FWSAR (CC130H, Buffalo, C27J, V22): Status & Possibilities

[Oldgateboatdriver]

But can a Herc do this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1GUTtCiTmg

 

[MilEME09]

But can a Herc do this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1GUTtCiTmg

sure it can

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHOvoO-6nWQ

 

[Kirkhill]

or this

https://youtu.be/BjNyQvhsQE8

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

sure it can

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHOvoO-6nWQ

True. True. But if you do that in the bush, I think the Forest Fire Service may not appreciate having to send a water bomber to clean up behind you  ;D.

or this

https://youtu.be/BjNyQvhsQE8

I am pretty sure you know Chris, that the Forestal is a little more than two football fields long, so it doesn't beat a single Baseball diamond. You also know that the Forestal was going 36 Kts into the wind, giving the landing and takeoff more than a 45 Kts advantage at the time. At that rate, I think a Buffalo can almost make a vertical landing and take-off  :nod:

 

[PuckChaser]

Why CAF procurement is a joke:

http://www.nationalnewswatch.com/2016/02/03/bids-for-new-military-search-planes-needed-moving-vans-to-be-delivered-2/#.VrKX8tCgWjx

Bids for new military search planes needed moving vans to be delivered

By Murray Brewster, The Canadian Press — Feb 3 2016

OTTAWA — At least two of the companies bidding to provide Canada's long-delayed, new fixed-wing search planes had to rent moving vans to submit the tonnes of paperwork required by the bureaucrats evaluating the project.

Critics and analysts say it's a sign of how "obscenely complicated" and risk-adverse military procurement has become, despite promises by both the Liberals and Conservatives to fix the system.

The bid from Alenia Aermacchi North America weighed some 2,700 kilograms, while Airbus Defence and Space used a U-Haul van to deliver 1,500 kilograms of documents to Public Services and Procurement Canada on Jan. 11.

It's not known how big the pitch was from Embraer, the Brazilian aerospace firm that appeared to wait until the last minute to enter the race to join the $3.1-billion program.

In total, almost 100,000 pages were submitted for all of the bids.

The federal government was asking not only what kind of planes were available, but also solicited recommendations on how many planes were needed and where to station them, among other things.

Even so, former defence procurement boss Alan Williams — who oversaw the first attempt to buy the planes a decade ago — called it jaw-dropping that contractors were required to submit all that paper.

"I have no idea why anything, any kind of process, would result in that kind of paperwork," Williams said in an interview.

"I find it absolutely perverse."

Williams said he's astounded because search planes are neither jetfighters nor complex warships, both of which have countless systems and moving parts. The aircraft in the competition have flown and have a service history that is well-known.

I'm sure PSPC also has a total of 2 people assigned to read all those bid documents and evaluate, as well. FWSAR program to be delivered FOC sometime in 2045....

 

[Quirky]

The companies making these bids should come together and agree not to sell anything to Canada, just because of all the non sense. The government needs to pull their heads out of their asses.

If it takes this long to pick a relatively simple SAR aircraft I don't want to see what the fighter replacement competition will be like. Lockheed and Boeing should tell Canada to fuck off, its not worth their time to prepare hundreds of thousands of pages for a measely 60-65 jets.

 

[Kirkhill]

Even so, former defence procurement boss Alan Williams — who oversaw the first attempt to buy the planes a decade ago — called it jaw-dropping that contractors were required to submit all that paper.

"I have no idea why anything, any kind of process, would result in that kind of paperwork," Williams said in an interview.

"I find it absolutely perverse."

Really?

 

[Journeyman]

.....I don't want to see what the fighter replacement competition will be like.

Ah, but the RCAF is run by the fighter mafia, that's why CF-18 replacement is a priority and FWSAR and MH fall below badges and leather jackets.  :nod:

 

[Eye In The Sky]

The current Comd RCAF is a AirNav who flew on Herc's and as an EWO on T-33s and CE-144s.  Also, the Comd of 2 Cdn Air Div is also a Herc Air Nav by roots.  Not sure who is taking over 1 Cdn Air Div, but maybe the fighter mafia is being flanked.  8)

 

[Kirkhill]

In related news:

Maybe Coderre was right: The National Energy Board wants TransCanada to rework its application for the Energy East pipeline because the document is too hard to understand — even for experts. In a letter to TransCanada the NEB said it’s not requesting a whole new application but wants the information repackaged so they can make sense of it. The original 2014 filing was 30,000 pages long — filling 68 binders in 11 boxes — and the NEB says it’s since become even more complicated.

