I have previously commented that the RCN knew the Upholders were in poor condition when they accepted them. The RCN knew these subs were the only option to stay in the sub business back in the Chrétien era. The billion dollar expense to make them right is on him, not the RCN. There needs to be a public commitment by junior to renew the RCN's sub fleet.
John, I read some books about Collins, and it did mentioned that Canadian navy did sent a few people to "come and have a look", a co-built with Aussie was mentioned/considered, but they went for Upholder class instead.
GF might have an insight aswell, as he has mentioned before of RCN being in the room when the RAN was toying with the idea of a second Squadron using the Upholders.
The Chrétien government would not properly fund the RCN to replace our submarine fleet. Had the Upholders been unavailable, the RCN's submarine capability would have ended almost twenty years ago. The RCN will find itself in the same situation in the next few years unless a firm commitment is started soon to fund the Victoria class's replacement.
2nd hand Collins once the Short-Fins get commissioned?
They would be too old by the time the new subs became avalible I would imagine,the Upholder/Victoria were only ten years old when purchased
Depending on the IP situation I imagine you would like home build as well, tagging onto the RAN build would be logical choice as well
GF would be better to explain the implications of a joint project, Im lead to believe the approached AusGov on a similer proposell which was knocked on the head.
The idea from what the proposal says is Davie will buy four almost brand new hulls refit then and then offer a lease buy contract to the coast guard. The hulls themselves are already purpose built ice breakers, they were original made for northern Alaska oil drilling. The large hull was an exploratory vessel the other three multi purpose ice breaking tenders. All that Davie would be doing is refitting to coast guard specs really. For once I hope the government makes the right choice.
Pollies in both countries would make this next to impossible and then there the unions to consider. Good idea that won't go anywhere.
I know there was a shipyard in St. Catherines Ontario that fiscal and technical qualified under the NSPS, but obviously never had built a combat ship prior. Davie im pretty sure was trying to get a fiscal waver at the last second. At the time of the NSPS award though, Iriving was really the only Canadian shipyard that was not in the utter gutter that had at one time built naval combat vessels.A sad situation indeed. Hadn't heard the ABI acronym before. Davie was bankrupt at the time NSPS selected the shipyards so I have no idea what any alternative could have been.