Canada’s new wardships, the Canadian type 26 frigate variant is now expected to arrive in 2030 or 2031. Fourteen years after the original 2017 delivery date. This is of course no surprise whatsoever to anyone who has ever watched the Canadian government do military procurement. The ship building programme designed to keep Canada’s ship building companies employed however, has been unimaginably successful. A few companies will have so much work that every employee will retire before Canada has its new navy. So will every bureaucrat involved. Of course, Canada’s military procurement is famously abysmal
If the goal is to create a Canadian Navy, then first we need to cancel the National Ship-Building Strategy immediately It has certainly proven that it doesn’t work. Take your pick, incompetent government, inefficient, money wasting companies, or both, have created a system that chews up enormous amounts of money, adds to the profits of a few large companies and has delivered nothing to Canadians. Canada isn’t expected to cut steel for the first Canadian frigate until 2027 and the first ship isn’t expected to be built until some time in the 2030s. Considering the first ship was supposed to be built in 2017, I’d say that constitutes failure. Canada needs to rethink their global strategy as the UK and Australia, two of Canada’s true allies are doing
So, What to do? Scrap the Frigate program or at least reduce the number on order to no more than 4 ships maximum. Scrap the National Ship Building Program and create a built-in-Canada agreement, to purchase 20 new 110 meter Corvette sized ships for Canada’s navy. Use every available shipyard to build the ships. Partner with a company with a proven off-the-shelf design such as the Fincantieri’s Multirole Corvette or the French NAVAl group’s Gowind 2500. Both modified for Canada of course.
Why? First of all, a Multirole Corvette can do everything identified as needed roles for the new frigate. Second, Canada has no real need for a state of the art, 2 billion dollar Frigate. Canada needs a navy designed to protect Canada and Canada’s interests, not a navy designed to help the US protect their aircraft carriers.
If you think about the functions defined by the government for the type 26 frigates they are specific functions designed to protect American ‘Aircraft Carrier Battle Groups’. Command and control is one function. That actually means having command and control of the frigates screening an aircraft carrier battle group. Not command of the fleet, that is and will always be the role of an American Admiral. Command and control given to Canadian Frigates will never be more than commanding the outer anti-submarine screening force. I think that if the Americans want someone to die protecting their Admiral’s aircraft carrier it should be Americans. Another function per ported for the new frigates is Area-Air-Defence. Again, that is air defence over those same aircraft carriers. I don’t think the perceived prestige for Canada’s senior naval officers, to be part of America’s club is worth the billions of Canadian dollars Canada plans to spend on these ships.
Canadian Ship gets into a picture Yipee! I feel sorry for the fourth ship. The ship front and centre of course isn’t Canadian
Basically, our navy officers and government officials want to spend billions of tax payer dollars so that they can get an attaboy from some American Admiral or a photo op with an American fleet. I’m sorry, Canadian warships sailing along in the Pacific Ocean in precise order along with ships of other nations behind a huge American aircraft carrier, like a gaggle of ducklings behind their mother does not fill my heart with pride.
I don’t care if we don’t have the most expensive warships or the most expensive planes for that matter. I for one am not in favour of wasting money on ships we don’t need to fulfill tasks that don’t serve Canada. It’s OK by me if Canadian Navy officers command smaller ships, built to patrol and protect Canada, and sail them where Canada sends them. Corvettes are quite capable of protecting themselves and nearby civilian ships from aircraft, submarines or surface ships They are also quite capable of joining UN or NATO anti-piracy or ‘freedom of the seas’ missions. They can work with allied navies and yet they are many billions of dollars cheaper. Fifteen frigates will cost Canada 70 billion dollars or 4.6 billion each. Assuming 2021 projections. Who knows what the 2030 cost will be? Qatar is currently purchasing 4 multirole corvettes for 5 billion dollars. At that price, Canada could buy 28 corvettes for about half the current budgeted frigate dollars. These ships could, if required, be a mixture of air-defence, anti-submarine and general-purpose ships. Some, at a minor increase in cost, could even be strengthened for fully armed arctic patrols. Or, even better, buy fewer Corvettes and buy several Gotland class submarines from Sweden.
This plan would create jobs now, not in 2030 something. It would provide Canada with a new navy in short order. It would provide a Canadian navy built to protect Canada and promote Canadian policies. And, it would be much more in line with Canadian fiscal policies and budgets.
As for the National Shipbuilding strategy. The shipbuilders have had ten years of capital investment. if they know anything about business, they will take that money and the money made building Corvettes and put it into new technologies. If they don’t. if they do what they have done in the past and take profits instead, then they deserve the downturn in business that will follow. It’s not the governments job to subsidize corporations or their shareholders.
What we need now is a government that can get off their proverbial can and get something useful done. I don’t care which political party comes to their senses, I only care that one does.
