AORs/support ships – Canadian Naval Review

Reflecting on the Names of the Joint Support Ships

By Dr. Rob Huebert, 14 February 2024 As the relationship between United States and Canada continues to suffer one blow after another from the new Trump Administration, this is perhaps […]

Sea-to-Shore connectors achieve milestone

By Garry Noble, 15 November 2022 The RCN issued a news release including a video on November 1 regarding training on the Sea-to-Shore connectors https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/maple-leaf/rcn/2022/11/new-barges-bring-exciting-capability-to-the-rcn.html The two minute video shows […]

Sea to Shore Connector for JSS

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RCN Public Affairs, 26 April 2022 On April 8, 2022 the first of four Sea to Shore Connector systems completed final sea trials after being delivered to the Royal Canadian […]

Ship-to-Shore Connectors

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By Garry Noble, 12 March 2022 When the news release was published in September 2019 that the Navy would acquire 5 connectors, did anyone think it would be 26 months […]

PMO JSS attends in-water Factory Acceptance Test for Sea-to-Shore Connector

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RCN Public Affairs, 09 November 2021. The Project Management Office for the Joint Support Ship participated in a successful in-water Factory Acceptance Test for the first of four Sea-to-Shore Connector […]

NAC Briefing Note #39: Behind the Scenes & Behind the Lines

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Dr. Ann Griffiths, 27 May 2021 In the movies we see the sharp end of fighting (the teeth), but not the many people who operate behind the scenes (the tail) […]

Support Ships for the RCN

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The recent Parliamentary Budget Office report on the Joint Support Ships (JSS) made it clear that the build will cost significant money, and noted the huge difference in cost (and […]

The Navy is NOT in Crisis

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Retired RCN, 06 December 2020. A reply to the post “Canada’s Navy in Deep Crisis – 2021” I think the RCN is NOT in crisis. The RCN certainly has a […]

Supply Ships Galore!?

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Procrustes, 26 November 2020. Through Access To Information (ATI) documents, the Canadian Press reports that the Canadian Navy has planned for some time to rely upon Chantier-Davies’ converted civilian container […]

The DND Response to the PBO Supply Ships Cost Comparison

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Procrustes, 22 November 2020. Following the Parliamentary Budget Office’s (PBO) release on 17 November of its cost analysis of the government’s Joint Support Ship (JSS) program, DND immediately issued a […]

PBO Releases Cost Comparisons for Canada’s Two Supply Ships

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Dan Middlemiss, 17 November 2020. Today, Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Officer released a detailed cost projection for the two supply ships for the Canadian Navy [1]. The PBO analysis compares the […]

Support Ships for the Navy

Unless the RCN wants to rely on friends and allies, Canada needs support ships/Auxiliary Oiler Replenishment (AOR) ships when RCN ships deploy. Until about five years ago, Canada had two […]

Supplying the Navy at Sea

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How do navies get fuel, ammo, food and spare parts when they’re at sea? Naval forces often have agreements with allied or friendly states that allow them to visit ports […]

Construction contract awarded for Joint Support Ships

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On June 10, the Joint Support Ship (JSS) Build Contract was awarded to Seaspan’s Vancouver Shipyards Ltd. (VSY). This $2.4-billion contract will undertake the full construction phase for the replacement […]

AORs in the Age of Distributed Lethality

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30 March 2017. An article written by Christopher Cedros, a surface warfare office with the US Navy, sparked my earlier comment on repair containers and mexeflotes. The article is “Distributed […]

Mexeflote for Interim AOR – and Elsewhere

22 March 2017. “Mexeflote for Interim AOR” was the title of an article posted on Broadsides last September. The article proposed the interim AOR be equipped with a mexeflote-powered raft […]

Providing the Royal Canadian Navy with an Auxiliary Oiler, Replenishment

On 30 November 2015, the federal department Public Services and Procurement issued a statement (http://news.gc.ca/web/article-en.do?nid=1022609) that the government of Canada had “determined that proceeding with Project Resolve is the most […]

Naming the Joint Support Ships

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I am writing to express my concerns regarding the names announced recently for the RCN’s two future Joint Support Ships, Chateauguay and Queenston. A recent press release stated: “The names […]

Pacific Pivot

The editorial piece by Eric Lerhe in the Canadian Naval Review Vol. 9.2 [“Time for a Canadian Pacific Pivot?”] raises a real dichotomy between what is no doubt desirable and […]

A reply to Jack Granatstein about shipbuilding in Canada

Jack Granatstein, one of Canada’s foremost historians, has written a significant op-ed for the Ottawa Citizen (“National interests collide in shipbuilding strategy,” 30 October 2013). In it he quite correctly […]