‘Big honking ship’ in plans of military
Urgency to replace aircraft, choppers Sea King fiasco won’t recur, Hillier says
OTTAWA— Canada’s military is moving to buy new transport aircraft and helicopters “ as soon as possible,” Gen. Rick Hillier says. And behind the scenes at the defence department, Hillier’s plan for a “ big honking ship” — an amphibious assault ship — is slowly take shape. With Ottawa ramping up Canada’s presence in Afghanistan next year, the military has urgent need for new transport aircraft to replace the world’s oldest fleet of Hercules, and new helicopters to move troops and equipment in the field.
Hillier, the chief of defence staff, insists this acquisition process will not be a repeat of the tortured saga to replace the aging Sea King helicopters, a purchase that dragged on more than a decade.
“ The troops need it. They need it now, not 15 years from now, not 10 years from now, not even five years from now. They need it as soon as possible,” he said in an interview.
“ Our country has asked them to do many things, some of them high risk, and they need those kind of tools to help them succeed at what we ask them to do,” the general said. “ So we’re going after a variety of those things fairly aggressively.”
Hillier and Defence Minister Bill Graham met with Prime Minister Paul Martin several weeks ago and laid out the urgent need for new transports and choppers as well as proposals for new trucks, mobile guns and ships. With $ 12.8 billion in new military spending planned over the next five years, Martin gave his blessing to Graham’s efforts to shake up the military procurement process and work in closer concert with the industry and public works departments to streamline big- ticket purchases.
“ People shouldn’t be shocked. There are massive spending proposals being reviewed and considered at defence headquarters,” said one defence official. “ The government made the commitment to get the ( Canadian Forces) the equipment it needs.” As a result, the department is going ahead with a “performancebased” purchase for its choppers and transports that will measure competing bids based on how fast they can fly and how much they can carry.
“ Never mind 17,000 pages of specifications; here’s what we need it to deliver . . . Then the Government of Canada has the acquisition challenge to deliver that to us,” said Hillier. But it’s the proposal to buy at least one amphibious assault vessel that would mark a dramatic capability gain for the Canadian Forces.
Hillier says Canada’s response to the Dec. 26 tsunami in Sri Lanka and, more recently, Hurricane Katrina along the U.S. Gulf Coast, drove home the need for a ship that could anchor offshore to shuttle equipment and troops to land.
Capt. Peter Ellis, director of maritime requirements, said the
amphibious ship
would be able to get
troops and equipment
quickly ashore in a
“ medium- intensity” conflict. But the more likely role is delivering assistance to a disaster zone or evacuating Canadians or embassy staff from a country in turmoil.
“ From the perspective of transforming the Canadian Forces, this is obviously a key element of that,” Ellis said, noting it reflects “ accurately the world situation and what our potential roles are.”
Plans for the ship, expected in the fleet sometime between 2012 and 2017, are in the “ embryonic” stage, Ellis said. But this much is known — the ship will be able to carry a battalionsized force, about 800 troops and their gear, along with armoured vehicles. It will have an expansive flight deck to accommodate helicopters and a well deck for landing craft.
Overall, it’s designed “ to get that critical mass of people and their equipment ashore, in relatively short order, to be able to carry on with their operations virtually immediately,” Ellis said. The new ship is expected to be a centrepiece of a paper on the military’s capabilities, expected later this year, that will lay out how defence planners intend to spend billions of dollars in promised new funding.