Poor IT support hurting Canadian military operations, internal review finds

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  November 28, 2018 | Local, Naval

  Tribunal orders feds to postpone contract in $60B warship project

  The Canadian Press, Lee Berthiaume OTTAWA — The $60-billion effort to build new warships for Canada's navy is facing another delay after a trade tribunal ordered the federal government to postpone a final contract for the vessels' design. The federal government announced last month that U.S. defence giant Lockheed Martin beat out two rivals in the long and extremely sensitive competition to design replacements for the navy's frigates and destroyers. Lockheed's design was based on a brand-new class of frigates for the British navy called the Type 26. The company is now negotiating a final contract with the government and Halifax-based Irving Shipbuilding, which will build the ships. But one of the other two bidders, Alion Science and Technology of Virginia, has asked the Canadian International Trade Tribunal and the Federal Court to quash the government's decision. It says Lockheed's design did not meet the navy's stated requirements and should have been disqualified. Two of those requirements related to the ship's speed, Alion alleged, while the third related to the number of crew berths Late Tuesday, the tribunal released a one-page statement ordering the government to “postpone the awarding of any contract ... until the Tribunal determines the validity of the herein complaint.” Alion has argued that the rules of the competition required the federal procurement department and Irving, which helped evaluate the bids, to reject Lockheed's bid because of its non-compliance. Instead, they selected it as the preferred design. The company also maintains that its own proposed design, which is based on a Dutch frigate, met the navy's requirements. It has said that it has received no information about why Lockheed's bid was selected over its own, despite requests for answers. Lockheed Martin and Public Services and Procurement Canada declined to comment because the matter is before the tribunal and federal court. The third company in the competition, Spanish firm Navantia, has remained largely silent on Lockheed's successful bid. The government is planning to build 15 new warships starting in the next three or four years, which will replace Canada's aging Halifax-class frigates and retired Iroquois-class destroyers. They're to be the navy's backbone for most of the century. The bid by Lockheed, which also builds the F-35 stealth fighter and other military equipment, was contentious from the moment the design competition was launched in October 2016. The federal government had originally said it wanted a “mature design” for its new warship fleet, which was widely interpreted as meaning a vessel that has already been built and used by another navy. But the first Type 26 frigates are only now being built by the British government and the design has not yet been tested in full operation. There were also complaints from industry that the deck was stacked in the Type 26's favour because of Irving's connections with British shipbuilder BAE, which originally designed the Type 26 and partnered with Lockheed to offer the ship to Canada. Irving also worked with BAE in 2016 on an ultimately unsuccessful bid to maintain the Canadian navy's new Arctic patrol vessels and supply ships. Irving and the federal government have repeatedly rejected such complaints, saying they conducted numerous consultations with industry and used a variety of firewalls and safeguards to ensure the choice was completely fair. But industry insiders had long warned that Lockheed's selection as the top bidder, combined with numerous changes to the requirements and competition terms after it was launched — including a number of deadline extensions — would spark lawsuits. Government officials acknowledged last month the threat of legal action, which has become a favourite tactic for companies that lose defence contracts, but expressed confidence that they would be able to defend against such an attack. https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/canada-news-pmn/tribunal-orders-feds-to-postpone-contract-in-60b-warship-project

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  October 7, 2019 | Local, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  With billions of dollars at stake, all parties promise to fix defence purchases

