National Defence committee  Of course, like either of my two colleagues from the air force or the army, I would welcome additional resources for a variety of undertakings. Like any department, however, we have budgets to work within. I'd go back to the fundamental point. When it comes back to building an armed force, that's what one has to do, rather than building an army, navy, or air force.

National Defence committee  At the navy level?

National Defence committee  We look ahead at the future security environment, based on the work that we're doing today. Over the past year, we've had ships deployed with the alliance in the Mediterranean and off the coast of Africa. We have a ship that's just coming back from doing maritime security work with coalition forces in the Persian Gulf region.

National Defence committee  Do you mean in terms of an opening statement? I believe I'm the only one with an opening comment.

National Defence committee  Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman and ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for providing us an opportunity to come here today and speak to you. Certainly we were encouraged by the active role that the committee is taking in the study of matters of national defence, and we look forward to this discussion of maritime procurement.

National Defence committee  It's a very tentative first step that was successfully executed with a company of soldiers operating from a safe, secure sea base and supported from there to conduct very straightforward operations ashore in North Carolina. It demonstrated that we certainly have the capability to do it, but it's going to take years to develop that capability, if that's the direction the government chooses to go.

National Defence committee  We've made decisions recently that we will base our Chinook helicopters in two locations. One location will be Edmonton, Alberta, and the other location will be Petawawa, Ontario. We found, after an examination, that this just makes the best case. They are located in close proximity to two of our large army formations and close to good training areas.

National Defence committee  The intent of those vessels is to provide the basic supply support required by a naval task group, to be able to provide transport for whatever might need to be transported using a cargo deck, and to provide support to forces ashore from a secure location at sea. The amount of room in one of those ships for transport is useful for a tactical deployment of an army unit, but is relatively modest compared to what would be in a cargo ship—one of the large container ships you'd see in Halifax or Vancouver or Montreal.

National Defence committee  In fact I might mislead you if I indicate that maritime resupply is the way things are going. I'm not the person to talk, but I think most of the goods going into the country are going in by air. That's because of the particular geographic circumstance there, but also because of the timeliness of delivery.

National Defence committee  Certainly the leadership in theatre is by the fleet commander, who is an American officer based ashore in Bahrain. He's the maritime component commander for American forces. He has a variety of international officers on staff, and some officers from both regional and western nations as subordinate commanders.

National Defence committee  It certainly is part of Operation Enduring Freedom. There's a slight nuance. The ship deployed with the American battle group is completely interoperable with the battle group, but its rules of engagement flow entirely from the Chief of Defence Staff and directions from the Government of Canada.

National Defence committee  Indeed, the maritime operations are undertaken by a coalition of nations that choose to participate and are not under the leadership of the alliance. That said, if you look at the nations that are involved, there are a few of the coastal states that participate. Pakistan, for example, recently had the leadership of one of the maritime interdiction zones in the region, but most of the navies are the highly capable western navies that are also NATO members.

National Defence committee  They have a very limited capability at lift, and at this point my understanding is we are using maritime charter to go from Canada into the region, but I don't know the details about that.

National Defence committee  Right now, the frigate Ottawa is in the... Well, it's in the Arabian Sea off the coast of Yemen, but it will be bound for the Gulf of Oman and a visit to a country in that region in the short term.

National Defence committee  That's why I made the point about how many sailors we had at sea last week--2,600. We're still carrying on with business, and quite successfully so. We're making a modest contribution where we can. I made mention of CIWS earlier. The close-in weapons system is not a system that resides in the army presently.