18 janvier 2023 | Local, Autre défense
'Until the government gets put on a war footing, the defence industry isn’t going to be on a war footing,' says former defence minister David Pratt, a current defence lobbyist.
19 juillet 2021 | Local, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
/CNW Telbec/ - Aéro Montréal, Québec's aerospace cluster, welcomes major investments confirming the strategic and economic importance of the sector. In a...
29 septembre 2020 | Local, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité, Autre défense
Lee Berthiaume OTTAWA — While the federal government is pressing ahead with plans to buy billions of dollars worth of much-needed equipment for the Canadian Armed Forces, the Department of National Defence's top procurement official says COVID-19 is further slowing down some already delayed purchases. The past six months have seen a number of major milestones for Canada's beleaguered military procurement system, including last week's unveiling of the first of 16 new military search-and-rescue planes after 16 years of delays and controversy. Procurement officials are also now reviewing three bids that were received from fighter-jet makers at the end of July as Canada inches closer to selecting a replacement for the aging CF-18s following more than a decade of political mismanagement. The list of recent successes also includes Halifax-based Irving Shipbuilding having delivered the first of six new Arctic offshore patrol vessels in late July, while progress has been made on a number of other files, such as the long-overdue purchase of new engineering vehicles for the Army. Yet some of those milestones would have been achieved earlier had it not been for COVID-19. And Troy Crosby, the Defence Department's assistant deputy minister of materiel, acknowledges many other projects are being affected as well. That includes the more than 100 military procurements — roughly half of them dealing with new equipment and the rest focused on building new infrastructure on Canadian Forces bases across the country — that were listed as already delayed before the pandemic hit. "COVID didn't speed anything up," Crosby said in an interview with The Canadian Press. "I think everybody would understand that that's going to have some impact. And exactly what that impact is difficult to tell right now." Delays in military procurements can have several impacts. In some cases such the CF-18s, the Canadian Armed Forces is being forced to keep using equipment that was supposed to have been retired years ago. In others, delays drive up the cost of the new purchases due to inflation. The projects most likely to be delayed due to COVID-19 are those in production, Crosby said. Examples include the construction of new naval ships by Irving and Seaspan ULC in Vancouver, which have had to adopt physical distancing and other COVID-19 measures at their shipyards. "For the projects that are at a stage where the work is office-based ... once we got over that initial hump as everybody had to as we moved toward a remote-work posture, the work continued," said Crosby. "If you're in a shipyard and you're trying to advance the production of a ship given all of the physical distancing requirements and the health and safety considerations, that's challenging." Crosby has previously argued much of the frustration around military procurement is the result of unrealistic expectations born of a lack of understanding and appreciation for how the system — which is dealing with more projects than at any time in recent history — actually works. COVID-19 has also prompted speculation the Liberal government could start cutting back on its promise, unveiled in 2017, to spend $553 billion on the military over the next 20 years. Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan told The Canadian Press earlier this month that the funding is "secure." Asked about the spending plan — which is contained in the Liberals' defence policy and known as Strong, Secure, Engaged — Crosby said: "Strong Secure Engaged continues to be our focus and it laid out a program of work and we're trying to get that program of work delivered. "It's been that way right through this whole COVID situation. That hasn't changed anything. ... The people in the materiel group, the people we're working with across government, we're all seized with the program forward." This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 28, 2020. https://www.kamloopsthisweek.com/news/covid-19-further-delaying-some-overdue-military-procurements-1.24211049
28 novembre 2017 | Local, Naval
