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AOR Replacement & the Joint Support Ship (Merged Threads)

Ex-Dragoon, why is it that you edited my post above ???
Kirkhill said:
I still don't get why the Brits, the Dutch and the Spanish can buy a boat that will transport a Battle Group's worth of kit, a Command centre, a hospital and a Helicopter maintenance facility for $160,000,000 each and we are going to spend $2,100,000,000 for 3 vessels that may be great tankers and supply the navy with all the frozen beef and Tim Hortons they can handle but on the face of it have only a half-arsed transport capability.
By the way 160,000,000 goes into 2,100,000,000 13.25 times.
As usual, the CF are getting abused. According to those figures, we could probably acquire 3 conventional AORs and 2 of those amphibious platforms for the price of the 3 JSS. Now that would give us some flexibility. But as Kirkhill mentionned, we probably have to save some CDN shipyard somewhere...
BTW Ex-Dragoon, the HMAS Tobruk is manned by both Army and Navy pers. The Sailors sail the ship, but the Traffic Tech aspects are done by a joint team of Navy and Army pers. So Army pers are actually posted to the unit.
 
Sorry Jungle when I was looking at your post I hit the Modify Tab vice Quote Tab, no worries nothing was changed.

You will also find though that HMAS Tobruk is still under naval control, at least that is what my souces in the RAN tell me.

Let me ask this of you guys, I know a lot of you are upset with what we are paying to build these ships, if we can asemble them offshore for much cheaper should we take that option and to hell with Canadian Industry?
 
Ex-Dragoon said:
Sorry Jungle when I was looking at your post I hit the Modify Tab vice Quote Tab, no worries nothing was changed.

I've done that a couple times too....

Let me ask this of you guys, I know a lot of you are upset with what we are paying to build these ships, if we can asemble them offshore for much cheaper should we take that option and to hell with Canadian Industry?

That's a toss up.   If we're doing it for political purposes; ie: to prop up regional interests and distribute political largesse - then I say no.   If we are doing it to promote and sustain neccesary skill sets and capabilites in the Defence Industrial Base, then I'd say yes.

As well, two other factors I'd want to consider is the difference in cost and the length of time of a homegrown version vs an off the shelf one.
 
I have no problem with using tax-payer dollars to support ship-yards.   Just make it an honest investment and direct it out of Industry or Infrastructure.   Don't take it out of the Defence budget.   They have got little enough to play with.

Likewise I am not thrilled with the way the new life-cycle costs are being used to "bulk-up" contracts.   The Liberals love to bundle a bunch of projects together and add them up over a long period of time so that they create the impression that they are doing something while standing in place. Better yet if they can add in third-party money, like provincial, municipal and private funds and take credit for them all as a federal investment.

Case in point, the new SH-92s.   5 Billion dollar contract.   Wow - they're spending.   Gee-Whiz Pauly's spending more than even Brian Mulroney was proposing.   Pauly definitely isn't from Shawinigan.   He's a BIG friend of the CF.   And spending all that money in the US - won't that make George happy.

Counter-spin.

5 Billion = 1.8 + 3.2 Billion

1.8 Billion for 28 choppers at roughly 64 million a copy.    3.2 Billion for 20 years of maintenance and training support including facilities.

Now while I support life-cycle costing and through-life support I am concerned that the spinning will be used by the Government to show how much they are doing and justifying how little more they can do.

On the other hand they could make the point that they are only setting aside 5 Billion out of 20 years x 13 Billion (assuming no increases) or 5/260 or less than 2% of projected spending.

I guess I will have to wait and see but between past history, burying the defence review as an internal exercise and the delay in getting a defence and foreign policy review out (both were supposed to be released this fall for discussion) I am exceedingly cynical.

Just for laughs I took the Cyclone Programme Expenditure costs and used the same ratio of Capital to Operating costs and applied them to the JSS project.  

Capital costs are 1.8/5 or 36% of the total project costs.   With the 2.1 Billion dollar JSS project that results in a total capital cost of 756 Million dollars for three vessels or about 252 Million dollars apiece.
Actually that is probably a pretty fair and reasonable price.   The question is who is going to get the 20 year maintenance contract and who is going to be given the new improved dry-dock necessary to handle a larger hull.

Having said that - if the capital cost is in the 250 Million range (maybe even 150 Million for a similar hull but without the RAS capability and more Transport space)   maybe it wouldn't boost the cost of the project so much to add another couple of hulls for Jungle and me.   Especially if they were only used occasionally for deployments and training and were manned by a skeleton crew (50 or so) or reservists.
I can't see that it would add that much to the support costs if they were not going to accumulate the number of sea-days that their sisters operating in the AOR-RAS roles would.

Gawd - if somebody would just let me be King of the World for a day................ :-\ ;) ;D :'(
 
Ex-Dragoon said:
Sorry Jungle when I was looking at your post I hit the Modify Tab vice Quote Tab, no worries nothing was changed.
No problem...

You will also find though that HMAS Tobruk is still under naval control, at least that is what my souces in the RAN tell me.
Yes, of course it is under Navy control. That is where it belongs... But a TPT ship is useless if there are no troops to transport.  ;D
Maybe this "joint" thing will be more difficult than I thought for the CF... we are used to doing our own thing, without a care for the other Services. The Army and Air force had a good thing going with the CAR, but that's all gone now.
 
Let me ask this of you guys, I know a lot of you are upset with what we are paying to build these ships, if we can asemble them offshore for much cheaper should we take that option and to heck with Canadian Industry?

Yes. Now without diving into the political realm too much, let me ask you this, did you or a member of your family design and sew your before mentioned thong? If not, why?
 
