AngusThermopyle Posted December 2, 2017 Report Share Posted December 2, 2017 A new proposal to replace our aging Frigates has emerged from a French/Italian consortium. The government has said that the cost to replace these ships has risen to $60 billion now. This proposal would reduce that cost by $32 billion and also provide plenty of good jobs for Canadian workers for years to come. Given that the ships will fit our requirements, and they should as they're a very highly regarded class it would appear to be a no brainer. The only downside would be that the Irving's would lose out on that extra $32 billion. http://nationalpost.com/news/french-italian-consortium-offers-canada-a-deal-on-a-new-fleet-of-frigates-that-could-save-32-billion#comments-area Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Argus Posted December 2, 2017 Report Share Posted December 2, 2017 (edited) I think too much money has gone into pockets of too many politicians for them to back away from the companies that have put it there already. The above looks good, but it's only taxpayer money, so not really very important next to campaign doners and political games in Atlantic Canada. Edited December 2, 2017 by Argus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PIK Posted December 2, 2017 Report Share Posted December 2, 2017 (edited) Trudeau could be losing the east coast, if he does nothing about the ships. Edited December 2, 2017 by PIK Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
?Impact Posted December 2, 2017 Report Share Posted December 2, 2017 Certainly sounds like it should be looked at. Of course the fine print is always what is important, not the sales pitch in the National Post. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngusThermopyle Posted December 3, 2017 Author Report Share Posted December 3, 2017 Interestingly this scenario is quite similar to the one that existed when we built our last Frigates. At that time it was the Germans who proposed that we buy their Meko class Frigates. The big difference was that those ships would be built in Germany as opposed to Canada. So that was a no go right there. The Meko's were very good ships and we would have saved a lot of money if we had purchased them, but that wouldn't have helped our ship building industries at all. In this case most would be built in Canada so we'd benefit from the job creation aspect of this plan. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PIK Posted December 6, 2017 Report Share Posted December 6, 2017 Savings will be used to buy a bunch of used jets. Funny how the Israeli air force is flying a plane that trudeau not to long ago said it did not work. Sop are we buying used jets just to poke a finger at boeing?? Using our soldiers again for political points.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Argus Posted December 14, 2017 Report Share Posted December 14, 2017 (edited) A couple of items in today's paper illustrate just how horribly our military procurement is off the rails and subordinated to politics and 'regional development' subsidies. First, a report today out of BC recommends scrapping the entire national shipbuilding program and redoing it on a fixed cost basis. The program is way over budget and nowhere near schedule. The report points out the offer in the OP could save us more money than the entire shipbuilding program was originally supposed to cost. Yet the government has brushed it aside contemptuously - not interested in the thirty billion since it's only taxpayer dollars. http://nationalpost.com/news/politics/cancel-federal-shipbuilding-program-launch-fixed-cost-competitions-to-save-money-and-get-ships-quickly-report Then there's Andrew Coyne's column on the ridiculous purchase of those old fighters from Australia, and the plan to launch another search for a replacement fighter which will start a dozen years after the last such search was completed. Let me see if I have this straight. In order to meet an urgent “capability gap” with regard to its aging fleet of fighter jets, the federal government is kicking the competition to produce a replacement jet that it promised two years ago another year into the future. A winner will be chosen no sooner than 2022, five years from now, or a dozen years after the winner of the previous competition was declared. The planes will be delivered in 2025. Everything about this whole sorry mess reeks of politics, deceit and cowboy economics — or in other words, procurement as usual. The “capability gap” suffers from a pronounced credibility gap: virtually no independent expert agrees it exists, defined as it is by a standard of military readiness — the ability to meet both our NORAD and our NATO commitments, simultaneously, in full — that has never been asked of us and is unlikely ever to be. http://nationalpost.com/opinion/andrew-coyne-fighter-jet-mess-reeks-of-politics-deceit-and-cowboy-economics Edited December 14, 2017 by Argus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Argus Posted December 14, 2017 Report Share Posted December 14, 2017 On 12/6/2017 at 1:29 PM, PIK said: Savings will be used to buy a bunch of used jets. Funny how the Israeli air force is flying a plane that trudeau not to long ago said it did not work. Sop are we buying used jets just to poke a finger at boeing?? Using our soldiers again for political points.. In fact, the savings would be enough to entirely pay for brand new jets. In other words, it's like if we went this route we'd not only get the ships sooner but get the F-35s for free. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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