Remarks on upcoming ship construction program
by Dan Ross, ADM (MAT) to DEFSEC 2010
We went to government and said, effectively, the way we've been doing ship-building is not going to work out for us very well. Wait 25 years. Throw the RFQ over the wall. See what happens. You get eye-watering prices. You get shipyards that haven't touched a warship and that's not their fault, that's a fact of life.
The Coast Guard needed about 45 ships built, the navy needs about 35 built so we went to the government and said, look, everyone else in the world has kind of rationalized how they are building large ships for their federal fleet and we need to think about that.
And so we said, sort of the most efficient model is one shipyard builds big ships. For a bunch of reasons, that's not practical. We should have two, one for the combat ships, one for the non-combat ships, over 1,000 tons and then look after the other shipyards. Look after the smaller shipyards that normally have the smaller business by saying those two big guys don't get to play in the small stuff. And actually, for a small yard that builds up to 500 tons, they get their grass cut by the guys that are bigger and more efficient, and it provides a better spread of opportunity out there.
So we've had two industry days, one about two weeks ago, the last about two weeks ago, there will be a statement of interest and qualification, a single statement of qualification going out shortly. Then we'll ask Canadian shipyards to self-identify with interest one or more of those packages, one package being Arctic patrol ships and warships, the other package being the Joint Support Ship and a Coast Guard program of ice-breakers, science vessels, et cetera, which will be followed by a request for proposal early next year, in which we will do a formal evaluation of capacity, experience, depth, technical of the two most suitable yards to proceed with those two packages' build, with a long-term relationship with those two yards, and then we would negotiate long-term agreements we call umbrella agreements with the two yards.
And individual ship projects, Joint Support Ships or AOPS, for example, would be negotiated directly with that yard. In this case, the warships, the combat ships, the Arctic patrol ship is designed to be a warm-up for that yard, and we would go directly to negotiate the construction of those six to eight Arctic patrol ships.
[Mr. Ross explained each of the major navy shipbuilding projects - Joint Support Ship, Arctic Offshore Patrol Ship, Canadian Surface Combatant]:
Joint Support Ship had a false start. Obviously we hadn't contracted for a warship since the Halifax class had been delivered, prices were not appropriate to our budget, so we have reannounced that. That occurred this past summer. Actually we announced that here in Halifax, and it will be the first ship going into what we call package B.
Arctic offshore patrol vessel. Well advanced. A very good design, tested. There has been large scale model testing done. Designed to break ice and to be a stable enough platform to do patrolling off the east coast in bad weather that's typical of this part of the world. Similar in size probably to about five or six thousand tons. That's about as small as you can get it to be able to do that. But well advanced. Project is in final stage and we need a shipyard to talk to.
And the Canadian Surface Combatant. Up to fifteen warships, probably replacing the DDH280 destroyers first, followed by frigate and these are literally ten years away which will follow the Halifax class modernization program that Washington Group, Irving and Lockheed Martin are well advanced in, so about 2020 you will see the first new class of warship being delivered.
[on the Halifax class modernization] HMCS Halifax is due to come out of the water here in town by the end of this month and go into Irving's yard and be stripped down there for a major refit and a modernization of most of its systems and a complete replacement of its radar and command and control capacity on those frigates. And they will be a very, very capable combat platform to run another ten years.
QUESTION AND ANSWER session:
Q: Why is AOPS in the combat ship package?
ROSS: Deliberately in the combat ships systems package, for a couple of reasons. One, it's a combat ship. It will have weaponry of a navy ship with a gun on the front and a navy helicopter. They will be able to do land, boarding parties, shore parties. They'll have small landing craft capability of a combat ship. It'll be commercial standards but probably look and feel like a frigate, but the key reason is, we wanted to warm up the first yard, the combat ship yard. If you're going to leave that yard inactive until you're building your first warship seven or eight years from now, you're going into high-risk with a very expensive platform which is the same size as AOPS. We see a frigate or frigate replacement at five to six thousand tons - the AOPS is five to six thousand tons, six to eight ships. And we're ready to go get that package started , get that shipyard into a place of efficiency and then go into our higher risk, more complex warship in that same yard. Clearly we thought that made the best sense for that package. The other package is also based on the size. Joint Support Ships are big. Icebreakers are big. And they clearly are commercial standards although the JSS does have a gun on the front, but you know, it's not a patrol ship, it's not out potentially doing a patrol combat role. And it had to be in that package.
And we wanted the packages to be balanced so we had approximately the same work in terms of Canadian shipyard hours in the two packages because the warships are complex, but a whole bunch of that money is not Canadian money. It's your weapons systems coming in from the weapons systems integrator, normally offshore, so we wanted balanced packages and would start roughly at the same time, and we wanted to warm up and get the shipyards as efficient as possible at the same time. That's a long answer but a lot of thought went into that.