Trailer loads of paper do not equal informed decisions. 

And, unfortunately, piling departmental SMEs on top of each other, does nothing to improve the decision making process.

A friend of mine, in industry, once described the requirements for making a pitch in his company - 1 page, double-spaced, 14 pt.

The decision was made on that basis.  The company was owned an operated by a guy that grew one of the world's major conglomerates in less than 20 years starting from scratch.

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

No, trailer loads of paper do not equal informed decisions. But neither do they entail that the submitted material is complex or unintelligible. However, since the NEB itself wants it re-submitted because they can't make sense of it in the present case, we can assume that it is unintelligible. And the combination of massive submissions with non intelligibility is usually a good sign that the person making the submission is either incompetent or has something to hide.

On the other hand, Chris, you cannot compare your friend who works for Lord Branson at Virgin (wild guess on my part here) pitching a new idea internally with the requirements for an application for a permit made to an independent government board charged with application of a complex technical act.

That does not mean that the application must be complex, even if extensive.

I have worked on such applications before and, while they were in the hundred of thousand of pages, the actual submission was all in the first 400 to 500 page binder. The rest is the supporting documentation.

In one such case, to give you an idea on a single aspect, we had to demonstrate the reliability and environmental quality of large transformers during the preceding permit period (10 years) and that their inspections were made in accordance with the regulation. There were about 100 such transformers, each inspected annually, and with a 5 pages inspection report for each. That aspect of the submission alone thus included about 5 thousand pages. And that is just one aspect.

However, the actual reference to this in the application binder only needed ten pages. It listed in a table all one hundred transformers and indicated where you could find their inspection reports for each year in the supporting docs, followed by  a table of the 17 environmental incidents (PCB oil leaks) that had been found, listing the transformers affected, referring to the specific location in the supporting docs where the "failed" inspection reports, the related Incident Report to authorities and the Certificate from the Environment Department confirming that the remedial work had been carried out to their satisfaction could be found. 

So, I am not surprised at a 30,000 pages submission for an oil pipeline going from Alberta to Saint John (I suspect just the plans of the location of the right of ways and the proof of obtention of all the easements and "droits de passage" would be in the tens of thousand of pages). That the NEB can't make heads or tails of it however, that is surprising. You would think that TC pipelines would know how to make a proper submission.

/Digression off

Mods, since the Canada East pipeline is going to be with us for a while (NEB decision not expected before 2018) and will certainly raise issues (and political clashes :nod along the way, perhaps a new thread in the Canadian Politics category?

 

[Kirkhill]

Wrong answer on Branson

And I do understand the difference between supporting docs and an executive summary.

 

[Edward Campbell]

In at least a few of the great big projects (tens of thousands of pages of documents, etc) with which I had some involvement, the process was, really, fairly simple:

    The 25,000 pages were, in fact, in, say, 125 discrete "packages," each dealing with some specific part of the specification and each between 50 and 500 pages long. Each package went to a 'team,' sometimes just one guy, often three
    or four people. In no time at all each team had digested its "package" and produced its own one or two page summary: basically "Yes," or "No, because ...." Those 125 summaries went to the Project Manager who sorted them and produced
    his own very short summary which went up the chain to the ADM, etc. At the very top, ministers, it was a single page brief. But someone, experts, read all 25,000 pages.

We, the big we which includes DND and PWGSC and Industry Canada and, and, and everyone and his brother including the Commissioner of Official Languages, asked all the questions and insisted upon the detailed answers, so the 25,000 pages was a "self inflicted wound," but it was, really, 100+ tiny little flesh wounds that are taken by 100+ directorates and branches and agencies and the PMO, itself, so we expected the truckloads of paper and we knew how to handle them.

 

[Good2Golf]

From: Eye in the Sky
Not sure who is taking over 1 Cdn Air Div, but maybe the fighter mafia is being flanked.

The  CANFORGEN message listed MGen Drouin, a Tactical and Special Operations helicopter pilot, as the next Commander of 1 CAD, so perhaps the fighter boys' club has seen its halcyon days?

