AORs/support ships – Canadian Naval Review

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 […]

Cheap and Nasty: Just What Types of Ship does the Navy Need?*

[*Originally appeared in Canadian Naval Review, Vol. 6, No. 4 (Winter 2011).] “Cheap for us and nasty for the Germans.” Winston Churchill, 1940. In this centenary year there is much […]