By Dan Middlemiss, 10 January 2024
Recently, I was browsing through various articles and reports in an attempt to establish exactly where the CSC project stands. In the course of this review, I was struck by a couple of apparent anomalies.
First, when does Ottawa expect the Preliminary Design Review (PDR) to be completed? In a Broadsides post on 25 October 2022, David Dunlop noted an article from an industry source that Lockheed Martin expected the PDR to be completed by the end of 2022. (See, David Dunlop, CSC Preliminary Design Review (25 October 2022, https://www.navalreview.ca/2022/10/csc-preliminary-design-review/)
Then I happened across the following from DND:
“Canadian Surface Combatant: The project design progressed towards construction readiness. On 16 December 2022, the project completed Preliminary Design Review with appropriate agreed actions and is progressively transitioning towards functional design following a risk-based approach. In December 2022, the project was granted amended authorities for Definition, for work to be completed in parallel with the previously approved ship design efforts and prior to the start of Project Implementation and ship construction. The resulting authorities also included those related to Shipyard and DND Infrastructure scope....” (See, Ottawa, DND, Departmental Results Report 2022-23, p.89, https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/corporate/reports-publications/departmental-results-report/2022-23-index.html)
On 10 January 2024, John Ivison of the National Post reported that “The ship’s builders have yet to complete the preliminary design review, after which there is a critical design review and a final design review, both of which could take a year.” (See, John Ivison, “Our Navy sinks toward impotence because Ottawa can’t manage to procure ships,” National Post, 10 January 2024, https://nationalpost.com/opinion/our-navy-sinks-toward-impotence)
Confusing? We should note that no other Canadian government website has any news about the current status of the CSC PDR.
Second, Ottawa’s plan to release the latest cost updates for the CSC before the end of 2023 has not come to pass and we have no further word on when this costing update will be released. In this regard, in his aforementioned article, John Ivison states that “one industry source suggested ‘we are now perilously close to adding another digit’ – that is, rising above $100 billion. The Department of National Defence said that it will provide a formal update on costs this year but did not respond by press time to questions about whether the $100-billion barrier has been breached.”
These perplexing developments do not inspire much confidence that all branches of DND have a firm grasp on some basic details about the current status of the CSC project.
18 thoughts on “CSC Updates?”
This government is nothing more than a laughing joke about defence. I wouldn’t have them build an electric scooter. What are they designing a nuclear powered frigate? It will be green…… There is nothing like being open and transparent.
Hello Dan. Yes, this is very confusing as I knew the PDR was completed by LM before the end of 2023. Why it has not been released by the government is perhaps a mystery (or perhaps not). This government has been very secretive with regard to the CSC Frigate program from the start, so this is no different. The fact that they actually confirmed the PDR completion in their 2022-2023 report is proof of this. My question is, why has the Lockheed Martin PDR not been released yet? What has the government gained by not releasing it to the Canadian people so that we all know what the CSC Frigates’ ‘true’ capabilities will be? Perhaps that very question is the reason! Too much secretiveness and not enough openness with this government. I understand not giving out any official secrets for others to gleam however, the basic capabilities of this vessel should be known by all Canadians to see what these vessels will eventually look like. The Canadian people deserve no less! Cheers!
David,
To further muddy the waters on the PDR, in its Biannual Report to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates dated 30 December 2022, the Department of Public Works and Services Canada stated the following regarding the CSC:
“Current status:
– The base design and design team for Canada’s future surface combatant have
been determined and the contracts for this work were awarded.
– The project is currently in the design phase of the Definition Contract. The first
design activity, Requirements Reconciliation, has been substantially completed.
The second of four design phases, Preliminary Design, commenced in November
2019 and the Preliminary Design Review was conducted in December 2022. The
project will enter the third phase, Functional Design, in 2023.” (p.5)
(See, https://www.ourcommons.ca/content/Committee/441/OGGO/WebDoc/WD11908875/11908875/DepartmentOfPublicWorksAndGovernmentServices-Report-Dec%2030-2022-e.pdf)
Notice that this simple statement contains a couple of characteristic bureaucratic weasel phrases such as ‘substantially completed’, and ‘was conducted in December 2022’. To me, this could mean that there is still some fiddling going on with the basic design and that a final design is not yet settled.
