*Moderator's Note: This article appeared originally under the same title in The Ottawa Citizen on 17 May 2012. It is reprinted here with the kind permission of both the author, The Ottawa Citizen and CDFAI. Watch for an expanded version of this article in a future issue of CDFAI’s quarterly journal, “The […]
UAVs
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*Moderator's Note: This article was originally published on the Strategic Forecasts (STRAFOR) forum on 5 November 2010. It is reprinted here with the author’s permission. Colin Clark is editor of DoDBuzz and Pentagon correspondent for Military.com. You can find his biography here. My thanks to CFPS Research Fellow Dr. Stan […]
The Canadian Forces took delivery of the first CP-140 Aurora maritime patrol aircraft in May 1980; the 18th and last CP-140 was delivered in August 1981. The original requirement for 24 aircraft was unilaterally reduced by the Trudeau government without a commensurate reduction in tasks to be performed. Consequently, the […]
During the past few months there has been increasing speculation that the project to upgrade the CP-140 Aurora (the Aurora Incremental Modernization Project or AIMP) would be terminated. The decision by government is expected on 20 Nov 2007. The Auroras were purchased in the early 1980's and were optimised for […]
To echo Eric's Very nicely said comments, some of the recent fast-tracked programmes have made a lot of sense: especially in comparison with the glacial slowness of many acquisition programmes during the Jean Chretien "Decade of Darkness." Opposition defence critics would prefer the purchase of the 'paper' Airbus A - […]
Today's article by David Pugiliese suggests concerns about sole sourcing may have resulted in a scuppering of plans to fast track a $500M purchase of General Atomics' MQ-1 'Predator' drones. While I fully support some of the more recent accelerated purchases made by this government, I too probably have to […]
As Denis Stairs noted in his budget article, one of the few defence announcements in the Harper government's Budget 2007 was the acceleration of $175M from fiscal year 2009-2010, to 2007-2008. This, as Stairs notes, might well reflect a looming operational bill from the Afghan mission. A recent report in […]
All three of [Peter's] criteria fit quite nicely into my definition of a simple ship and were fulfilled admirably by a USCGC cutter of 50 years ago. Endurance, utility, and environmental survivability are all easy and cheap to attain through sensible design. All of your characteristics were part of my […]
David Perry: A couple of days later, on 4 February, the Winnipeg Free Press published an editorial by Peter Haydon of Dalhousie University, that echoed some of Eric Lerhe's unpublished concerns and took a more precise maritime security approach in addition to raising concerns over the apparent savings from the […]