Navy bought lemons

Re: Breakdown on new Arctic patrol vessel under investigation, Oct. 23

It is not surprising that after only few months, the new arctic patrol ship is breaking down. The navy bought lemons it will be stuck with for 30 years. This so-called Arctic patrol warship totally lacks what a navy ship should be equipped for, and that is force projection. The ship has no real tangible weapon systems, and it is slower than a BC ferry at 17 knots. The mission of the Arctic patrol ships is to provide armed seaborne surveillance of Canada's coasts, and to enforce Canadian sovereignty. Yet the ships are described by the navy as nonwar fighters.

The design is based on the Norwegian Coast Guard vessel Svalbard. The Norwegians spent less than $100 million to design and build the first ship in 2002. The Danish built two ships for $105 million in 2007, and the Irish did the same for $125 million. For Canada, the budget for the project is $3.5 billion for six ships, or $600,000 per ship. This immense difference in cost is attributed to a major Canadian redesign, to take a war-capable ship design and convert it to a non-combatant by removing naval weapons. The Norwegian ship design has the ships fitted with naval weapons, whereas the weapons were removed in the Canadian configuration. The cost of the Canadian variants works out to 10 times what the normal costs should have been, with no naval combat systems.

Surely Canada could have come up with a naval ship that has more capability, more punch or more bang for the buck, and one that would be able to perform force projection in the Arctic.

Cdr. (Ret'd) Roger Cyr, Victoria