National Defence Committee on Oct. 20th, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Well, that's my decision.

You have the floor, Ms. Gallant.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

In terms of having the CDS come before us to let us know how spread out our forces are, I would ask for copies of communications between the CDS and the committee clerk, to determine whether or not he's being disrespectful of our committee by not coming after all this time or if he's being prevented. However, that would require a motion and we are all too familiar with the tyranny of the majority, which was mentioned earlier.

All that being said, in an ever-changing and evolving threat environment, what capabilities should the Royal Canadian Navy attempt to acquire, in the future?

[Cmdre Eric Lerhe]

I and Ken Hansen are in pretty solid agreement that we simply must solve the missing AOR problem.

There is good news on the suggestion from Op Resolve. As an interim measure, we will take a converted merchantman of some form and convert it into a temporary tanker. That is a stopgap, but the current plans on the books are as stated. There are only joint support ships. At any particular time in the future, the odds are 30% that either the Atlantic or the Pacific will not have a tanker because it's in refit. So that's almost job number one.

Job number two is if we're to replace our submarines, we have to start planning now, and that goes to that overall problem of inadequate funding for capital.

I'll probably leave to somebody else to ask the question, because I could go on at quite some considerable length on what must be done from a fore-structure point of view, from a base point of view, from a personnel point of view, of what is required to get our capital into line—unless you'd like me to do that now.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

I have a question for Mr. Hansen, and then maybe we can get back to that and allow you to gather your thoughts.

Mr. Hansen, you mentioned that we need an integrated fleet in the Arctic, which we just don't have. We don't have many of the pieces for other coasts, let alone what we need in the Arctic.

Would you say that perhaps our NATO allies could help form this integrated fleet that is required to protect our Arctic waters?

[Ken Hansen]

Yes. Certain of them have things to offer. The Arctic Five that operate in the Far North know this far better than we do. The Danes, for example, are very advanced in how they manage their resources, how they organize the logistics that sustain them. There's a lot to be learned by doing comparative studies.

Going to the other angle of it, though, is logistics, intelligence, and industrial capacity. We shouldn't focus overly on numbers of hauls and numbers of aircraft. The history of this country has shown, on many occasions, that the few ships, the few resources that we did have, most often, were left unable to operate for the lack of spare parts, trained people, and repair facilities.

It is my personal view that we should be putting a lot more money into enlarging the logistical and repair capacities on either coast. Currently, you could not operate the entire Canadian fleet out of our west coast base. I think that should be a very basic planning factor, that the inherent advantage of sea power is that it's highly mobile. In two weeks, they could all be on the west coast and ready to operate. But if you can't sustain them, they're going to sit and not do anything.

So, logistics, logistics, logistics is the key, because it gives you what's called force multiplication.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Mr. Garrison, you have the floor.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to both our witnesses for their service, but especially for your testimony today.

I want to start by talking a little bit about submarines, again. I guess my question will go, first, to Mr. Hansen. I want to make sure we don't misunderstand his testimony. When he says that the fleet is too narrowly focused on anti-submarine warfare, I'm hoping people won't conclude that means we don't need a submarine capacity ourselves, and I'd like you to expand a bit more on that.

[Ken Hansen]

I am happy to do that. This is a very important issue.

In the Second World War we were involved in a struggle principally against a submarine threat. We did not have submarines or submariners of our own to train with and prepare us for that type of struggle, and we lost 24 ships before we sank the first enemy submarine. That's an exchange rate we could not sustain today, so submarines are a vitally important aspect of a fleet that is designed principally and foremost to be competent in anti-submarine warfare. They are vitally important if, for no other reason, than as a training asset.

Now, the big question is, can surface ships actually compete effectively against submarines? Our own submarines were in a big exercise on the west coast, performed incredibly well, and in another one on the east coast. You should ask the chief of the defence staff about what those exercises showed because those two submarines raised hell.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Mr. Lerhe, I would ask you [Technical difficulty--Editor] especially in the Pacific?

