Well, this whole debacle began when Jean Chretien decided on a campaign whim to cancel the Cormorant acquisition. What followed was a foolish attempt to find a replacement. In the meantime, Canada lost about 400 high tech jobs in Montreal developing the back end electronics and had to pay about $500 million in cancellation fees. This what happens when you elect a jerk.
The CAF has long struggled with a lack of funding, relatively unique doctrine shaping geography and political meddling within its procurement programs. The Cyclone was subjected to all of these and suffered greatly for it. Our doctrine and geography necessitates a large, long ranged helicopter that carries all of its sensor systems independently from its warship. This is a substantial niche only really matched by the Royal Navy and their Merlin, while also obviously requiring a number of expensive, difficult and complex decisions for the aircraft itself.
The chronic lack of funding also meant not enough aircraft were purchased to equip both land and sea deployments, stretching the fleet and providing little room for losses/attrition to be absorbed. This also meant spare parts were not adequately procured and the equipment aboard the aircraft was allowed to atrophy into a questionably modern state.
Political meddling screwed the RCAF out of the most capable, off the shelf aircraft in the Merlin, so we were forced to either accept a doctrinal shift/less capable aircraft or enter into a painful process of building our own unique, bespoke orphan helicopter design.
We're effectively back at the same point where we started back during the Sea King replacement, saddled with a barely functional money pit but this time, we don't even have the spare parts and logistics chain of the Sea King to rely on.
I think a serious question needs to be raised, does the RCN/RCAF adjust their operational requirements and doctrine to fit an aircraft like the Seahawk that most of the world operates, or do we again embark upon purchasing an expensive, complex and large ASW helicopter for our specific requirements? Something needs to be done sooner rather than later, because the Cyclone is actively crippling the RCN/RCAF's ASW capability.
The same can be said for domestic construction, I feel the urgent operational requirements of the CAF should overrule the strict requirements for a domestically produced aircraft at this point.
A 70% solution with much lower costs and a wide, shared operational and developmental base might be the solution versus a 100%, bespoke and expensive platform at the end of the day here.
Leaving aside the fact that “political embarrassment” has reduced the RCN’s operational effectiveness and cost the tax payer millions for an “absolute lemon” you note the key factor which does suggest Military Off The Shelf (MOTS) is the way to go - fleet size. Compounding the issue of converting a civvy design to a specialist military mission set is the tiny fleet size. If politics had not got in the way of a Merlin HM2, they would have had some commonality with Cormorants. If we had gone with SH60’s the worldwide fleet size is enormous, allowing us to leverage the investments of other operators and the manufacturer. Even though its reputation with some users isn’t great, there are over 100 naval variants of the NH90 in use with 7 navies. We are not, and never will be special enough to operate a bespoke and unique 28 aircraft fleet, DND should have been able to compute the cost benefit analysis around that!
Well, this whole debacle began when Jean Chretien decided on a campaign whim to cancel the Cormorant acquisition. What followed was a foolish attempt to find a replacement. In the meantime, Canada lost about 400 high tech jobs in Montreal developing the back end electronics and had to pay about $500 million in cancellation fees. This what happens when you elect a jerk.
The CAF has long struggled with a lack of funding, relatively unique doctrine shaping geography and political meddling within its procurement programs. The Cyclone was subjected to all of these and suffered greatly for it. Our doctrine and geography necessitates a large, long ranged helicopter that carries all of its sensor systems independently from its warship. This is a substantial niche only really matched by the Royal Navy and their Merlin, while also obviously requiring a number of expensive, difficult and complex decisions for the aircraft itself.
The chronic lack of funding also meant not enough aircraft were purchased to equip both land and sea deployments, stretching the fleet and providing little room for losses/attrition to be absorbed. This also meant spare parts were not adequately procured and the equipment aboard the aircraft was allowed to atrophy into a questionably modern state.
Political meddling screwed the RCAF out of the most capable, off the shelf aircraft in the Merlin, so we were forced to either accept a doctrinal shift/less capable aircraft or enter into a painful process of building our own unique, bespoke orphan helicopter design.
We're effectively back at the same point where we started back during the Sea King replacement, saddled with a barely functional money pit but this time, we don't even have the spare parts and logistics chain of the Sea King to rely on.
I think a serious question needs to be raised, does the RCN/RCAF adjust their operational requirements and doctrine to fit an aircraft like the Seahawk that most of the world operates, or do we again embark upon purchasing an expensive, complex and large ASW helicopter for our specific requirements? Something needs to be done sooner rather than later, because the Cyclone is actively crippling the RCN/RCAF's ASW capability.
The same can be said for domestic construction, I feel the urgent operational requirements of the CAF should overrule the strict requirements for a domestically produced aircraft at this point.
A 70% solution with much lower costs and a wide, shared operational and developmental base might be the solution versus a 100%, bespoke and expensive platform at the end of the day here.
Leaving aside the fact that “political embarrassment” has reduced the RCN’s operational effectiveness and cost the tax payer millions for an “absolute lemon” you note the key factor which does suggest Military Off The Shelf (MOTS) is the way to go - fleet size. Compounding the issue of converting a civvy design to a specialist military mission set is the tiny fleet size. If politics had not got in the way of a Merlin HM2, they would have had some commonality with Cormorants. If we had gone with SH60’s the worldwide fleet size is enormous, allowing us to leverage the investments of other operators and the manufacturer. Even though its reputation with some users isn’t great, there are over 100 naval variants of the NH90 in use with 7 navies. We are not, and never will be special enough to operate a bespoke and unique 28 aircraft fleet, DND should have been able to compute the cost benefit analysis around that!