February 17, 2023 | Local, Other Defence
OTTAWA — The head of the NATO military alliance threatened to raise the heat on Canada and other laggards on Wednesday as he called on member countries to…
September 10, 2023 | Local, Land
Thirty years ago this week, Canadian soldiers on a peacekeeping mission fought a pitched battle against Croatian forces near the town of Medak in the former Yugoslavia. Today, military members marked the anniversary of the Battle of Medak Pocket with a low-key ceremony at the national peacekeeping memorial in Ottawa.
January 6, 2020 | Local, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security
By Charlie Pinkerton; iPolitics Published on Jan 2, 2020 3:02pm Although Canada's defence minister has been tasked with working toward creating a new defence procurement agency to improve the country's often slow-moving system for purchasing military equipment, there's no clear timeline for when the new body will be put in place. In the mandate letter addressed to him by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and published last month, Harjit Sajjan was told that part of his job in this Parliament will be to “bring forward analyses and options for the creation of Defence Procurement Canada,” which the Liberals promised to advance toward in this mandate while they campaigned in the fall's election. “A lot of work has already started on (Defence Procurement Canada) and the goal of this is to make sure that we get the procurement projects done as quickly as possible to make sure the Canadian Armed Forces has what they need,” Sajjan told iPolitics the day before his mandate letter was released. Sajjan also said the Department of National Defence (DND), Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada and Public Services and Procurement Canada still need to complete “more work” before a timeline for the creation of the new procurement agency would be set. Some of the first steps of the Trudeau government to improve Canada's military procurement system was in transferring the responsibility of military procurements to being managed internally at DND. When the Liberals published its overhauled defence policy in June 2017, DND said that 70 per cent of procured projects were being delivered past their deadlines. “Cumbersome decision making and approval processes have introduced undue delays. Accountability among departments has been diffuse and at times unclear,” says the Liberals' defence policy (it's titled Strong, Secure, Engaged). As a response, the defence policy declared that DND would internally manage the contracts of all projects of under $5 million — an initiative which it said would reduce departmental approval times by 50 per cent for 80 per cent of all contracts. The defence policy is intended to lead how Canada's military operates beyond this decade. At the same time as developing the new agency for military procurement projects, Sajjan has also been tasked with choosing which company the government will choose to pay almost $20 billion to build Canada's next generation fleet of fighter jets. According to the current timeline laid out by the Canadian Armed Forces, the government will receive the final bid proposals from the three companies it deemed in 2018 as being capable of meeting Canada's needs (which includes Saab, Lockheed Martin and Boeing) early in 2020. If it sticks to its timeline, the government will pick which company will be its fighter jet provider by next year and will receive the first next generation jet as early as 2025. Sajjan's mandate letter includes another procurement-related list item; he's also tasked with advancing the renewal of Canada's naval fleet. There are four major navy procurement projects that are nearing their conclusion. Canada is buying new surface combatants, new Arctic and offshore patrol ships, new joint patrol ships and retrofitting its 12 frigates. The combined cost of these projects is expected to cost taxpayers more than $83 billion. Investments in procured projects account for a large portion of the $32 billion jump in annual defence spending that Canada is planning for by 2027. If achieved in that year, Canada's defence spending as it relates to a portion of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) would equal about 1.4 per cent. Canada currently spends just over 1.3 per cent of its GDP on its military two years ago. It has pledged to NATO to work toward spending two per cent of its GDP on its military, which is a common goal amongst allied countries. Over the past few years, U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly called on Canada to increase its military spending to surpass two per cent of GDP. Global News reported less than a month ago that Canada had multibillion-dollar discrepancies in the last two years in how much it planned to spend on its military and how much it actually spent. According to documents obtained by the publication, it had a discrepancy of $2.29 billion in military spending in 2017-2018 and a shortfall of $4.45 billion in spending last year, compared to what it outlined in its defence policy.
December 17, 2018 | Local, Naval
David Pugliese, Ottawa Citizen The Defence department has acknowledged the government's choice for a $60-billion warship program has a propulsion system that has been plagued by problems, at times shutting down entirely while at sea. But the department says it is confident the Type 26 ship, designed by the British firm BAE, meets all the requirements necessary for the Royal Canadian Navy's future fleet. The acknowledgement of the problems is contained in a Department of National Defence fact sheet that outlines potential issues with the selection of Lockheed Martin Canada, with its bid of the BAE Type 26 vessel, as the “preferred bidder” for the Canadian Surface Combatant program. That $60-billion CSC program, the largest single government purchase in Canadian history, will see the construction of 15 warships at Irving Shipbuilding in Halifax. Among the issues addressed by the DND was an outline of some potential problems with the Type 26 warship. “The British Navy has had serious issues with the propulsion system in their BAE Type 45s, both in the generator — which has caused near-total power failures — and the engines themselves,” the DND document noted. “Given it uses the same propulsion system, will this affect the CSC too?” But in the document, the DND also expressed confidence in the Type 26, adding that a design that didn't meet all the requirements would not have been considered. Until negotiations with the preferred bidder are completed, the DND can't discuss specific elements of the warship design, the department's response pointed out. Over the years, the BAE Type 45 destroyers have been plagued by problems, with the propulsion system conking out during operations and exercises. In March the British government awarded a contract to BAE worth more than $200 million to fix the problems, with the first ship to be overhauled by 2021. But a representative of the Lockheed Martin Canada-BAE team noted in an email to Postmedia that the propulsion system for the Type 26 “is fundamentally different to the Type 45 propulsion system.” “The T26 design therefore offers more propulsion options, both mechanical and electrical, and is underpinned by a greater number of propulsion engines, providing greater redundancy,” the email noted. “We are confident that the Type 26 design is the right solution for the Royal Canadian Navy and meets the requirements for the Canadian Surface Combatant.” Officials with the consortium expressed surprise at the suggestion the Type 45 issues could be linked to the Type 26 design. Negotiations with Lockheed Martin Canada on the surface combatant program have already hit a roadblock after the Canadian International Trade Tribunal ordered the Canadian government on Nov. 27 to postpone the awarding of a contract while it investigates claims the Type 26 doesn't meet the military's needs. That came after Alion, one of the firms that submitted a bid on the CSC project, filed a complaint with the trade tribunal. Alion, a U.S. firm, has also filed a legal challenge in federal court, asking for a judicial review of the decision by Irving and the Canadian government to select Lockheed Martin and the BAE design. Alion argues the Type 26 cannot meet the stated mandatory requirements, including speed, that Canada set out for the new warship and because of that should be disqualified. Alion had offered Canada the Dutch De Zeven Provinciën Air Defence and Command frigate, which the firm says meets all of Canada's requirements. The entry of the BAE Type 26 warship in the competition was controversial. Previously the Liberal government had said only mature existing designs or designs of ships already in service with other navies would be accepted, on the grounds they could be built faster and would be less risky. Unproven designs can face challenges as problems are found once the vessel is in the water and operating. But that criteria was changed and the government and Irving accepted the BAE design, though at the time it existed only on the drawing board. Construction began on the first Type 26 frigate in the summer of 2017 for Britain's Royal Navy, but it has not yet been completed. Company claims about what the Type 26 ship can do, including how fast it can go, are based on simulations or projections. The two other bidders in the Canadian program have ships actually in service with other navies so their capabilities are known. dpugliese@postmedia.com Twitter.com/davidpugliese https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/questions-raised-about-propulsion-system-on-new-canadian-warship-amid-fears-engines-could-conk-out