Procrustes, 05 July 2020. There has been a longstanding debate in Canada about the extra costs (i.e., the ‘domestic premium’) for building warships in Canada. Certainly the best exponent of the view that this premium is minimal and that comparing Canadian prices with the ship prices of foreign suppliers is […]
Broadsides Discussion Forum
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The Royal Canadian Navy is a blue-water navy - it travels around the world to play a number of roles to further Canadian foreign policy goals. It conducts operations, often with allies, such as counter-terrorism, counter-narcotics, disaster relief and capacity-building operations, as well as war-fighting exercises. What ships/boats does the […]
Procrustes, 26 June 2020. A 26 June 2020 report from Australia indicates potential problems for the Australian Hunter-class variant of the Type 26 frigate.[1] The report suggests that the ship design has become longer and heavier, largely because of the proposed new phased array radar. The report goes on to […]
The largest part of the National Shipbuilding Strategy is the construction of the Canadian Surface Combatants (CSCs). The proposed 15 CSCs are to replace the retired Iroquois-class destroyers and the current fleet of Halifax-class frigates. In January 2015 the government announced that Irving Shipbuilding had been named the prime contractor […]
It is usually a long process to procure new warships for the Royal Canadian Navy. Warships are both complex and expensive, so there are legitimate concerns about efficient use of taxpayer money. It should be noted that lengthy procurement processes do not just apply to warships - the Canadian Air […]
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 […]
Procrustes, 17 June 2020. See: "Part 1 - Future Domestic Orders" The second component of Dave Perry’s observation is not so obvious and would seem to fly in the face of one of stated goals of the National Shipbuilding Strategy (NSS), namely to seek out export markets for Canadian shipbuilders.[1] […]
Procrustes, 16 June 2020. Can the National Shipbuilding Strategy (NSS) stand a ‘mini-bust’ without the load-leveling principle wholly unraveling? That is, if skilled workers have to be laid off at Irving, Seaspan, and perhaps now Davie, for a significant period of time, can they be recalled in time to restart […]
The National Shipbuilding (Procurement) Strategy (NSS) to build ships for the Royal Canadian Navy and the Canadian Coast Guard was announced in 2010. That’s 10 years ago. So where are the ships? Some have been built but, as we’re learning, it takes a long time from the announcement that a […]
Procrustes, 08 June 2020. This is further to my earlier post about NSS contracts. An early unpublished, but apparently widely circulated, 2015 Price Waterhouse Cooper study concluded that these types of contracts create ‘perverse incentives’ for shipbuilders to drive up their labour costs to maximize their profits. It is worth […]