Why Ottawa continues to equivocate on what should be a good news story (hey, we are making some progress!) seemingly defies easy explanation. After all, the government of Australia did announce that its Hunter-class frigate had passed the Preliminary Design Review stage, as did the government in the U.K. regarding its Type-31 warship. The world did not come to an end as a result.
In situations like this, I like to resort to my own version of Hanlon’s Razor, to wit, ‘Do not ascribe to bad intentions that which can be explained by simple incompetence’.
Government departments and agencies and their various committees and directorates seem to have their own, silo-driven variants of public communications. Few, if any, of these, seem to be centrally coordinated or regularly updated.
The result is, especially with respect to big ticket military procurements like the CSC, that the Canadian public moves through several stages with each major project: scepticism, cynicism, and finally helpless apathy. Perhaps that is way governments these days like their respective publics – uncaring and compliant.
A sad commentary on ‘open and transparent’ NSS procurement.
Hello,
I suggest the possibility of a significant reconsideration of the systems planned for these vessels, in light of observations in the Ukraine, the Black Sea and the Red Sea. The systems that had been selected as part of the earlier review might have been found to be less effective than expected.
Dropping $100B on a platform with obsolete systems might thus cause some consternation at the higher levels.
Regards!
Curious (et al),
Please go to the Broadside, “Upgrading the CSC Missile Load” and see my post from 10 Jan. It addresses some of your concerns. I fear that that the recent action in the Red Sea will force us to confront this issue of cost when dealing with certain maritime threats.
One can perhaps breathe a sigh of relief that we have no vessel in those waters. The ship’s magazines might be near-depleted by now.
No the issue was the 100’s of change orders that came in the design. Right now everything is frozen and the functional design review is ongoing and nearing completion. Even the larger amount of VLS is not going to happen until after the first three ships are built because it would delay the build even further.
Hello again Ted. Since you seem to be the ‘go-to’ subject matter expert with regard to the CSC Frigate program for the CNR Forum, is there any info that you can publicly discuss with regard to the follow-on builds once the CSC Batch I contract is signed? Will Canada go with the BAE proposal for the Australian Hunter Class Type 26 Frigates to drop-in another 64 MK 41 VLS Cells and 4 x 4 NSMs Midships and cut out the MMB & MBHS for the next Batch II of 3 or 4 CSC ships? It would make some sense to “future-proof” that as part of the FDR, right?
I will say this, any more VLS added to the design will mean a cut of other capabilities to save weight.
Agree & Got it!
No the systems and loadouts are what they are for the first three ships. This may of course change after the first three ships are built. For now the changes to the design are frozen.
I do find the lack of public updates on the overall status of the CSC program to be personally disheartening as somebody who is interested in the process. However, I would not overly read into this as some kind of lack of information with malicious purpose or otherwise incompetency. John Ivison’s article has many issues, including him claiming the preliminary design review is not complete when it has been stated to already have been completed in December, 2022.
A PDR milestone is not especially notable, so I can see why the Canadian government did not see fit to make an announcement over it. Lockheed Martin Canada has had multiple articles circulated in October of 2022 speaking about how the PDR will be completed by the end of 2022, so why go through the trouble to release what will amount to no substantive information? Go look at other countries — when they do speak about PDRs, it’s very limited and contains nothing of note besides saying the milestone is complete. There is nothing to actually release besides news that it is complete, the detailed contents of the PDR itself are not something which will be released to the public at that time, if ever.
The vast majority of the Canadian public does not care about military procurement to anywhere near the degree that enthusiasts like us do, they will shake their head at some headline talking about big numbers and military equipment before moving along with their day. I could understand why the Canadian government might be remiss to release any information considering the absolute axe-grinding exercise currently going on with the Hunter class. Canada has enough armchair admiral journalists as things stand, they do not need additional ammunition to twist around and suit their narratives.
