Ottawa hires retired British admiral as shipbuilding expert adviser

And of course, there were no Canadians qualified for this position.

Given the current state of the Royal Navy these British experts are the last ones we should be inviting over here to show us how to procure ships. But, given that the Liberals have come out and said they're seriously considering purchasing off the shelf ships don't be surprised if they're more hand me down British derelicts like the Upholder/Victoria class which, we'll get a deal on.

http://www.kitchenerpost.ca/news-story/ ... placement/

And here are the most likely four new Canadian Warships.


https://www.gov.uk/guidance/commercial- ... 2-frigates

Or if we really want to spend big we might just extend our budget and get something even better.

http://www.defencetalk.com/mod-conclude ... hile-3419/


To bad the Lib's don't think infrastructure spending should extent to our military shipbuilding capabilities but, if they do go off the shelf someone should send the talking heads in Fraggle rock this video before they make their minds up and buy something completely incompatible with our requirements because it was cheaper.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jvRRuW9Asc

So, Chile has nicer Frigates than we do?

Pretty much everyone does.

The problem is ours were innovative in the late 80's not so much now. If you're a maritime nation you have to have a continual building or procurement program where you replace ships at regular intervals so you don't end up having to spend billions at one fell swoop to replace ships that were cutting edge technology in their day.

Given the speed of technological advances today, when the keel is laid you're already dealing with a ship that isn't as high tech as the one sitting on the NavArc's drawing board. Just a fact of life but, like I said. Without a continual turnover in ships, the sticker shock for replacing a fleet is a definite wake up call for the taxpayers who usually aren't happy.

Unfortunately our shipbuilding and procurement programs over the last 100 years have been politically driven rather than necessity driven and we can all see the results of that philosophy with our supply ships.

Eh Canada join the RN and hire the USCG Eh you might get me lololol

We build warships so infrequently that it is no wonder that we need to bring in expertise and relearn how to design and build them. I had met one of the Admirals who drove the Frigate program. His family were friends of an old girl friend. Anyway, he is long gone, now died of old age after a bout of Alzheimer's. It's been that long since we did this.

p.s. He was CO of Protecteur when I was in the Navy, forth years ago. She was cutting edge then, as were the 280s. That was the previous time that we built ships.

We build warships so infrequently that it is no wonder that we need to bring in expertise and relearn how to design and build them. I had met one of the Admirals who drove the Frigate program. His family were friends of an old girl friend. Anyway, he is long gone, now died of old age after a bout of Alzheimer's. It's been that long since we did this.

p.s. He was CO of Protecteur when I was in the Navy, forth years ago. She was cutting edge then, as were the 280s. That was the previous time that we built ships.

He's here to procure them not design them and if we don't start designing and building replacement warships on an ongoing basis we'll be forced to buy off the shelf whether we want to or not because there'll be nobody left here to build them.



So I stand by my original statement that there are just as qualified ex Canadian Admirals whom the Gov't could have chosen from but, for some odd reason they wanted to go right back to the same people who sold us a bill of goods with the Upholder Class submarines.


As it is now we only have a couple of shipyards left with the expertise to build from scratch. They're MIL Davie and St John Shipbuilding. Long gone are the days when you'd see the builders plates from places like Yarrows Canada Victoria, Canadian Vickers Ltd. Montreal, Halifax Shipyards, Halifax, Burrard Shipyard, North Vancouver and Victoria Machinery Depot, Victoria.

You do know that Seaspan is building ships from scratch right?

Maybe Canada should simply give up this charade of playing at a military and just join the USA and acknowledge the reality that you've defaulted your national defense to us.

Then maybe we can name a couple Ford-class aircraft carriers after some PM's who deserve to have their names on something of that magnitude.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the USS John A. Macdonald...

Still the arrogant one, eh Bart? You give your fellow Americans a bad name with your false bravado and condescending comments. Maybe the USA should fix it's own problems first instead of eternally being the World Police and sticking your noses in everyone else's business. But that's too easy right? Heaven forbid you even admit your faults, never mind attempt to fix them.



No American ship would ever be worthy of having a name on it like John A. MacDonald. I got a better idea.....how about the USS BENEDICT ARNOLD? Has a nice ring to it. Or better yet, the USS RODNEY KING! Fuck, i'd give a half-ass salute to both of those.

But, to each his own, right? Far be it from this Canadian to tell someone like an American how to do something. After all, you guys know everything about everything, eh?

-J.

No, just trying to piss you off enough that you prove me wrong.

You wouldn't pass the required spelling and grammar pre-entry tests.

On some level I agree with this. Canada is essentially permanently safe because the US will not allow a single hostile foreign foot to set foot in Canada any more than it would on US soil. Or Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, or Greenland either. It's a big umbrella the US has put in place.

I've given up on Canada ever having the internal discussion on what kind of military we should have being resolved. At this stage I'm mostly convinced that the Canadian military mostly exists to give jobs to the political schmoozers from both the Liberals and Tories that inhabit DND HQ. This isn't a shot at the people in the ranks either. They're not the issue here. The issue is that Canada's military is basically the same sort of hybrid monstrosity that Homer Simpson designed for his long-lost brother Herb's car company that put them out of business because it was so awful. It can't be sustained this way but at the same time there's no end to the political and business connections that ensure it will remain a scattershot organization trying to cover all the bases instead of more logically focusing in on a handful of specialty tasks that we would most likely excel at doing.

It's not going to change from being this way, not in the short term and not in the long term. We have to accept that the baffling way Canadian politics works, from making commitments (e.g. all of six planes sent to bomb ISIS) as a way to look good on the foreign stage at NATO meetings and such to dopey military procurement/job creation programs (e.g. shipbuilding) at home that end up as boondoggles, will be a permanent existential crisis for the Canadian military. Support the troops and all that, but the politics going on in the background defy surrealism.

Sure, but Seaspan is an American Company ( Dennis Washington) and if you read the headline for their web page it says:

"Canada’s Non-Combat Shipbuilder"

http://www.seaspan.com/noncombatshipbuilder

People seem to think that if you can build a ship you can build a warship which isn't exactly true. You need alot of specialized people, equipment, facilities and contacts to be able to build warships.

Am I happy to see Seaspan operating shipyards in Canada, sure but the truth is that they'll probably never invest the money needed to upgrade their infrastructure to be capable of building warships especially since we as a country only build warships as a knee jerk reaction to having left our fleet deteriorate to the point of non existence. The only way Seaspan would get involved in warship building would be if we incorportated a program that built ships on a continual basis otherwise it isn't worth the effort for them.

So, we're pretty much stuck with MIL Davie and St.John shipyards who, if the Liberals decide to go offshore to purchase warships will likely go under or have to shift their building priorities to civilian applications giving up the cost of maintaining the expertise to build warships once every 30+ years.