Canada's navy looks to fill fleet gap with purchase from U.S.

Linkee no workee?

Works for me... I posted a link in the Mistral thread too.

The Bainbridge and the Rainier? IIRC these were manned by a mixed crew so the manning requirements would be alot less than say, anything with the USS Designation. So maybe this is a good idea but, after working with their USNS ships for well over 30 years I'm a little sceptical about the condition of these vessel and for the record I've worked with both of them and wasn't impressed with the cleanliness or their seamanship.

But, if we can get a better deal than the ones they offered for the Spruance Class back in the 70's we'd be stupid not to go for it especially since we're just leasing them which, would mean the Americans would get them back cleaner and in better shape than they were when they lent them to us which may be one reason they're even contemplating doing this.

Here's the Rainier:

300px-USS_RAINIER_(AOE-7).jpg

And here's the Bridge:

1280px-USNS_Bridge_(T-AOE_10).jpg

One thing I wonder about though is will they leave the weapons systems on or will we have to retrofit to our own specs?

Hmm, it didn't work for me but I just copy and pasted the headline and got to the site that way.

But here we go. For me it just might be the answer if, and this is a big if, those ships are in decent shape otherwise it might turn out to be another Submarine fiasco with them spending more time welded to the jetty than at sea because, as everyone knows Navy's don't retire their best ships no matter what cost cutting measures they've had foisted on them.

I'm also wondering if that like the Spruance's they'll demand any work done on them to be done in US shipyards?

http://www.defensenews.com/article/2014 ... nactivated

According to this Bridge was taken out of service a matter of days ago and is being put into "Cat B" reserve, I imagine it'd be available sooner rather than later.

Supposedly it'll be a year before they put another one out to pasture.

As USNS ships they carry no fixed armament, but when she was USS Bridge she was equipped with two Phalanx, Sea Sparrow, among other things. We should have a couple (or six) extra Phalanx's kicking around.

And they can't be in any worse shape than ours were. Bridge was commissioned in '98. She's still young.

I say go for it, hoping that someone somewhere in DOD doesn't decide first that a billion dollars worth of Canadian "kit" has to be poured into each ship first.

Makes sense that they'd remove the weapons fit when the gave it to the Civies but then why the 30-45 Naval Personnel because years ago they had next to no mixed crew oilers? Must be the Air Crew.

I doubt that they'd let us mount our weapons on a rental unless we planned to use it on a middle east deployment which would pretty much defeat the purpose of renting them in the first place.

But on the plus side they use Gas Turbines so we'll have 4 ships worth of stokers that are already trained on the propulsion systems.

Helo detachment?

Probably.

The ships were built with positions to accommodate the Phalanx, it wouldn't be any kind of radical alternation, hell the wiring is probably still there. Plug and play. Just fixing what they "broke".

The gas turbines are the same ones we use on our frigates. There's just more of them.

Are we back to the point like in the 1930's or the Trudeau years that the guys are so short of ammunition that they have to yell out "bang! bang!" when they point their weapons during practice/drills? Ought to be nice and humiliating for whoever has to do something like that with a system as cool as the Phalanx.

Worse, right now some of them have to yell "bang bang" from imaginary ships.

Hopefully this deal with the US pans out.

This is a good idea, too bad it will probably be nixed for some odd reason (no Can-Con or something stupid like that), but really due to the fact that it will cost a few bucks.

After all, we gotta have a big surplus so Harper can dole out cuts before next year's election...