Just before Christmas the head of the CSC program was in Halifax giving briefs about the project. The presentation of an hour was very informative and there was a two hour Q&A. Lots of information is flowing unfortunately not to the civilian world. The program is very much alive and the preliminary design review is indeed complete, functional is ongoing. Just for the OPS side alone there are major obstacles that must be overcome on the training side in regards to AEGIS.
Hello Ted. Since you seem to be “in-the-know’ with regard to the CSC Project, if the PDR is indeed completed, do you have a completion time-line for the Functional Design Review (FDR)? I would suspect by the end of 2024 but maybe later? Yes, I would agree that AEGIS software within the CSC CMS 330 would be difficult to incorporate, but not impossible. The USN security requirements with regard to AEGIS however will be the challenging part for all RCN Operator/Technical CSC training.
I wouldn’t say I’m in the know as these presentations are for whoever military who wants to go and ask questions. As for AEGIS, it’s not the integration I was referring to. First of all the current OPS construct is very different from AEGIS ships, so much so the fact that we are getting AEGIS killed the OPS trade amalgamation. There is not enough OPS trade to staff the OPS rooms of the CSC currently. Operators will have to go to the AEGIS school in the US for up to two years of training. For whatever reason we can’t keep our end up in training etc for AEGIS, the US could pull our certification and the system would be useless. Don’t be surprised that we end up sending our own personnel on US ships deployed to gain experience and US personnel posted to Canadian ships to train. Even large areas of the ship will be out of bounds to many of the crew because of AEGIS security requirements.
My question to you Ted would be: Why would we want to send Ops personnel to AEGIS schools in the US? Could we not ask for US AEGIS personnel up to Canada at the new ‘secure’ CSC Land Base to instruct our own operators on AEGIS? If indeed Canada is buying the AEGIS software for the CSC Land Base & CSC Frigates, then sending our own operators to US ships (AB Class Destroyers) to gain experience seems to be counter productive. Let’s have our own operators train on our own CSCs utilizing the CSC Frigate Land Base here first with USN personnel at the new school and aboard for training/guidance. Besides, we couldn’t afford to lose any of own operators: as you say, there are not enough of them anyway to staff a CSC OPS Room as it stands right now. If AEGIS is that secure, why would we have the CSC Land Base in the first place? This CSC Land Base in Dartmouth is supposed to be for realistic training on all systems using the CMS 330 and AEGIS software/hardware for all operators. The CSC Land Base should be up-and-running well before the first CSC Frigate come out anyway.
David, the land based testing facility is very different from a actual AEGIS trainer and school in the US. The land based testing facility is for testing the combat systems and a far cry from a full simulator or school. You may want to have a look at this link of what the US Navy has. They also train allies with AEGIS equipped ships, must be a reason right? https://www.netc.navy.mil/SCSTC-ATRC/
Are you saying Ted that all AEGIS training will have to be done at the Surface Combat Systems Training Command in the US only, for the foreseeable future for all Technical and Operator training? Why not build another AEGIS CSTC training centre here in Canada to add to the 12 the US has world-wide? There is no reason why AEGIS training could not be done here in Halifax at the new CSC Land based centre or possibly at the Ops Centre at Stadacona or at the CFMWC complex. If AEGIS security is a problem for the US, I’m sure we could upgrade any of our trainers to meet USN AEGIS requirements/standards. If, in fact, this training cannot be done here in the near-term, then let’s get our operators down there to take the AEGIS training soonest, so that our training personnel are able to train our own Techs/Operators before the first CSC Frigate is built (i.e. Train the Trainers) which we have done before. If security clearances are the problem, let’s make sure all of our Tech/Operator sailors are at least NATO Secret/Top Secret clearance or to USN standards whichever is higher.
I’m curious to know how much it’s costing the UK for their type 26 to be built .. just saying..