John Fedup
The Bunker Group
If $5 billion per ship (~$4 billion US) is anywhere near correct then building just 3 is a stretch. This is at SSN level cost!
Royal Canadian Navy Discussions and updates
- Thread starter stephen weist
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The problem in Canada is that most of the published defence experts are usually shills for a large defence companies. While I agree with your criticism of the article, the main argument is worth debating: Is it worthwhile for Canada to pay a massive premium to build these warships domestically?
The Constellation class is a useful comparison. Yes, there are important differences between the two, but I would argue that Constellation class provides 80-90% of CSC's capability at less than half (third/ quarter?) of the price. US shipyards are busy, but I would guess that there would be a greater chance of an existing US shipyards increasing capacity and delivering extra frigates to the RCN before we see a Irving built CSC. There are also other yards in Europe and Asia that could have provided options.
The problem in Canada is we never really considered these options - we just put all our eggs in one basket - the National Shipbuilding Strategy which may be the biggest pork barrel project in Canadian history (bipartisan at least - started by the Conservative government and continued by the Liberals; even left wing NDP has shown support because of the union jobs. Atlantic Canada also holds a lot of electoral power so they are courted by all federal parties).
Analysis: Irving gets $463M more from taxpayers for warship program | Ottawa Citizen
Canada is plagued by incompetent bureaucracy (handling procurement and overall administration of defense programs) and politicians that lack the will make meaningful changes. Our recent defence minister made some damning comments very recently about this very topic:
"Over time, we've already made very, very significant increases in the defence budget, and what we have not seen is an increase in military capacity commensurate with those budget increases," Blair said.
Blair steals a page from the Harper playbook to justify cuts to National Defence | CBC News
While he has faced some criticism I think he's right (not that I am a Blair supporter or supporter of the Liberal party). I don't think we have the competence or capacity for these types large projects. But when politicians see these issues and question whether its worth funding all we hear about is cuts by Canadian politicians who don't care about defence etc... Its a easy trope.
I was a big CSC supporter but I'm not actually sure anymore what the correct answer is. Ultimately, we in Canada have not treated defence seriously for many years now and the problems this created are becoming exposed.
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John Fedup
The Bunker Group
I agree with much of your post. I do disagree that Canada can’t get these ships built properly, just remove the pollie BS and take a page from the past, assemble a team of $1 dollar a year executives to get this done. Perhaps these executives no longer exist in the Canadian corporate environment. Even if a GoD proposed a foreign build, it would still be a minimum 60-70 billion CDN cost with at the most 20% CDN content assuming the LMC CMS330 is integrated into whatever is decided upon. Politically challenging to say the least. Frankly, if the US allowed us to purchase 8 SSNs, it would be more useful, except for delivery time.
The Constellation Class is not a useful comparison by any means.
CSC is meant to combine the Iroquois Class and Halifax into one ship, more along the lines of a Burke, minus the missile loadout.
Please understand many years have past just to get to this point, reviewed, peer reviewed by "Experts" for the needs and capabilities of Canada's Navy. The though selection process years ago where Fremm lost out did not meet the criteria.
Now is not the time to change horses. The Halifax Class are getting old and any further delay will leave Canada without any warships.
This is the capability needed for Canada. Time to pay up
This seems like and insult to all the various professionals to not call them competent. We have the capacity for these large types of incredibly complex projects. We just don't have the will to spend the money.
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John Fedup
The Bunker Group
Trying to replace two classes of vessels with a hybrid design may be part of the problem. Agree, the Constellation class isn’t the solution nor was the FREMM. Either or with a few ABs, maybe.
I thought that high-end ASW capability was a core requirement, & Constellation has a reduced ASW fit compared to ASW FREMMs. Some of that would have to be designed back in.
Certainly adds to the complexity of the project.
What adds to the cost is having two large coastlines, plus the arctic to cover.
The true cost is the ability to have 2 ships at sea continually off 2 coasts for the next 35+ years.
With the rule of 4 to 1 or even 3 to 1 ships required for every ship on active duty at sea, were looking at 12 CSC ships minimum to be relevant.
Adding to the cost is the boom or bust cycle of shipbuilding in Canada, then the pollies ...
My understanding is the Constellation class also doesn't have the tonnage available for the amount of equipment Canada needs for a single class of warship.
Reducing capability by using the Constellation Class to save money just makes no sense.
Starting over makes no sense since the Halifax will be retiring before a new design is completed. Time is running out. The last Halifax Class ship will be ancient when it is paid off in 2045. That's an old ship.