ANDREA GUNN OTTAWA BUREAU Days before the bid submission deadline for the Canadian Surface Combatant request for proposals, Lockheed Martin Canada has announced it has teamed up with the UK-based BAE Systems to submit a proposal for Canada's new fleet of warships. The combined request for proposals is for an off-the-shelf ship design and combat systems integrator, and experts say the Lockheed Canada and BAE duo will be a powerhouse contender. For the ship design, BAE Systems is offering its Type 26 Global Combat Ship — long rumoured to be a favourite of Royal Canadian Navy officials and arguably the newest and most advanced vessel of its kind in the world — and the only possible contender that has yet to actually be built. The Royal Navy is building eight of their own Type 26 vessels. For the combat systems, which is best described as the brain and nervous systems of the ship's intelligence and combat operations, Lockheed Canada is offering its Canadian-designed CMS 330. This is a newer version of the combat management system Lockheed designed for the Royal Canadian Navy's original Halifax-class ships and is present on Canada's modernized frigates. Both firms were identified among bidders prequalified to participate in the process, alongside other international industry giants like ThyssenKrupp, Navantia and DCNS. Also part of the consortium participating in the Lockheed/BAE bid are CAE, L3 Technologies, MDA and Dartmouth-based marine tech firm Ultra Electronics. Speaking with The Chronicle Herald on Monday, Gary Fudge, VP of Canadian naval systems programs with Lockheed, said an independent study completed by Lockheed Canada revealed the Type 26 as the best design in the running, and prompted their interest in teaming with BAE for preliminary work several years before Canada announced that it would be combining the ship design and combat systems integrator into a single bid. He said BAE's modern design and modern toolsets — for example their use of advanced digital blueprints that will make it easier to modify and modernize the design in the future — made the Type 26 the key contender for them. “Given that Irving has just built the most modern shipyard, we wanted the designer to have toolsets and data that can migrate easily into Irving's toolsets,” said Fudge. Irving is the prime contractor for the combat portion of the government's National Shipbuilding Strategy and will build a fleet of 15 Canadian Surface Combatants (CSCs) at its Halifax shipyard, with a budget of $56billion to $60 billion, starting in the 2020s. It will also have a say, alongside the federal government, in selecting the winning bidder. Rosemary Chapdelaine, vice president and general manager with Lockheed Martin Canada Rotary and Mission Systems, on Monday touted job creation in Canada, including Nova Scotia, as a key component to their bid. For example, Lockheed Canada's combat systems and integration technology is built at a facility in Ottawa and tested at the the company's Maritime Advanced Testing and Training Site in Dartmouth. Chapdelaine said Lockheed Canada's approach to the bid is to be seen as the Canadian team, even if it takes points from other parts of their bid. “We want to provide the Canadian content, do the direct work in Canada using Canadian industry,” she said. David Perry, a senior analyst with Canadian Global Affairs Institute, said Lockheed Canada's long history with the Royal Canadian Navy via the Halifax-class frigates and the advantages of the Type 26 over other potential designs puts the consortium in a good spot in the competition. “An advantage of the Type 26 would be that where the requirements for it overlap with CSC, the technology would be very new, without modifying the design at all. The other ships in the competition would be older technology, so they'd need to modify it to introduce more current technology,” he said. But that doesn't make it a shoo-in — in an RFP with thousands of different parts, Perry said the winning design will have to tick a lot of boxes. Speed and accommodations for example, while adequate in the Type 26, Perry said are not necessarily the cream of the crop compared to other options out there. Retired navy commander and defence analyst Ken Hansen agreed that Lockheed Canada's extensive experience working with the Canadian Navy, as well as their edge on Canadian content, gives them an advantage over some parts of the competition. But, he said, while extremely advanced technology, the Type 26 might not be the ship Canada needs due to its high price and extreme complexity. “The (Type 26) is inordinately complex and it had a lot of teething pains — the ship has been described in the U.K. press as overpriced and a technical nightmare,” he said. “I have not gotten that warm feeling where the reassurances from the British design authorities say ‘Oh it's solved and we're back on track.'” It is not known how many groups will submit bids for the CSC competition. At least one other has gone public — Alion Canada announced its bid with Dutch De Zeven Provinciën Air Defence and Command frigate as its design last week. The federal government says it expects to be able to select a winning bidder at the earliest in the spring of 2018, dependent on the number and quality of bids it receives. http://thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/1524306-lockheed-martin-bae-submit-warship-bid