[Cmdre Eric Lerhe]

The rising number of submarines in the Pacific should cause great concern. I am continually amazed in Canada—I've been watching your testimony and your responses—and it's very pleasant because several years ago we'd have nothing but people wanting to get rid of submarines.

I always bring up the case of Singapore. Singapore, with a coastline no longer than that of municipal Toronto, has four submarines, and so does Canada. Something doesn't quite add up here.

What Ken has said is quite correct. In no way can a surface fleet replace a submarine because it will lose, and I think a 24:1 exchange rate is probably not wrong. A surface ship cannot compete against a submarine, primarily because the medium they find and launch weapons with is sonar, and a surface ship is 100 times noisier than a submarine.

People ask, “How noisy is a submarine?” The best response I've heard is “How noisy is your flashlight?” The fact is, they will always find you at three times the distance at which your surface ship finds them. When you launch a torpedo you will launch one with a 120-pound warhead, and they will launch a 21-inch Mark 48 torpedo with about an 800-pound warhead.

Missiles, like harpoons, damage ships. Heavy-weight torpedoes from submarines always sink them.

I think that's about it.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Great. Thanks very much.

As a member of Parliament who represents a riding that has submarine capacity and refit capacity, I've been a strong supporter of that capacity, and I think it's good that we have those discussions in public so people understand that importance. I think Canadians aren't aware of the great growth of submarine forces in the Pacific.

I want to go back now to Mr. Hansen. You said that a major step toward improving readiness would be to make humanitarian assistance and disaster relief official missions of the Canadian navy. I think that's very interesting because many people have argued that Canada is a nation with a reputation of helping internationally. Humanitarian assistance is something we do simply as part of our duties to be a good citizen. But you've connected this to readiness, and I think that's an important point that I'd like you to expand on a bit more.

[Ken Hansen]

Yes, thank you. I'd be happy to do that.

The humanitarian assistance and readiness missions, which we've been involved in, in the past, resonate very strongly not only with the Canadian public, but with Canadian naval service people. When they were off the coast of Haiti, many said that they didn't want to come back and that it was the most satisfying, rewarding work they had done in their entire careers.

It resonates, it's important, and it aligns with Canadian societal values and ideals.

What it does for the military is get it ready to do large-volume, logistically demanding missions at short notice. This is a tough task. To do the planning, the scenario development, and the concept development work to identify the skills, the volume metrics, the restrictions on the system as it exists, and to plan for improvement, I think is a vitally important part of getting ready for the types of problems that the future security environment studies identified.

We are already seeing mass human migration problems. We know that cyclonic storms are increasing in frequency and intensity, and that there are fragile states out there that will look to us for assistance.

That doesn't mean the logistical capacity that you would develop for such undertakings is competitive with combat capability. This is the argument that goes against it most frequently. In fact, if you do the modelling and scenario testing, logistical deficiency is the biggest problem the Canadian military has, and to start building that kind of capacity makes it valuable in any number of scenarios that you can possibly imagine—high Arctic, far Pacific, Eastern Europe, it's all vitally important.

[Cmdre Eric Lerhe]

If I could, I would just qualify that. As I mentioned, David Perry said the biggest problem we have is in capital, with a $50-billion demand and $11 billion available. It's the work of this committee to weigh the threats. Is it major state war or is it global warming? Which is going to grab attention?

Yes, an HADR ship would provide tremendous backup logistical support, but to buy new? It's $5 billion for two, because what's the point of buying something for one coast that's not on another?

Two, everything you buy, every ship you buy, two for $5 billion, will eat twice that much in personnel, operations, and maintenance over the next 20 years. You've just created a $15-billion demand. There are ways of doing it. There are proposals that are going to be coming for leased ships, for civilian-manned ships. They should be looked at by all means, but it's the recommendations of this committee to government that will tell the navy where it should be put its emphasis.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you for that.

I'm going to move the floor over to Mrs. Romanado.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and I'd like to thank our witnesses today for, first, their service to Canada and of course for being here today with your expert testimony.