What makes sense is to pony up the money to give our sailors the right tools to do their job and come home again!
The time to change direction was a long time ago...
Your right, it doesn't make cents. It equals about 20-30 billion dollars.
The real question is: would you rather have 15 CSC as spec'd or 15 Constellation / FREMM / other foreign made multirole frigates PLUS 60 P-8's (or substitute whatever naval / military system you want)? Because that's what we are talking about here; how to get the best warfighter capability for Canada per dollar spent. Also, if we ordered now we could get hulls faster from a foreign yard than Irving would be able to deliver, I almost guarantee it.
Arguing that we need "the right tools [for Canadian soldiers / sailors] to do their job" is how we got the Cyclone naval helicopter program (edit to add: I don't mean the delays and restarts of this program which was entirely the fault of politicians. Rather choosing an orphan military system when other more widely adopted options existed). This need for extra Canadianized capability leads to delays, cost overruns and loss of confidence in the military by the public.
Also, please familiarize yourself with the recent military handgun replacement program and explain to me how it was the fault of politicians or lack of funding that caused this debacle. Matt Gurney: Canada's bid to replace WWII-era pistols a case study in government incompetence | National Post.
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Is this even a question in parliament?
Listen, it takes years to reach this point to get warships to this stage of design because of the extreme complexity.
Changing now only help our adversaries.
Again political inference is the biggest issue here
lol The Cyclone program is exactly political inference. Contracts were already signed, then PM Chretian call it a "Cadillac" cancelled the program costing 500 million in penalties then had no other choice but to go with the Cyclone.
No thanks, lets stick with naval topics.
Design?Not politics? Because CSC started if not wrong in 2008, what does it design have it harder than other ships?
Fincantieri won FFGX in April 2020. In august they started building them.
BAE in October 2018. 1.5 years of advantage and way more as a program.
How is substantially more complex CSC than the FFGX to allow such delay? We(Italians) will probably field our DDX with their 13000 tons around 2030. Is the CSC more complex than a 13k destroyer?
So how is this imputable to design complexity?
I think you missed the part of the discussion about changing to a "cheaper" design.
Like it or not this is where we are now (the embarrassing Canadian way) and changing to a supposed cheaper design at this stage of the process would be in typical Canadian fashion leave Canada with fewer ships is the water and costing as much as the original program.
The Halifax Class were built in the 90's and nearing the end of their useful lives. Add to that, if war was to break out today the Halifax class ships will be pushed hard, which will shorten their life span even more necessitating replacements sooner.
Time is against us so lets not further delay an already delayed program!
This was your time schedule 2 years ago. (From Navy.ca)
You are already completely out of Chinese window of opportunity.
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/UHO2BFUDLJJMXENVLPFQO4T5NE.jpg)
China's population to hit 'turning point' in 2026-2030 - think tank
China is expected to reach a "turning point" between 2026 and 2030 with its population plateauing or even shrinking as fewer babies mean a slow down and then a reversal in the momentum of growth, a state think tank said on Wednesday.
www.reuters.com
Give a +5 years of flexibility(2035), China isn't going to do something drastic while dealing at home with its Silver Tsunami and imploded family model (due to the urbanization and internal migrations).
And ships exist for the mission they have, Russians don't pose anymore a big threat since they will take years to recover. So the Chinese window of opportunity is the most relevant data.
Since you missed that one i would take it slowly and do a sustainable work in place of the classic big push followed by a valley of death.
Meanwhile I would considering a solution like the F-16 leasing we had in Europe decades ago.
What about leasing Constellations Frigates from the USN and in exchange you get to build blocks of it. This way the USN speeds up the FFGX program, your shipyards start already producing something and you can take your time to do a good job on the CSC with the T26.
Or does it sound like Sci-Fi? of the bad genre
John Fedup
The Bunker Group
US law will not allow a foreign shipyard to build ships for the USN. This would apply to blocks as well.
This was your time schedule 2 years ago. (From Navy.ca)
You are already completely out of Chinese window of opportunity.
China's population to hit 'turning point' in 2026-2030 - think tank
China is expected to reach a "turning point" between 2026 and 2030 with its population plateauing or even shrinking as fewer babies mean a slow down and then a reversal in the momentum of growth, a state think tank said on Wednesday.
Give a +5 years of flexibility(2035), China isn't going to do something drastic while dealing at home with its Silver Tsunami and imploded family model (due to the urbanization and internal migrations).
