Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/235053
sit rep S Raven contract has navy possibilities shipyards to build the combat and non-combat packages – the report recommended Public Works capture the lessons from the request for proposal process for "future complex procurements and strategic sourcing arrangements" – it based the cost of building the Joint Support Ships, Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships and Canadian Surface Combatants on estimations during the early phase of options analysis. Those figures were then treated as a hard cap, despite increased costs over the years for raw materials, labour and military components. As a result, the AG noted that the JSS has been reduced to just two less capable ships than the three multi-role platforms originally envisioned, while the AOPS took such steps as a reduction in "top speed in order to lower the cost associated with the propulsion system and overall size of the vessel." As for CSC, the AG said the $26.2 billion budget "is insufficient to replace Canada's 3 destroyers and 12 frigates with 15 modern warships with similar capabilities...The project team's original and subsequent analyses indicate that the budget of $26.2 billion is sufficient to build only a lesser number of ships when considering the effects of inflation and other cost increases." The report did note efforts to explore cost-saving proposals. The report suggested more flexibility in how and when budgets are set, saying that while they are a useful control, "Canada may not get the military ships it needs if budgets are not subject to change." "The initial budget for each class of military ship was set years before construction will begin," the report stated. "As such, the estimates were very imprecise and should be regarded as, at most, placeholders. As the military ships are complex developmental projects, their design will be defined more precisely over time, which will result in greater certainty on the cost of the vessels. It is not realistic to expect that the original budget cap will remain the same from a project's conception to completion." The AG zeroed in on a gap that many pundits have been flagging between the ambition stated in the Canada First Defence Strategy and the cost of the capabilities required to meet it. "National Defence should continue to monitor the extent to which it will or will not meet the government's expectations for future military needs, and continue to report to ministers on expected capability gaps, allowing the government to make adjustments to expectations and capabilities." The Canadian Army has taken significant step in the development of its future family of unmanned aerial vehicles. In October, MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates of British Columbia was awarded an $11.3 million contract from National Defence to provide the Raven-B, a small UAV built by AeroVironment of California. That could also be significant for the Royal Canadian Navy. In exploring its unmanned systems options, the navy has leveraged the army's existing contracts for the Boeing Insitu ScanEagle over the past four years to demonstrate the capability on three of the deployed Halifax-class frigates. During a presentation to Unmanned Systems Canada in November, Lieutenant Commander Hamish Thom noted the Raven contract and said the navy would likely seek to "leverage into that" as well. The hand-launched remote-controlled Raven features full-motion video exploitation tools and is used by the U.S. Marine Corps and Special Forces, among many others. Combat vehicle project cancelled It might not have been a surprise, but it was not the Christmas present Nexter Systems, General Dynamics Land Systems or BAE Systems were seeking. On December 20, the federal government cancelled the Close Combat Vehicle project, putting an end to humours that had been circulating for most of 2013 about the state of the project. At a briefing in Ottawa, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, and Lieutenant-General Marquise Haines, Commander of the Canadian Army, said the decision was based on recent assessments of improved force protection capabilities across the Canadian Army, especially ongoing evaluations of the upgraded Light Armoured Vehicle (LAV). "These capability improvements, combined with an assessment of the most likely employment scenarios for the Canadian Armed Forces in the future, were the most important factors in our analysis," Lawson said. The CCV was part of the army's Family of Land Combat Vehicles and was intended to bridge a protection, mobility and firepower gap between the LAVs, which sustained significant battle damage over IED-infested terrain in Afghanistan, and the Leopard II tanks. Hainse said recent improvements in ISR and counter-IED capability as well as better TTPs (tactics, techniques and procedures) had helped change the nature of the requirement. In addition, the upgraded LAV, which is still undergoing evaluation, is "far superior to what was originally envisioned... [W]e will have...the same level of protection that the CCV would have provided." Patrick Lier, Nexter's senior vice president, challenged the suggestion that the upgraded LAV offers protection on par with the CCV. "As a company with decades of experience in producing armoured vehicles, we...are astonished by this assertion. The LAV UP simply does not provide the same level of protection or mobility. This situation also begs the question as to why the army proceeded with a second CCV request for proposals six months after it awarded GDLS the LAV UP contract in 2011. It knew the capabilities of both vehicles at that time yet decided to proceed with another RFP and engaged industry in another costly competition." He said Nexter would expect the government to "compensate bidders for the cost of their bids." Colonel Andrew Jayne, Director of Land Requirements, confirmed the protect had cost $38 million to date to manage and evaluate the bids. "That is roughly the amount of money that it would have cost us to own and sustain these vehicles for the 25 years that we expected to own them," he said. www.vanguardcanada.com DECEMBER 2013/JANUARY 2014 7