As you know, we've been tasked to study the defence of North America and we are taking a holistic approach. We did the first phase in which we looked at aerial readiness, and the next phase, of course, is naval, and the third phase will be our ground support. We visited NORAD back in April of this year and what we discussed there was the fact that our maritime awareness is currently in the agreement that we have with NORAD, but the control component is not.

Given the fact that we're going to be looking at our relationships, and commitments, and so on, what are your thoughts on expanding that mandate to include the control component rather than just the warning component or surveillance? Could you elaborate on your thoughts on that, please.

[Cmdre Eric Lerhe]

Regrettably, you've highlighted precisely the problem when maritime surveillance was moved to NORAD. I think the case was over-stressed to no good effect by certain members in the Canadian navy and elsewhere who said, surveillance is fine, but the movement of Canadian ships for sovereignty purposes, Coast Guard vessels, and fisheries enforcement is too clearly a national responsibility for us to share with the Americans.

That might have been appropriate 20 years ago as a decision. I'm increasingly concerned that with the state of potential for conflict up there, and the need for perhaps a massive response to a huge oil spill, we're going to need far better coordination on that control function with the Americans. There certainly have been hints from them on the possibility of dividing...of doing NORAD regions in the north.

The Americans, based in Alaska, would be the coordinator of the western region of the north for both response and control; and Canada the eastern half. It's a great proposal that at least deserves mature study.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Superintendent Hansen, do you want to comment on that as well or I'll go to my next question.

[Ken Hansen]

No, I just want to support Dr. Lerhe and say that the control issue is a very defined term in a military context, but don't get hung up on it. The responsibility for the actions of that unit, whether it's a ship or an aircraft, always lies with the commander and that commander will always have direct contact with his national command and control authority.

If there's ever a question, it reverts to the national authority and the only problem would be in a short-fused, short-reaction time scenario, and again, it reverts to the commander on the scene to make the decision. These are constructs that we put in place for planning purposes. It helps to sort out and organize who does what to whom and who makes what day-to-day decisions, but in the crisis scenario, the commander always has the final control authority.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Further to my colleague, Mark Gerretsen's, comments, in addition to our surveillance issues that we have, the north warning system is set to expire in 2025, which will impact many branches of the military, in fact, all three. Given the fact that we have major investments that are required in terms of capital and in terms of human resources, what are your thoughts in terms of RADARSAT and the north warning system, on their importance, and where should we be focusing?

We have a lot of priorities on our plate right now and many demands and we do not want to make decisions on capital investment at the peril of other branches of the military. We were given that advice when we were at NORAD. I'd like to get your opinions in terms of where we start.

[Cmdre Eric Lerhe]

In my view, this screams out for expert opinion and it's not me, but I'll provide you my two cents' worth.

For RADARSAT, currently what is needed is at least three satellites and I believe there are plans for only one, or perhaps two. RADARSAT does a great job of tracking ships. I'm almost 99% sure it does nothing about the air-launched or submarine-launched cruise missile threat, ergo you need some kind of enhanced northern warning system direct-line-of-sight radars. It's going to end up to be a balance of the two, but that's the limit of my competence.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Okay, thank you.

Professor Hansen.

[Ken Hansen]

I agree with Dr. Lerhe. What you do depends entirely on your future vision. For the sake of safe navigation, responsible resource management, and those sorts of things, RADARSAT is very well suited. If you get into a high-level conflict scenario, those surveillance resources are vulnerable to countermeasures and can be neutralized or even destroyed without too much difficulty. So what you see developing in the future and what is the need that has to be met must be very carefully considered when you go forward. Perhaps it would be a phased plan to deal with the routine administrative, safety, and law enforcement issues first, and then threat and sovereignty issues later, but it depends entirely on how you see the threat.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Given our current NORAD and NATO commitments, commitments that are coming down the pipe, and requests for support, we've heard from some witnesses that we are ready, but in your expert opinion are we ready?

[Ken Hansen]

In a naval context, no, we are not.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Thank you.