August 16, 2021 | Local, Aerospace
Modernization of military surveillance aircraft fleet delayed as $52 million more needed for project
DND spokesman Dan Le Bouthillier said $52 million will be provided to companies so the project can be completed.
October 25, 2018 | Local, Naval, Security
'Interim' icebreakers to be used for decades
OTTAWA — The Canadian Coast Guard says three "interim" icebreakers that were recently purchased without a competition will be used for the next 15 to 20 years.
Coast guard officials revealed the timeframe in interviews with The Canadian Press while playing down concerns about the state of their aging fleet — and the challenges in building replacements.
The government in August agreed to sole-sourcing the purchase of three used icebreakers from Davie Shipbuilding for $610 million, saying a stop-gap was needed until replacements could be built.
The deal represented a win for the Quebec-based shipyard, which had been lobbying hard for additional federal work, and should ease pressure on the coast guard's icebreaking fleet.
The coast guard's existing vessels are on average more than 35 years old and have lost hundreds of operational days over the past few years due to mechanical breakdowns.
Yet there are no immediate plans to replace them; the government's multibillion-dollar shipbuilding plan includes only one new heavy icebreaker, which won't be ready until the next decade.
Deputy Commissioner Andy Smith, who is overseeing the shipbuilding plan for the coast guard, said the service is instead in the midst of extending the life of its current fleet another 20 years — during which it will rely on the Davie ships to fill any gaps.
"The icebreakers that we recently purchased were envisioned to backfill behind those various ships as we put them into a refit or an extended maintenance period," Smith said in an interview.
"And we have mapped that out over 20 years."
Deputy Commissioner Mario Pelletier, who is responsible for coast guard operations, confirmed that time period in a separate interview, saying: "I would expect that we're going to have them for 15, 20 years.
"The urgent need is just to make sure we do have a surge capacity to backfill when those ships come out of service," he added.
While few would argue the need for additional icebreakers, the timeline has nevertheless resulted in fresh criticism of the country's procurement system — and questions about the shipbuilding plan.
The federal government previously purchased "interim" icebreakers in the 1980s and those vessels are still in use, said Rob Huebert, an expert on the Arctic at the University of Calgary.
That, plus the absence of any real plan to replace the majority of the coast guard's icebreakers, leads Huebert to believe the three Davie ships will eventually become part of the permanent fleet.
"What's going to happen is we have been overworking our three medium icebreakers and those three (Davie ships) will replace them even though no one is saying they're replacing them," he said.
The two Canadian Coast Guard officials both insisted that the Davie deal would not undercut the shipbuilding plan, through which Vancouver Shipyards is building several coast guard ships.
Those include three fisheries-science ships, an ocean-science vessel and a heavy icebreaker, in that order. Two naval support ships will be built between the ocean-science vessel and the icebreaker.
But defence analyst David Perry of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute wondered whether calling the Davie deal an "interim" measure was intended to sidestep the plan — and any legal trouble.
Either way, he said, the arrangement only underscores many of the enduring issues facing Canada's troubled procurement system and the long amount of time it takes to buy new equipment.
"If they're defining an interim period being up to 20 years, only in Canada is that considered an interim basis," he said, noting that the shipbuilding plan is already years behind schedule.
"Only in a country where you run things for 40-plus years is two decades a temporary solution."
Smith and Pelletier said the current coast guard fleet is nonetheless in good shape and that there are positive signs of progress at Vancouver Shipbuilding, despite some hiccups.
Those included a welding problem discovered on the three fisheries-science ships that has pushed back delivery of the first of those vessels until next year.
The design and budget for the ocean-science ship also remains up in the air, while the construction schedule for the navy support ships and heavy icebreaker remain in limbo.
"It's really a dynamic time as we look to regrow the whole ecosystem of shipbuilding in this country, and they are in various stages of design and construction," Smith said of the challenges.
"So that whole ecosystem is being rebuilt."
— Follow @leeberthiaume on Twitter.