No matter, the only thing remotely " Defence-ish" about defence procurement is the lower-case "d" in defence.  Operational requirements may make the "Top 5" list on a good day, but it's about Canadian industry and how it will be strengthened/reinforced/established.

Remember, Mr. Williams, who in Washington DC in 2002 was the guy who physically signed the very first MOU committing Canada as a participant in the JSF Program, is the guy who tell us that Canada's (him, actually!) signing the MOU was for Canada's aerospace industry, and in no way committed Canada to actually buying the jets... :

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Let me put this in perspective, i worked on the site C review process, the paperwork including the Environmental Impact Studies, various studies on particular issues like dam design,ice, caribou, raptors, economics, archaeology  downstream hydrology, seismic stability ran about 60,000 pages. this is for a dam creating a 83km reservoir, downstream effects way into Alberta and with a life of roughly 200 years.

So please tell me why a buy of 5-8 planes lasting 40 years at best needs more paperwork for review than the above? 

 

[Kirkhill]

Colin

My original disgust pertaining to the paperwork was threefold:

First the source of the utterance -  Alan Williams is something other than a credible critic, for the reasons that G2G alludes to.

Second the utterance - If he is surprised by the amount of paperwork that all of these silly bugger requests generate, then it would seem unlikely that he ever had a plan for managing the responses to the requests.  And therein lies the ultimate problem with all these government projects.  Too many of the managers have little to no understanding of what they are asking or how to interpret the responses.  Thus you have "shovel ready projects" that never put a shovel to dirt, you have projects where the entire budget is spent on administration when the same amount of cash could easily have actually built something, and you have 20 year delays in acquiring ships, planes and trucks.

Third the alternative - Supporting documents are just that. They are supporting documents.  Too often they are used as cover for people unwilling to take decisions.  Ask a few more questions and the promotion board will take this cup from their hands.

I alluded to the difference in a responsive organisation positioned to take advantage of opportunities:  The boss did not expect to see all the supporting documents.  He expected that his staff had done their homework and they offered a clear, single page summary of the opportunity, the costs and the risks. 

Not every factoid that went into that summary was recorded for posterity.  Many times a lot of the information came from -what shall we call it? Transient Intelligence? - ideas picked up in conversation, mulled over with cup of coffee or a pint of beer and never committed to paper.  I'm sure it left the accountants and the lawyers frustrated that the paper trail was incomplete but the process itself was speedy, responsive and I believe very thorough as people in various departments argued their corners informally.

And if I read the tea leaves on the new government and its decision making process and gurus the love of process is only going to increase.

During the October election, Gerald Butts, the Prime Minister’s principal secretary, took a pause in the campaign to tweet a picture of a book on forecasting the future that he was buying at McGill University.

Mr. Butts has now hired one of the authors of that book to help the Prime Minister’s Office make better decisions.

“We had good long discussions about my book, about decision making,” said Dan Gardner, a former Ottawa Citizen columnist and, until yesterday, the editor of Policy Options. “I have to say, I’m really impressed with Gerry’s own capacity for self-examination, self-criticism. He’s a very astute and informed thinker.”

Mr. Gardner will not be working directly out of Langevin Block, where the rest of the Prime Minister’s Office toils, but he said he expects to be “on call” when they need an external point of view to clear their heads.

“I’m going to bring, I hope, a critical perspective, where I look at the work that’s going on, the decision-making that’s going on, and I try to apply exactly the things which I talk about in Superforecasting and my other books.”

Mr. Gardner is the author of three books that look at how to evaluate risk and what clouds the thinking and predictions of experts.

“If there’s one theme to all three books, and all of the work that I do, it’s that good decision-making requires vastly more self-criticism and self-awareness than people typically deliver,” he said.

Between resettling thousands of Syrian refugees in a short period of time to climate change policies, Mr. Gardner said he expects there will be no end to the difficult decisions facing the Liberals in the early days.

“I think it’s fair to say this is a very ambitious government.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/trudeau-hires-adviser-to-help-him-make-better-decisions/article28549451/

The Trudeau Liberals are determined to make no rash decision, to subject every important choice to rigorous critical tests — which is good, surely. But there’s a dawning political question: At what point does Solomonic mulling begin to look like dithering?

....