  Every election, would-be prime ministers promise to cancel bad military purchases or processes, hurry along good ones, fix the mess once and for all OTTAWA — The seemingly endless effort to replace Canada's CF-18s fighter jets passed a tiny milestone Friday: fighter-jet makers participating in the $19-billion competition were required to explain how they planned to make their aircraft compliant with U.S. intelligence systems. For nearly a decade, Canadians have been inundated with talk of fighter jets without Canada ever buying them, an ever-worsening symbol of the failures of Canada's military procurement system. Every election, would-be prime ministers promise to cancel bad purchases or processes, hurry along good ones, fix the mess once and for all. Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer this week promised to “de-politicize” military procurement with new oversight bodies in cabinet and the Privy Council Office while working toward multi-partisan consensus on procurement projects in Parliament. The Liberals promise to establish a new agency called Defence Procurement Canada, which suggests taking the entire function away from the four departments that now share responsibility for buying military kit. The New Democrats and Greens promise, without detail, that they will ensure Canada's military gets the equipment it needs. The origins of what we face today can be traced back to the end of the Cold War when Canada and its allies began to cut defence spending after a decades-long arms race with the Soviet Union. There were concerns about whether or not you're getting the right kind of economic benefits “We deferred purchasing new fighter planes and did the same thing with our frigate fleet,” says David Perry, vice-president of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute and one of Canada's foremost experts on defence spending and procurement. “We just kicked the can down the road on fixed-wing search-and-rescue aircraft. There was a bunch of other projects that fit the same vein.” The military had to use equipment for years longer than it was supposed to and the Department of National Defence lost most of its procurement experts. But in the mid-2000s, the Forces' equipment problems were revealed in Kandahar: the military lacked transport aircraft to resupply its Afghanistan mission, artillery and tanks to support troops on the ground and helicopters to move them around. Ottawa rushed into gear, purchasing transport planes, howitzers, helicopters and tanks in short order — in most cases without competitions. New equipment flooded in but there were some big failures, starting with accusations defence officials rigged the requirements for a new search-and-rescue plane to select a specific U.S. plane. There was also a failed effort to buy new supply ships for the navy and, most explosively, a plan to buy new fighter jets, Lockheed Martin's F-35s, without a competition. In 2012, auditor general Michael Ferguson blasted the Defence Department for failing to communicate the stealth fighter's risks, including escalating costs and schedule delays, to Parliament and decision-makers. Dan Ross, who was the department's head of military procurement at the time, would later say defence officials had all the information and were willing to share it — the Harper government just wouldn't let them. Either way, the public's confidence in the system and the government's ability to manage it were shaken. The F-35 purchase was scrapped. The Tories imposed new constraints to keep costs under control and ensure Canadian industry and communities benefit from defence contracts. “There were concerns about whether or not you're getting the right kind of economic benefits, some significant concerns about whether or not process was being adhered to until you had this system recalibration where you had an injection of additional rules and governance,” Perry says. That recalibration imposed a fundamental tension on the system: the need to get the best equipment possible, with the most benefit to the economy or local industry, at the lowest cost. Every big procurement is partly about the military's needs and partly about national industrial policy — and, that means, partly about politics. Most procurements are still completed with minimal fuss. The problems largely lie with big, once-in-a-lifetime contracts like fighters and warships that are worth billions of dollars and are not only essential for the military to operate, but have the potential to benefit Canadian businesses and communities for years. The ones that involve billions of public dollars. “You're trying to get the best bang for the buck for as little buck as possible,” says Queen's University professor Kim Nossal, who wrote a book entitled “Charlie Foxtrot: Fixing Defence Procurement in Canada” in 2016. “The one comforting thing is that very few countries have got the balance right. All industrial countries, all of our allies, faces these kinds of pressures. They worry about jobs and costs and capability.” Efforts to combine the three competing priorities can lead to bickering among federal departments, lawsuits from companies and politicians sticking their fingers in things. Seconds after saying he would de-politicize the military procurement system this week, Scheer promised to negotiate the purchase of an interim naval supply ship from Quebec's Chantier Davie shipyard, which lobbied the Liberal government for years to ink such a contract without success. Davie is one of Canada's big players in shipbuilding — and it's in much-contested political territory just outside Quebec City. Alan Williams, who was the Defence Department's head of procurement from 1999 to 2005 and now advises companies on procurement matters, compares Scheer's promise on Davie to Justin Trudeau's promise in 2015 not to buy the F-35. That's because while a government can decide to purchase a piece of military equipment, procurement laws — and Canada's international trade obligations — forbid it from choosing or excluding a specific product or supplier except under extreme circumstances. Upon taking office, the Liberals twisted themselves in pretzels to get around the legal implications of their promise. That twisting led to a plan to buy Super Hornets from a competing vendor. When that fell through, four years passed before an actual competition was launched — with the F-35 now one of three planes still in contention. In the meantime, the CF-18s will fly until 2032, reinforced with second-hand Australian F-18s to buy time. https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/election-2019/with-billions-of-dollars-at-stake-all-parties-promise-to-fix-defence-purchases

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  February 24, 2024 | Local, Land

  ANALYSIS | Ravaged by war, Russia's army is rebuilding with surprising speed | CBC News

  Russia's military has suffered enormous losses in the two years since it invaded Ukraine. Multiple experts and top military commanders are warning that Moscow is finding innovative ways to rebuild, despite sanctions. It's an effort that could tip the balance on the battlefield in Ukraine and throughout Europe.