According to the Ottawa Citizen, Cabinet recently approved the purchase of 6 Arctic Patrol Vessels, at a total estimated cost of $1.8 Billion. As Dr. Rob Huebert is quoted in this article, this purchase will be worthwhile when the Coast Guard has its icebreaking capability restored. So far, no word […]
Broadsides Discussion Forum
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Sirs: The modern day Canadian Navy has no experience in Canadian Artic waters and has not operated an icebreaker in almost a half century. Furthermore if you think a gun boat will solve your problems you are mistaken. You should analyse the reasons other countries have naval vessel vessels on […]
(The conclusions, deductions and opinions expressed are those of the originator and are not to be construed as official policy of the Canadian Forces.) The government believes that more emphasis on defence of our northern territory is essential, including (as stated in their last election platform's defence policy) the acquisition […]
The navy's plan to replace the existing fleet on a one-for-one basis plus a couple of extra ships over the next 30 or so years is ambitious and very expensive. A useful number hasn't been suggested yet, but I would think it has to be around $60 billion. To a […]
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 […]
In Defence Watch an unnamed Canadian naval officer laments that the lack of progress on naval construction and refitting will result in the navy being short on "major warships," which he categorizes as destroyers and frigates, in the foreseeable future. The officer says that delaying this critical work will leave […]
Neil Reynolds, in his column "Bring back the mighty ship Labrador" (Feb. 14), writes that "Canada could very quickly deploy heavy Arctic icebreakers that function simultaneously as armed naval patrol vessels." But there is no national or military need for navy icebreakers. As Mr Reynolds notes, the Canadian navy has […]
For much of February 2007, a small group of academics that included serving and former naval officers engaged in an electronic debate on the future of Canada's defence and naval policies. What follows is an attempt to gather up the key points of that debate in the hope that they […]