Vanguard Magazine

8 JUNE/JULY 2016 www.vanguardcanada.com s sIt REP Wonky welds on Victoria-class subs Two of the Royal Canadian Navy's Victoria-class submarines will be confined to the dock in Es- quimalt, B.C. because each have several hun- dreds of welds that may not hold tight when the vessels dive underwater. The vessels were part of a fleet of four used diesel-electric submarines the government bought for $750 million from the United King- dom back in 1998 to replace the navy's de- commissioned Oberon-class submarines. The HMCS Chicoutimi and its sister HMCS Vic- toria will remain in Esquimalt until repairs are done, according to a briefing note for Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, which was obtained by CBC News. Since February this year, technicians had Team Spartan eyes C-27 J training facility in Comox An aerospace consortium that is pitching the Alenia-Aermacchi C-27 J military transport as Canada's new fixed-wing search and rescue plane is proposing to build a new aircraft train- ing facility in Comox, B.C. if it wins the $3 billion contract to replace the military's existing fleet of SAR aircraft. Team Spartan, which is headed by Italian aerospace company Leonardo-Finmeccanica and made up of General Dynamics Mission Sys- tems Canada, DRS Technologies Canada and other companies, announced plans to erect a three-storey, 73,000-square foot facility in Co- mox to house several instruction classrooms, an air maintenance training hangar, as well as, full-flight and sensor-operator simulator for the C-27J Spartan. The training centre and training support sys- tem will be designed, built and managed by a team of Canadian-based companies led by DRS Technologies Canada Ltd., according to Steven Lucas, former head of the Royal Canadian Air Force and now Team Spartan spokesman. Other consortiums competing for the FWSAR contract include a team led by Airbus, which is proposing the C-295, and Embraer, which is of- fering the KC-390. The FWSAR program was originally meant to replace the Air Force's remaining fleet of six DeHavilland CC-115 Buffalos and relieve the air force's fleet of CC-130 Hercules fleet of its SAR duties. The Buffalos were purchased as far back as 1967. The plan to replace them began back in 2002 with a funding of $1.3 billion for 15 new aircraft. Since then, the cost of the project has ballooned and provisions have changed. Now it is up for the companies bidding for the contract to submit in their bids the number of aircraft they believe will be needed for Canada's FWSAR operations. looked into 344 welds on Chicoutimi and found at least 30 needed to be re-welded. Technicians will also inspect 325 welds on HMCS Victoria. It is estimated that downtime on the Chicoutimi will be around eight months. Analysis of prob- lems with the Victoria could easily come up to five months. "The situation is the result of a sub-contrac- tor not performing work to required standards," the briefing document said. The submarines were designed in the late 1970s to augment Britain's nuclear submarine force. The Victoria-class was decommissioned at the end of the Cold War. Even before they reached Canadian ports, the submarines have been plagued by prob- lems and costly repairs. The series of mishaps included a fire, a colli- sion with the ocean floor, a defective engine, as well as maintenance errors. An electrical fire inside the HCMS Chicoutimi during its transit from Britain to Canada in 2004 resulted in the death of a crew member. It was only in late 2015 that the government announced that two of the submarines would be ready for operations. The main contractor for refurbishing HMCS Chicoutimi, Babcock Canada Inc., will be paying for most of the cost of inspection and repairs on the vessel, but is it not clear who will pick up the tab for the repairs on HMCS Victoria, accord- ing to the report.

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