It is no secret the Liberal leadership team has long believed that among Stephen Harper’s chief managerial failings was the reactiveness of his office. It’s actually a problem that extends back well beyond Harper. Decisions that get made quickly, based on gut instinct or headlines or the need to put out the political fire of the moment, can often be quite bad decisions. The Mike Duffy Senate mess stemmed from a series of such decisions. As part of an effort to make its decision-making more rigorous, the PMO this week announced it has recruited Dan Gardner, a co-author with Philip Tetlock of the 2015 non-fiction book Superforecasting, to serve as a consultant.

Superforecasting is a marvelous book, as much a manual for leadership as it is an exploration of political and economic soothsaying. Among its central tenets is that gut feeling, or “tip of the nose” judgment, should never be a substitute for rigorous analysis, open-mindedness and critical thinking. It urges decision makers to subject their pending choices to a battery of systemic practices, including contrary opinion and uncertainty, to prevent their taking disastrous wrong turns such as, to name one example, the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

But as the book’s authors point out in chapter 10, The Leader’s Dilemma, “leaders can’t ruminate endlessly. They need to size up the situation, make a decision, and move on.” How to prevent decision paralysis? The authors posit a solution which, boiled down, is to delegate. The leader sets an objective, based on an overarching vision. His or her subordinates, subject-area experts, determine the best way to achieve that end. Sounds like Trudeau’s government-by-cabinet.

...

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-politics/michael-den-tandt-wishy-washy-trudeau-risks-getting-stuck-with-the-mr-dithers-tag

I am reminded of a Harvard Business Review article of the difference between Soldiers and Marines in the US vs Air Force and the Navy.  The latter were particularly rigorous in their adherence to process, which suited them well to working within large, established companies.  The former were used to making decisions based on only having, at best 70% of the situation clear before them.  They would then act and make another 70% decision based on the revised situation.

Process is necessary, and has its merits, but not if it just used as an excuse to defer decisions indefinitely out of fear of the unknown.  Somewhere along the line it is necessary to commit to a course of action and then just manage the situation as it evolves.

Or putting it another way:  Comes the time you have to roll the dice.

And I don't get any sense of dice rollers here.

"McGill's political family

Gerald Butts is one of Trudeau's most influential advisors and also a close friend. The two first met when they were students at McGill University in Montreal.

But the Liberal McGill network extends far beyond that.

Three downtown Toronto Liberal MPs were also part of the 1994 graduating class with Trudeau.

Arif Virani, Parkdale-High Park, lived one floor up from Butts in the same dorm. Julie Dabrusin, Toronto-Danforth, didn't know the Butts-Trudeau gang at McGill but got to know Virani when they both studied law at U of T. Julie Dzerowicz, MP for Davenport, also graduated in 1994. Also part of that 1994 gang: York Centre MP Michael Levitt (though he was a '93 grad).

Overall, 25 MPs are McGill grads and 21 of them are Liberals, including cabinet ministers John McCallum, Jim Carr and Catherine McKenna.

On the opposition benches, McGill grads include NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair and former Conservative minister Steven Blaney."

http://www.torontosun.com/2016/01/29/cracking-down-on-hecklers-and-the-liberal-mcgill-mafia-a-week-on-the-hill

 

[Colin Parkinson]

we are on the same page (singular) on this one. I left my job for a bit, they had someone replace me, when I returned the files and their organization was a thing of beauty, until I found a rather thick folder labelled "for decision" The guy somehow avoided having to make a decision on the files for quite sometime, sigh. that being said, it seems most of the legal challenges against the government are not so much on what it decides, but on the process to get there. I am afraid C.D. Howe would not do so well in this day and age. for defense related companies I would like to that if the tribunal rules that their appeals are frivolous in nature they are fined a significant penalty, that would leave the door open for real grievances but stop the whiny "i didn't get picked" current problems   

 

[ringo]

Canada operates 6 buffalo's and C-130 in SAR? are 5 of the C-130 also tasked as tankers?

 

[Zoomie]

6 Buffs are located in Comox - they manage to barely maintain one line of tasking (FWSAR standby).

Winnipeg, Trenton and Greenwood have the other FWSAR assets - namely CC-130H Hercules.  Each squadron will have roughly 2-3 Hercs each.  Winnipeg has CC-130H that are plumbed for AAR - they maintain this role along with a SAR role (ie two separate machines holding each task).

 

[ringo]

Thanks for reply, so is there any requirement that some of the new FWSAR aircraft to be tanker capable or will Herc tanker's retire without replacement?