Aside from the numbers issue, to be able to deploy where required, it's also important that the ships be ready to deal with the challenges of not just today but of the future as well. Let's take the surface combatants that would be built seven, 10 years from now. They will not be modernized until mid-life, which means sometime around 2040 or 2045. Whatever exists today has to be extrapolated to what the threat will be a decade-plus hence, and that is why the requirements are the way they are. What is required is not simply a replacement of one capability in the outgoing ships with the same one, but something looking to the challenges of the future.
The force that fired the cruise missile against an American destroyer, which Commodore Sing referred to, were the Houthi rebels. Something similar had been done by Hezbollah a decade earlier. If you picture that as a threat from rebels, imagine what state competitors are putting into their platforms. These weapons will be used in their regions and, as has been done in the past, in our waters as well.
If you're looking for precise capabilities that would be required, the only thing that the navy doesn't have that would be contemplated and is common in other navies, including some of the European navies about the same size as ours, would be the ability to conduct precision strikes ashore. In this our navy has a limited capability, with a system it's acquiring. We would be looking, however, to have a greater capability to influence events ashore, mostly in support of Canadian Forces. We are also considering the potential of having a ballistic missile defence. This is not a strategic ballistic missile defence; this is a theatre capability. It's an anti-air problem, effectively, to be used to defend an area where Canadian Forces operating just ashore were attacked by short-range or medium-range ballistic missiles from enemies.
That's another potential, but those cost money. As I alluded to in my opening remarks, there isn't enough money for the replacement of the fleet that exists, so you could put those additional capabilities down as desirable, probably necessary for the effectiveness of the Armed Forces in the long term, but subject to the question of money.