But a TPT ship is useless if there are no troops to transport.

Don't forget when not embarking troops it would be carrying fuel. spare parts and bullets for the navy so hardly useless.
 
Ex-Dragoon said:
But a TPT ship is useless if there are no troops to transport.

Don't forget when not embarking troops it would be carrying fuel. spare parts and bullets for the navy so hardly useless.
I was talking about the Tobruk...
 
Don't forget when not embarking troops it would be carrying fuel. spare parts and bullets for the navy so hardly useless.

That is the whole point.  You need them for those jobs.  They will not be available to carry troops. The army needs to know that it has reliable, available, ready transport to get what it needs to wherever it needs to be in a timely fashion.

Three of them together are just about big enough for one battle group but at least one and possibly two are likely to be away on deployment at any given time with the third possibly in for maintenance.  Are they going to come on back to Halifax or Montreal to be loaded up and leave the Navy unsupported?  Are they going to return without escort or is the Task Force going to leave station to return with them?  Or is an escort group going to have to leave Halifax or Victoria and transit out and back to pick them up before they can be loaded?

We need enough vessels that we have the capacity IDLE and READY at dockside.  Otherwise its like saying we can use the Fire Chief's pick-up truck to put out fires when he is not busy picking up the groceries.
 
The question is who is going to get the 20 year maintenance contract and who is going to be given the new improved dry-dock necessary to handle a larger hull.

I believe the graving yard in Victoria can handle something as large as being proposed with no modifications and Vancouver ship yards have a 220M floating dry dock. I haven't any idea of what Halifax or Davie (is it still around) can handle.

Washington Marine Group facilities:

Floating drydocks

220 metres (722 feet) x 45.8 metres (150 feet)
    36,000 tonne lift capacity
    Cranage to 85 tonnes

131.1 metres (430 feet) x 33.5 metres (110 feet)
    30,000 tonne lift capacity


Graving dock

347.67 metres (1140 feet) x 38.40 metres (126 feet)
Vessels up to 100,000 DWT
Cranage to 150 tonnes


Mike.
 
Kirkhill, in our largest mission in the last 20 years, how many vehicles and of what types did we deploy?

I'm just trying wrap my head around how much capacity we need to transport our non-MBT-based force.

As an example, if we bought two small Ro-Pax Ferries, would that not be able to carry and support just about anything we need to deploy?



Matthew.    ???
 
I can't answer you directly Cdn Blackshirt but when the GTS Katie was coming back from Bosnia she had on board 580 vehicles including 5 Leos and numerous other armoured vehicles as well as 390 ISO Containers according to the BBC  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/865091.stm.

Cheers.
 
mjohnston39.....at that rate it seems that both Washington Marine and MIL Davie's yard (assuming that it is in business) could handle something like the Rotterdams (178m x 28m and 12 - 16,000 tonnes displacement) or for that matter the JSS at 200m x 26m and 20,000 tonnes.

Perhaps my outrage was premature and misplaced (it has been known to happen so I am told) but I seem to recall comments at the time the JSS project was raised that Canadian yards might not be able to handle vessels of that size without considerable "investments".  Perhaps my memory, my understanding or the initial concerns were wrong - all possible.

However - it still bugs me that it seems that all of these projects require us to build up civil infrastructure at military expense.
 
It drives me friggin mad how the government forces us to account for everything even remotely related to a project when calculating the costs! If the JSS project management office needs an ergonomic chair for one of their civilian employees, it is calculated in the tally! $2.1 billion sounds like a lot which has the effect of making people (i.e. media, politicians, public) balk at the price tag, when in reality, as someone pointed out, it is less than 2% of our budget over the life of the project. Anyway, I'm just ranting about that.   >:(

What I really wanted to say was this: when I first heard of ALSC (on CID for those who know what that is), the project proposed 4 ships. At the time I thought: we should just buy three of those bad boys and use the money we would have spent on the fourth to buy this: http://www.izar.es/cgi-bin/run.dll/...Type=1016&paginaInclude=/productos/detail.jsp (Wow, that's a long address. Sorry)

Look at the dimensions and displacement. Looks alot like the JSS. I realize they will cost more but damn it would be great if we were back in the carrier game! What do you think?

Alex

 
at that rate it seems that both Washington Marine and MIL Davie's yard (assuming that it is in business) could handle something like the Rotterdams (178m x 28m and 12 - 16,000 tonnes displacement) or for that matter the JSS at 200m x 26m and 20,000 tonnes.

Thinking about this some more, it seems to me that they have the capacity to handle a build this large, but do they may not have the capability. Recently, Washigton Marine lost a bid to build 140M ferries for BC ferries because it was believed that they didn't have the capability to deliver on time and on budget. I've got a feeling that these ships will be built overseas and fitted out/refitted here.

Mike.
 
I realize they will cost more but darn it would be great if we were back in the carrier game! What do you think?

I think we have done the carrier approach to death don't you?
 
Quote
I realize they will cost more but darn it would be great if we were back in the carrier game! What do you think?

I think we have done the carrier approach to death don't you?

Agreed.
 
We should always build things in Canada.....the problem is private shipyards require constatn orders to justify maintaining facilities and staff.....we get tax dollars back from them, but they should be given frequent contracts so Canadians are employed and our technical espertise is on display....nationalized shipyards re-coup all revenue, but require the government to pay to maintain the facilities and staff.
 
I think we have done the carrier approach to death don't you?

Yeah, sorry about that. I just think it would be such a good idea. I'll try lobbying the defence minister next time I see him in the hallway (which never happens BTW)

MG
 
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