Vanguard Magazine

30 FEBRUARY/MARCH 2019 www.vanguardcanada.com Shipbuilding by Jeffrey f. CollinS I n Canadian eyes, Australian defence policy appears to be getting it right. With seemingly bipartisan support on the country's security challenges and generous defence budgets to boot, the Australian Defence Forces (ADF) have spent the last decade or more purchasing maritime patrol aircraft, amphibious assault helicopter carriers and air warfare destroy- ers. That such projects are being acquired amid a constant turnover of people in the prime minister's chair makes the contrast with Canada's ever-constant drip of pro- curement woe headlines even starker. But dig a little deeper and it becomes clear that Australia has seen its share of procurement challenges. The Seasprite he- licopter – a close parallel to Canada's Sea King replacement saga – saw an A$746 million plan to buy 11 used American he- licopters balloon to A$1.4 billion before being axed altogether in 2008 without ever a helicopter entering ADF service. Likewise, stories of competing political pressures, regionalism and demands for domestic offsets are no stranger to gov- ernments in Canberra either. As these two countries entered the 21st century they had to contend with the prospect of replacing numerous naval capabilities over the short to long term. Wanting to move past previous boom- and-bust shipbuilding cycles, both coun- tries independently committed to pursu- ing national shipbuilding plans aimed at generating sustainable naval industrial bases while equipping their fleets with the vessels they need in a timely, cost-sensitive fashion. Under both Canada's National Shipbuilding Strategy (NSS), and Austra- lia's Naval Shipbuilding Plan (NSP) tens of billions of dollars will be spent over sev- eral decades to acquire new maritime ca- pabilities. Neither country has a historical parallel for such an undertaking and nota- bly, the NSP has singled out Canada as a country for Australia to learn lessons from. While the NSS and NSP are still in their relatively early stages – the former having begun in 2010-2011, the latter in 2016- 2017 – this article contends that impor- tant insights can be gleaned from looking at how these procurement plans emerged, what they have achieved so far and what challenges they have encountered. Canada's National Shipbuilding Strategy Historical Context The National Shipbuilding Strategy is a product of both recent and longstanding shipbuilding decisions. But it took a failure in 2008 to get beyond the stand-alone shipbuilding projects of yore to a national, multi-decade shipbuild- ing strategy. The Joint Support Ships (JSS) was supposed to replace the four decades- old Protecteur-class auxiliary oil replenish- ment ships (AORs, but it came undone for several reasons: Like all previous shipbuild- ing projects in Canada it was to be a one- off build. Additional challenges came in the form of skyrocketing global shipbuilding material and labour costs of 200 per cent to 300 per cent, and inadequate shipyard infra- structure. Because of these reasons the first attempt at getting AOR replacements led to non-compliant bids. The Solution and Early Success The JSS failure necessitated a rethink on the federal government's approach to domestic shipbuilding. Both DND and the CCG knew as far back as the early 2000s that a minimum of 30 ships was needed to replace both services' aging fleets over the coming decades. This presented an opportunity. An interdepartmental National Shipbuilding Procurement Office struck in 2008-2009 in the wake of the JSS cancellation recom- mended moving beyond the boom-and- bust history of Canadian shipbuilding to a continuous-build strategy that would help avoid the inevitable economic impact of closed shipyards and lost shipbuilding skills of the country's previous project-by-proj- ect efforts. The result is the National Ship- building Procurement Strategy (NSPS), launched in June 2010. The NSPS/NSS program was broken down into combat and non-combat pack- ages, for which the initial acquisition cost was $37.7 billion for larger vessels over 1,000 tonnes. Halifax-based Irving Ship- building Inc. and Vancouver-based Seas- pan successfully competed for these pack- ages in 2011. Irving won the largest of the two pack- ages, that for combat ships, and will be building 15 new replacements for the Halifax-class frigates and the now-retired Iroquois-class destroyers, otherwise known as the Canadian Surface Combatant (CSC). In October 2018 the federal government selected a Lockheed Martin-led consor- tium using the British Type-26 design for the CSC build. The CSC project is esti- mated to cost up to $60 billion and is the single largest, most expensive procurement in Canadian history. Work is not expected to begin on the CSC until the early 2020s. Irving is also building six Arctic and Off- shore Patrol Ships (AOPS). In September Analyzing National Shipbuilding Plans in Canada and Australia 'boom and buSt'? Overcoming

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