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 speed at which it was available) compared to converting MV Asterix as an interim solution. Setting aside the question of […]
AORs/support ships
17 posts
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 lot of challenges throughout its history stemming back from its inception in 1910 and the challenges it’s facing now and […]
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 ship MV Asterix even after Seaspan builds its two Joint Support Ships (JSS). [1] The original plan was for three […]
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 statement [1] basically saying the Department did not misjudge the cost of its planned JSS from Seaspan. This is depressing […]
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 overall costs of procuring the ships from Seaspan under the National Shipbuilding Strategy (NSS), and the costs of procuring, and […]
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 AORs – HMCS Preserver and HMCS Protecteur – but both ships have now been retired. This meant that Canada had […]
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 to buy fuel and supplies, but often there is no convenient state nearby. And in sparsely populated regions like the […]
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 of the RCN’s two, previously decommissioned, Auxiliary Oiler Replenishment (AOR) vessels. The award directly supports both a significant Strong Secure […]
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 Lethality and the Importance of Ship Repair” [available at http://the strategybridge.org/the-bridge/2017-2-14/distributed-lethality-and-the-importance-of-ship-repair]. The doctrine of distributed lethality could fill an issue […]
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 for ship-to-shore transfer of large cargo, up to 60 tonnes per trip. The AOR's cranes could lower the mexeflote pontoons […]