Note to readers: This is a corrected story. It corrects Mario Pelletier's title.
By Lee Berthiaume, The Canadian Press
https://www.niagarafallsreview.ca/news-story/8982113--interim-icebreakers-to-be-used-for-decades/
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December 3, 2023 | Local, Aerospace
Liberals award Boeing and U.S. government sole-source deal worth $8 billion for new military surveillance aircraft fleet
Liberal government has awarded the U.S. aerospace giant Boeing a sole source deal worth $8 billion for a fleet of new surveillance aircraft
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March 12, 2019 | Local, Aerospace
Simulating the ‘SuperScooper’
by Lisa Gordon The Viking CL-415 “SuperScooper” is more akin to a pick-up truck than a sports car. It's a hardworking, amphibious turboprop that was built to fight wildfires. It flies low, battling blistering heat and blinding smoke, before releasing 13,500 pounds of water in six seconds – and then returning to a nearby lake where it skims the surface to reload. Introduced in 1993 by Bombardier, the CL-415 was essentially a turboprop version of its predecessor, the piston-powered CL-215. Today, there are close to 170 CL-215/415 aircraft in operation, mostly in Europe and North America. They are now supported by Viking Air, which acquired the program from Bombardier in 2016. Pilot training in the CL-415 has historically been done in the aircraft, but TRU Simulation + Training says that due to the unique mission it performs, those training flights can be dangerous. The South Carolina-headquartered company is a division of industry giant Textron Inc., and was formed following the amalgamation of several specialty flight simulation and pilot training companies, including former Montreal-based Mechtronix. About two years ago, TRU's commercial aviation division in Montreal began designing the world's first CL-415 full flight simulator (FFS) with the capability to replicate operations not only in the air, but also on the water. The company was able to draw on its recent experience of successfully building a Series 400 Twin Otter FFS for Canada's Pacific Sky Aviation in Calgary, Alta. – the world's first seaplane simulator with water-handling capabilities. “Before the Twin Otter project, hydrodynamic modelling is something we hadn't done before,” acknowledged Thom Allen, TRU's vice-president of Technology and Innovation. “It's like a boat simulator because you're modelling the buoyancy of the floats or the fuselage in the water. Interestingly, our engineers working on the Twin Otter program actually went to the library and researched how boats work on the water. Mixing the boat sim with the aerodynamic sim is the whole package.” He said the CL-415 experience took things one step further by adding the mission component – scooping the water – to the Twin Otter build. “From a safety point of view, the types of missions you do in a waterbomber are quite a bit different from a commercial aircraft. When you're scooping water and dropping it over a fire, training in those conditions is very dangerous. The tradeoff has always been between the quality of the training and the danger of doing that sort of training.” TRU's CL-415 FFS was delivered to Ansett Aviation Training in Milan, Italy, in September 2018 and certified by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) in December to Level D standards. Although training courses have yet to be completed in the simulator, the hope is that both initial and recurrent pilot training will be done exclusively in the device. Allen said the operational characteristics of a CL-415 are complex and unique. “When you're flying over a very hot fire, you drop your water and the mass of the aircraft is cut in half. The turbulence effect is quite significant when you hit the updraft. The fire is creating turbulence, smoke, reduced visibility – and pilots are dropping every five or 10 minutes repeatedly, usually in rugged terrain at low altitudes. This is the part that made this project something new.” To gather accurate performance data, TRU rented a CL-415 and equipped it with flight test instrumentation. “We weren't doing fire drops with our engineers on board, but we did all the manoeuvres around that, and we brought in a number of senior CL-415 pilots to evaluate our work.” The result is the world's first high fidelity CL-415 simulator with the capability of replicating not just air and water operations, but various types and intensities of forest fires and changes in related environmental conditions. The cockpit noise level is accurately reproduced by a secondary audio system that – like the real aircraft – requires crewmembers to wear a noise-cancelling headset. Full article: https://www.skiesmag.com/news/simulating-the-superscooper