Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/337874
M MARITIME 18 JUNE/JULY 2014 www.vanguardcanada.com by Chris Thatcher SUBMARINES CHART A NEW COURSE FOR IN-SERVICE SUPPORT I n-service support: It wasn't the most eye-catching of the breakout sessions at Navy Outlook in April, but the topic drew a full room nonetheless – twice. As part of a new sustainment initiative, the Royal Ca- nadian Navy is seeking to develop strategic partnerships with the companies that provide ISS, creating a systems view that will significantly change the way it approaches the maintenance, repair and upgrades of its future fleets. To do that successfully the navy, other government agencies and their industry partners will require a notice- able culture change, senior RCN officials acknowledged during that session. As a result, one in-service support contract in particular is garnering much attention. It might not provide the ex- act road map to the future, but at conferences and public events across the country over the past 12 months, Vice- Admiral Mark Norman, commander of the RCN, has raised the Victoria-class submarine contract as a successful illustration of how the navy intends to approach ISS for complex vessels. "We have basically built, from nothing, a world-class support capability for a class of vessel that didn't have a support capability with it," he said in a recent interview. "And that is an enormous success. To be able to support something that didn't come with a supply chain is a real challenge. When you look at Chicoutimi as one of the most important symbols of that success, we have in es- sence taken that submarine apart from stem to stern and completely rebuilt it in Canada." The four much-maligned Victoria-class submarines have faced an endless barrage of media criticism ever since they were acquired in 1998 to replace the three Oberon-class subs: about their condition, their cost and their strategic utility to Canada's navy. But as they enter a steady state of operations – HMCS Victoria began her operational peri- od in 2011, followed by Windsor in 2012 and Chicoutimi later this year – the submarines are being talked about in a new light. And so is the Victoria-class in-service support contract, known as VISSC. "It really is in the vanguard of large in-service support contracting for complex vessels in the navy," said Blaine Duffley, the director of Maritime Equipment Program Management (Submarines). "For major combatants it is our first foray into something this large and complex. It's a model in the regard that it is allowing us to execute significant scope of work and creating in Canada an indus- trial critical mass of expertise to look after our submarines.