Elinor Sloan wrote an excellent article recently entitled “What Canada’s shipbuilding strategy is getting right, and where it is still failing.”

Two quotes summarize her main points:

“The most capable warship in the world means nothing if Canada waits a generation to receive it.”

“The strategic frame around build-at-home, continuous build, shipyard rationalization, and modularity is mostly correct. The cultural problem is the impulse to ask one ship to do everything and to ask new ships to be paper designs first and water designs second. Until addressed, the impulse will leave the Royal Canadian Navy without the warships it needs.”

As one who had a role in the conception and implementation of the National Shipbuilding Strategy (NSS) between the summer of 2008 and my retirement in 2017, I feel a responsibility even today for how it was developed and where it is today.

Sloan masterfully explored six shipbuilding methods employed since NSS was conceived, four of which she generally supports and two which she believes together are the Achilles heel to timely Canadian shipbuilding efforts. This article touches on these six themes.

Build-at-Home: Our warships have been built in Canada off and on for over a century, and the changes from “off” to “on” have not been without challenges. NSS was conceived after a failed procurement strategy in the first decade of this century. It complied with the government’s 2001 policy to build ships for government fleets in Canada. It was not a choice for those of us studying the way forward, and as Sloan explains it has been successful from a national perspective for maritime industries and for our GDP. However, an argument can be made that the Joint Support Ships could have benefited by being built offshore, as the UK and Australia have done with their replenishment vessels.  

Continuous Build: Everyone manufacturing complex artifacts knows that continuous production maintains a stable skilled workforce and enables less costly and more effective products. It is the same with shipbuilding, but to a much greater extent in terms of maintaining a skilled workforce. It was the atrophy of naval shipbuilding after 1998 that argued for a continuous build strategy to end the boom-and-bust cycle. But rebuilding any complex capability is costly, as is maintaining it when gaps occur between ship construction projects, when filler projects must be found. Synchronizing government approvals of shipbuilding projects to avoid such gaps is exceptionally challenging. However, it is essential for continuous build strategies, arguing for very early ship acquisition approvals, even decades before they are required.

Shipyard Rationalization: Sloan points out that continuous build means a rationalization to two or three shipyards awarded monopolies for sustained performance. And because this avoids competition among many yards for every class to be built, it minimizes the investment in Canadian shipyards building the government’s fleets.

Once again, all is not roses. This approach introduces the need for lengthy negotiations for both the design and construction of vessels, significant insight by the government into the build activities and a requirement for post-contract auditing as the norm. 

Modularity: The concept of modular designs was formalized by the Danes in the 1985-1995 period, to provide flexibility for ship missions and to facilitate modifications in response to emerging threats throughout the ships’ lives. And it is now being incorporated in various ways in today’s ship designs.

Although such approaches were used in the past, analysis indicated that few changeouts of ship mission fits actually occurred. As for modifications for new technologies, building in excess margins in ship’s weight, space, electrical power, heating and cooling systems has also proven difficult. It remains very much a work in progress. 

Multi-Mission Perfection: Sloan suggests that the significant customization by the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) of an immature parent design has led in the River Class Destroyer (RCD) program to delays, with the attendant cost growth jeopardizing the affordability of the desired number of warships.

When Canada launched the RCD acquisition, the RCN expected the government’s decades old constraint to one class of warships to defend Canada would continue. Therefore, every possible weapons, sensor and other system that would enable the conduct of all mandated missions were selected, to best enable delivery of the nation’s maritime defence.

Furthermore when spending on the RCN was out of favour, multiple simpler ship designs would have meant much greater costs for crews, in-service maintenance, tailored training programs, port modifications and growth in naval base infrastructure. The funding simply was not available. Thus, requirements “perfection” was an appropriate response when only one hull design was possible in the numbers needed.

But that could be changing, with the government's commitment to a much larger spend for the Canadian Armed Forces. Assuming it can be sustained, the commander of the RCN now talks of less customization, more acceptance of military off-the-shelf minimal viable designs and an additional class of less expensive Corvettes. In essence, the Navy is working to address this concern within in today’s fiscal defence environment. 

Extensive Modifications of Parent Designs: This is linked to the comments immediately above. Taking a parent design and significantly redesigning it is admittedly a major time and cost driver.

Sloan argues against what she calls “paper designs first and water designs second,” which implies a single ‘water design’. That means that Canada would design the entire warship largely from a clean sheet of paper, while recognizing that all engineering is empirically based.

The reality is that, for warships, one does not simply develop a single design. Routinely, 100 plus design spirals or iterative options must be conducted, as one tries to optimize from concept design to functional detailed design to production design – the latter being how the shipyard will build it. 

Change one major system late into the design work because of a new threat and novel weapon system response, and you are likely adding a dozen or more design spirals for optimization. It is essentially a massive complex puzzle where perfection is sought but never achieved.

This could be done under NSS, as there could be a new ship design being pursued once a previous class of ships is being built – a type of new ship continuous design capability (NSCDC). 

Previously, Canada relied on the now defunct Naval Ship Drawing Office, a contracted ship design capability and something that could be recreated in whole or in part if desired.  As long as such activities are funded and guided effectively by the RCN early enough, the concern of delays in ship programs for massive redesign of military off-the-shelf parent ship designs could potentially be avoided. 

This is one of my favorite oxymorons. It ain’t so.

Anything is possible, given unlimited time by starting very early, available expertise and limitless money. That was not the Canadian context of the NSS since its inception, and the concerns raised by Sloan were not based on “RCN impulse.”

But as the context changes, so too can design strategies and the time to delivery of warships. 

I applaud Sloan’s article and sincerely hope that we can indeed overcome the 30-year period between conception and first delivery of the follow-on to the RCD’s. Nothing in warship acquisition is easy. But then, defending the nation is way up there with what Canadians do best: the impossible.