Why CC-177? No "nyets"
The Russians are not necessarily friendly.
Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor says Canada needs four giant U.S. military transports to avoid being "hostage" to the wishes of Russia, which leases planes to NATO.William Watson meanwhile applauds the government's apparent decision to let Boeing allocate the regional benefits--but, quite rightly, questions the real value of industrial offsets.
[...]
"General O'Connor, why do we truly need those planes?" Liberal defence critic Denis Coderre asked in a parliamentary hearing on Tuesday. "Because the way I see it I could have put that $3.4-billion on [improving] the troops' conditions, more trucks? I don't see the rationale of it."
[..]
"...when it comes to leasing commercial aircraft, essentially strategic airlift are under the control of the Russian government, and we already know of incidents where the Russian government has refused the use of aircraft because they don't agree with its use.
"The British, for example, eventually went and bought C-17s because they had trouble with the leased aircraft because the Russian government refused to allow them to land where they wanted to land them.
"So we are not going to be hostage to any foreign government and we are not going to be hostage to any foreign company. This country, this Armed Forces, is going to be as self-reliant as it can be."
The Liberals wore out Canada's Hercules fleet [emphasis added] by using the planes as long-haul strategic transports during their years in power, he said...
posted by Mark, Ottawa at 9:03 a.m.
4 Comments:
In reality the the minister dodged the question. NATO has a new program called SAC, for Strategic Airlift Capability.
http://www.nato.int/issues/strategic-lift-air-sac/index.html
It regroups 16 Europeen countries who got together in a pool to purchase C-17s that are going to be operated as the NATO AWACS have been. Canada could have joined SAC, added two aircraft to the pool to bring it up to six aircraft and placed a condition that one of the C-17s always be based out of Trenton. If what the Netherlands claims it costs them reflects the true hourly cost, 1500 hours a year of C-17 usage would run in the 60 million dollars a year.
Why is our Minister saying Nyet to this one?
I forgot. Just to put things in perspective, 1500 hours of C-17 a year represent 50 round trips Trenton-Kandahar a year.
There is also the fact that we require trans-Atlantic range with a decent load. Which the Euros do not (hence the A400M).
Mark
Ottawa
And it came to pass, ironically, that the day our first bird flies in, the Russians (Ukrainians?) announce that the entire Ruslan fleet (32 aircraft) is up for sale.
http://popsiq-canadian.blogspot.com/2007/08/caveat-emptor-airbus-sequel.html
Price? About 1/3 what we paid* for four Boeings.
We continue to lease the Ruslan to this day as it can carry some loads the Boeing can't.
*what we 'gave up'. It was never clear we'd get a penny on those lumber tariff claims. And Boeing needed the work.
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