Residents of Halifax are sighting the Sikorsky H-92 Cylcone in flight over the Shearwater airfield and in the local area. I saw the first one last Saturday, but other residents are reporting that they have been active around the airfield for the last three weeks. The Cyclone has a distinctly […]
Ken Hansen
8 posts
Fraser McKee rightly takes me to task for not crediting the sinking of the Italian Marcello-class submarine, R.Smg. Commandante Faá di Bruno, Cdr. Aldo Enrici, CO, by HMCS Ottawa, Cdr. Edmond 'Rollo' Mainguy, CO, and HMS HARVESTER (H19), (ex-Brazilian JURUA), on 6 Nov 1940. I admit that I deliberately did not […]
The number of visits to the Broadsides Forum passed one million in August. Data has been recorded since July 2008, although the forum has been in existence since October 2007. The number of visits for the past 12-month period is over 540,000. Want to make a comment or enter into […]
Friday’s news carried a couple of stories that speculated on whether or not the Sikorsky H-92 ‘Cyclone’ helicopter deal will be cancelled. CBCNews ran a story, entitled ‘Other options’ sought for Sea King Helicopter replacements, that quoted Public Works spokesperson Amber Irwin as saying, “the government is considering other options […]
Ken Hansen’s excellent post on the subject of submarines raises important issues concerning the future of submarines in the RCN. For those of us who ‘get it’, the post hits all the right buttons, especially his comment “what if the first time our surface ships encounter a sub is when […]
Readers of this forum will know my critical position on the report “That Sinking Feeling” by Prof. Michael Byers and Mr. Stewart Webb. After serving as the lead writer for the MSPP Research Team report, published in this forum on 15 June, I wrote a fuller analysis of the Byers-Webb […]
I agree with much of Ken Hansen’s analysis. While we have indeed done badly at maintaining leading edge capabilities after purchase (note, however, exceptions of Halifax-class, CP-140, and CF-18 mid-life projects), I would not immediately accept your second point that the F-35 is entirely for conflict against a peer competitor. […]
The cost factors Ken Hansen outlines demonstrate the ongoing need for sealift. Indeed, with sealift costs being between one-tenth and one-seventieth the cost of airlift, coupled with the fact that many of our shipments to Afghanistan are routine in nature given the four year plus length of our current mission, […]