What a novel approach, offering notions that are readily achievable. Being a former naval person, two catch my eye. Significant pay increases would make the CAF in general more attractive, and the Navy in particular (it’s obvious compensation for those long deployments away). And the accelerated submarine acquisition should be a no-brainer. The present four Victoria-class were only ever intended to “maintain the capability”, which they have achieved, but the problems doing that speak for themselves, and now 20 years on, it’s time to get on with a replacement program. It’s crazy to try to design our own, so buying an existing offshore design is the only way to go. I hear you on “nuclear is best” (yeah, yeah, yeah) but the Navy has investigated that four times in the past, and always come to the conclusion that, yes they could operate them, but no the country will never get comfortable with the idea. And then the choice of conventional design is not that broad — the Europeans *only* need boats with short legs for their offshore approaches; for the long ranges we need to cover in three oceans, *only* the South Koreans and the Japanese have proven designs in production that we could tap into.
Great piece. Submarines are part of that sustainment problem though. The current programme was underfunded and staffed from the beginning which explains the amount of time spent alongside rather than at sea. Purchasing capability means having money to actually run and staff the systems. A larger sub fleet without substantial changes to the RCN would likely mean more of the same results we've had for the past two decades. This includes shore based infrastructure, which you also point out. The decision to base all sub refits on the West coast was an own goal that has never worked as planned.
Some excellent ideas here. A couple of them might bring us up beyond 2% quickly. The key is to sort through this and determine what is not only possible but what is needed the most — right now. (That is, if the “right now” stuff is actually available and not being sought by everyone else in NATO…)
What a novel approach, offering notions that are readily achievable. Being a former naval person, two catch my eye. Significant pay increases would make the CAF in general more attractive, and the Navy in particular (it’s obvious compensation for those long deployments away). And the accelerated submarine acquisition should be a no-brainer. The present four Victoria-class were only ever intended to “maintain the capability”, which they have achieved, but the problems doing that speak for themselves, and now 20 years on, it’s time to get on with a replacement program. It’s crazy to try to design our own, so buying an existing offshore design is the only way to go. I hear you on “nuclear is best” (yeah, yeah, yeah) but the Navy has investigated that four times in the past, and always come to the conclusion that, yes they could operate them, but no the country will never get comfortable with the idea. And then the choice of conventional design is not that broad — the Europeans *only* need boats with short legs for their offshore approaches; for the long ranges we need to cover in three oceans, *only* the South Koreans and the Japanese have proven designs in production that we could tap into.
Great piece. Submarines are part of that sustainment problem though. The current programme was underfunded and staffed from the beginning which explains the amount of time spent alongside rather than at sea. Purchasing capability means having money to actually run and staff the systems. A larger sub fleet without substantial changes to the RCN would likely mean more of the same results we've had for the past two decades. This includes shore based infrastructure, which you also point out. The decision to base all sub refits on the West coast was an own goal that has never worked as planned.
Some excellent ideas here. A couple of them might bring us up beyond 2% quickly. The key is to sort through this and determine what is not only possible but what is needed the most — right now. (That is, if the “right now” stuff is actually available and not being sought by everyone else in NATO…)