choose will influence the size and type of ships we need. The same can be said of the air force. Do we need F-35s to join in future coalition attacks? Or do we just need something to patrol our airspace?

Either way, the days of big peacetime fleets (larger than 20 major ships) in Canada are finished, no matter which party is in office. Still, it could be much worse, we could be like New Zealand, which has paid off all but two frigates.