And ships exist for the mission they have, Russians don't pose anymore a big threat since they will take years to recover. So the Chinese window of opportunity is the most relevant data.
Since you missed that one i would take it slowly and do a sustainable work in place of the classic big push followed by a valley of death.
Meanwhile I would considering a solution like the F-16 leasing we had in Europe decades ago.
What about leasing Constellations Frigates from the USN and in exchange you get to build blocks of it. This way the USN speeds up the FFGX program, your shipyards start already producing something and you can take your time to do a good job on the CSC with the T26.
Or does it sound like Sci-Fi? of the bad genre
Let me defend the Italo-french proposal.
It wasn't underbid, and consider for example the Leonardo vs Airbus bid where the french overbid above the max budget allocated. But i dont want to enter in polemics of C-235 vs C27J (APU vs speed vs endurance vs operating cost).
The CSC FREMM proposal doing calculation wasn't that big underbid. We did a direct bidding because we had no intention to give Irving our design without any guarantee on it. It would have been a completely different story if bidded directly towards the goverment or it was the RCN that went through the designs.
But giving a competitor a design without the insurance of winning the race or that there wont be a breach of IP sounds pretty good reason to not participate in the bid.
In SEA5000 or the FFG(X) there wasn't this private middle man in a clear conflict of interest.
Seriously? You must live in a different world than me.
Putin is a bully and is doubling down in Ukraine, conducting naval exercises with China around Japan this year.
They have a fleet of nuclear submarines, nuclear powered ice breakers, Arctic bases....
They are a bigger threat now than ever before.
This is a classic choice of the politicians thinking their saving money, then complaining at the cost when starting from scratch again.
Did you notice other bidders had no problem submitting bids?
Sorry, I wouldn't touch a French proposal with any length of pole.
Here is a useful Government site showing the audit of the CSC.
Audit of the Canadian Surface Combatant Project - Canada.ca
Audit of the Canadian Surface Combatant Project
While this is from 2015 and some info is redacted, it is fairly lengthy and gives you tons of info with a good base of knowledge of the CSC project.
I started following this forum exactly for CSC and SEA5000 i remember all the progress on the program. I followed it on a day per day basis.
In your opinion @shadow99 why didnt we lowball the Australian bid or the US one? like we did for the Canadian one?
Probably because we got way bigger freedom of action in shipbuilding since we got very big orderbooks behind us. While in 2017 the UK Goverment removed BAE monopoly on shipbuilding, and 4 years before If i remember correctly they were axing jobs. To make an example. I remember writing here how Navantia workforce in Ferrol was 50% over 50 years old back in SEA5000 time and how that was a bad sign of health of the shipyard.
Ok then the market must be crazy considering how many orders they place of french ships.
In your opinion @shadow99 why didnt we lowball the Australian bid or the US one? like we did for the Canadian one?
Sorry Meriv90, maybe there's a language barrier but I'm not exactly sure what your trying to say? Do you want to re-start the program now and change to a different ship?
If so I'm curious about your plan. Do you have any details to share with us? When would you start this? What are the actual cost savings. Have you figured a way to overcome the political hurdles? What is the impact to the navy? What exactly are we getting?
Redlands18
Well-Known Member
Why was France nowhere to be seen on FFG(X), Sea 5000, CSC and the Indonesian Frigate program. The Italian FREMM design was on all 4 short lists, won the biggest, is in talks with Indonesia on 6 ships. France is very successful when they can totally dictate the terms and basically build a MOTS design, in competitions where the ships are being built in country to a heavily modified design, the Italians and Germans are running rings around them.
Ananda
The Bunker Group
Actually they did enter bid for Indonesian program. However they come with FTI, while Italian that come with their FREMM version. Rumours from those inside Indonesian defense sales circles, NG quite piss off with Fincantieri cause their cut Frenchie FTI/Belharra with FREMM.
However this is mostly I suspect because NG got wrong perception on what Indonesian MinDef looking for. Perhaps they are thinking more on countering previous Damen SIGMA proposal, and not seeing as Indonesia already shown interest with larger Odense now Babcock design for sometime. While Fincantieri see that, which is why they come out with FREMM offer. Even if Indonesia now rumours going to change the order from FREMM to PPA, still it is in similar dimensions size.
As for the flexibility on offer, this is something that also perplexed me. NG shown big effort to customize their design for India, Brazil and now Indonesian Scorpene offer. More flexibility then what I heard the German wiling to go. However not from what I heard on Frigate.