The launching of a new maritime studies centre (The Corbett Centre for Maritime Policy Studies) within the Joint Services Command and Staff College, at Shrivenham in Wiltshire, is a fascinating development. Just at the Canadian Forces College in Toronto is deleting the Maritime Component Programme (as well as the Land […]
Afghanistan
20 posts
The problem [of acquiring nuclear submarines, as suggested by Keith Spicer,] is not so much the acquisition cost as it is the cost of training, infrastructure and operating the boats. The political aspects cannot be ignored either. The result I suspect is that the nuclear submarine becomes as onerous to […]
A major maritime terror incident is inevitable; it is merely a matter of where and when. Why is this? The answers are fairly simple. First, let us not be naive about Islamic terrorism; its aims are to destroy Western society, destabilize the Western economy, and instill terror in the citizens […]
The cost factors Ken Hansen outlines demonstrate the ongoing need for sealift. Indeed, with sealift costs being between one-tenth and one-seventieth the cost of airlift, coupled with the fact that many of our shipments to Afghanistan are routine in nature given the four year plus length of our current mission, […]
This plan (David Pugliese, "Forces to lease supply ship", Daily News 18 July 2007, p.12) to charter a cargo ship for a period of a year or more was described in a presentation at the Maritime Security Conference by Lieutenant-Colonel Martha Stouffer from Canadian Operational Support Command, which was entitled […]
Both political parties in the United States have recognized three key elements of a balanced defence policy. First, despite the high costs of their Iraq and Afghanistan commitment, their leaders recognize you must retain a viable navy for all the other security challenges likely to arise. Second, with a building […]
The report of the arrival of France's F.N. Tonnerre in Halifax should raise some issues for Canada. Tonnerre is a four-in-one vessel - helicopter carrier, hospital ship, command ship, and amphibious ship - that might have been a potential contender for the "Big Honking Ship" once touted by no less […]
The Canadian navy's sea-lift capacity has been mentioned previously in these quarters, in the context of the rumoured Conservative plan to pay-off the existing Protecteur-class replenishment ships a full two years before their replacements, the Joint Support Ships come into service. This issue resurfaced, indirectly, in Eric Lerhe's comments about […]
As we wonder what the next budget will bring for naval forces in Canada, we might ask if the present fixation on joint and expeditionary warfare is/is not blinding us to more long standing and traditional maritime concerns. Perhaps it is timely to see what the "other guy" is thinking. […]
On February 22, 2008, the Ottawa Citizen published an anonymous letter, entitled "Navy Capabilities Slide While Government Sits Idle", attributed to a serving Canadian Naval Officer in David Pugliese's Defence Watch column. Mr. Pugliese thought it would be controversial and judging from the number of comments posted to the web […]