What Joint Support Ship anyway? And when?

Another procurement mess flounders along:

Navy faces seven-year wait for new ships, Senate hears

It could be up to seven years before the navy is able to replace its 1960s vintage supply ships, senior defence officials told a Senate committee on Monday.

And even then, the ships they get may have to be a scaled-down version of the original multi-purpose vessel envisioned by National Defence and the Conservative government.

Dan Ross, assistant deputy minister of materiel, testified that a request for proposals for three new joint support ships likely won’t be issued until next year, and it will take another five to six years before the first one is delivered to the fleet.

Last summer, the federal government scuttled a $2.9 billion replacement process for supply ships, which were to double as army transport and command vessels, because the bids exceeded the Conservatives’ budget envelope.

That has forced the navy to go back and re-think the kinds of things it wants the ship to do, said deputy defence minister Robert Fonberg.

"We’re trying to live within the funding envelope," he said Monday.

"We’re looking at the capabilities to see what within that design was driving up the price, and if you were to take that out of the design what it would actually mean for the navy’s ability to operate."

Liberal Senator Tommy Banks wondered whether that meant the navy will be left with a less capable ship.

Fonberg said the federal government has not ruled out increasing the budget, but such a measure would mean the military would have to do without some other appropriation [emphasis added--oh dear].

The two existing supply ships — HMCS Protecteur and HMCS Preserver — are both nearly at the end of their life expectancy and have required major overhauls to stay in service.

Ross noted that at least one of the ships will have to undergo a year-long refit in order to remain in service until the new vessels arrive.

Replacing the aging tankers with multi-purpose ships — capable of carrying army supplies and vehicles — was first suggested in the 1994 defence white paper produced by Jean Chretien’s government. But the plan collected dust on the shelf until 2005, when it was resurrected by former prime minister Paul Martin and eventually adopted by the Conservatives.

Defence Minister Peter MacKay suggested last winter that he wanted to see a comprehensive shipbuilding strategy that would include work on the joint support ships.

I guess I was right when I wrote yesterday near the end of this post:

..."replenishment ships [why no longer called Joint Support Ships--capabilities to be reduced?]...

An August 2008 post:

JSS: "a compromise between an AOR and a troop ship capable of supporting an amphibious landing is exactly that: a compromise that does neither"

So now, realistically, it'll be at least 2016 before the Navy has a new vessel. In 2006 the new Conservative government said the target date would be 2012. On and on and on things go.

Predate: Defense Industry Daily has a good summary of the project that end with this prescient bit written in 2006:

Appendix A: DID Op-ed/Analysis (June 30, 2006)

HMAS Collins launch
(click for alternate view)

Candidly, the record for small to mid-size powers attempting to develop new military technologies is not all that good. Engineering is a challenging art at the best of times, and military projects are more demanding than most because of the myriad of parts to integrate and the advanced (and hence often new and unproven) nature of the technologies. Add local unfamiliarity into the mix, and the result is inevitably schedule slips and cost overruns – often significant slips, and major cost overruns.

Given the limited procurement resources of small to medium powers, such projects can easily threaten to swallow entire service procurement budgets. Cancellation means millions or even billions of scarce dollars has been flushed down the toilet and wasted. On the other hand, continuing the program may break one’s military as other areas are starved to pay for it – all with no guarantee of success.

Australia’s Australia’s Collins Class subs, for instance, are excellent vehicles. Yet cost overruns have measured in the hundreds of millions, remediation is not yet finished, and the schedule for full deployment has slipped by years. All for vessels of a well-understood ship type, based in part on a pre-existing class (Sweden’s Gotland Class), and built in cooperation with an experienced, world-leading firm in submarine technology.

Overall, the Collins Class is an example of a successful local to medium power project to develop an advanced military platform despite previous inexperience.

Canada’s Joint Support Ships, in contrast, conform to no known ship type in their breadth of required functions, and are based on no pre-existing class. The firms competing for the design are not world leaders in similar ship classes like amphibious assault ships or LPDs. Nor does the depth of Canadian design and build experience in related efforts give cause for optimism; quite the reverse. Indeed, the JSS’ breadth of functions alone suggests a difficult project for any entity or country to undertake, and little hope of much beyond mediocrity in all functions due to the required trade-offs.

The Canadian Forces may succeed in the end, and if so we at DID would be happy to apologize. Indeed, we would be pleased to run an article here explaining why they believe they can succeed, and what steps they have taken to address their approach’s inherent risks and performance trade-offs.

For the project’s critics appear to have the high ground when they suggest that JSS is set up to become a budget-eating failure, and recommend that Canada replace the unwieldy JSS idea with a conventional oiler or two plus a few HSV rapid deployment vessels like the ones the USA is gravitating toward. Or recommend the LPD-17 San Antonio Class amphibious support ship as an alternative. Or even recommend a larger number of smaller Dutch/Spanish Rotterdam Class LPDs, plus the USA’s versatile new T-AKE supply ships.

Those kinds of risk reduction strategies would leverage successful R&D efforts, and spend more money on cutting steel and floating boats. As opposed to pursuing paper visions that risk sucking up vast resources and producing inferior products – or no products as all.

Appendix B: Additional Readings

• DND – JSS Project Office

• Wikipedia – Protecteur class auxiliary vessel

• Naval Technology – LPD Rotterdam Class Landing Platform Dock, Netherlands. A less ambitious, less expensive, and successful effort.

• New Zealand Navy – HMNZS Canterbury – L421. New Zealand has its own multi-role ship design, which combines transport and some minor patrol tasks. The vessel was built by Merwede Shipyard in the Netherlands, under subcontract to Tenix.

• CASR – BG Comparison – Joint Support Ship (JSS) Project – AOR or LPD. Includes an excellent comparison of the proposed JSS specifications with several existing ship classes – including the Dutch Rotterdam Class LSD.

• Canadian Conference of Defence Associations (Nov 19/08) – Military/Naval Procurement in Canada: A Flawed Process by Commander (Ret’d) Ken Bowering [PDF]

• Ottawa Citizen: David Pugliese Defence Watch Blog (Sept 2/08) – Navy Talking Points for Joint Support Ship

• National Post (June 20/08) – J.L. Granatstein: Canada needs a navy that can do the job