Absolutely. That's a very good question.
It's a typical Canadian response that instead of understanding that the ship strategy as it has been conceived and as the experts have called for is supposed to be seen as an ongoing process, rather than an end-all, and as you've pointed out, there has been a growing tendency to say that we're not dealing with an ongoing process. We're saying how do we achieve a final end product of five, six, or seven Arctic offshore patrol vessels with 14 or 15 surface combatants.
We know, and this is the part that's so frustrating for us, that from a technological perspective, from an economic perspective, and most importantly from a military perspective, you cannot stay with technology. The only way you can ensure that your naval assets have the best and most modern navy is to have constant, ongoing upgrading.
The only way the Americans, the Japanese, and the French have been able to do this is by having a shipbuilding strategy that says, “We will have one hull that is constantly being built. We will constantly be upgrading the technology, keeping in mind that we want to be able to retroactively retrofit. We want to have one aircraft carrier coming out at a time and one submarine coming out at a time.” It is an ongoing, never-ending process.
From today's economic industrial perspective, the idea that we build a whole class of vessels, as we did in World War II, is simply outdated thinking. We find ourselves paying for these huge numbers of vessels with great technology for their day, and then we just let them fall apart because we can't maintain the workforce that is necessary.
The shipbuilding strategy, in theory, as was put forward, needs to be thought of as an ongoing process. We build the Arctic offshore patrol vessel, but instead of trying to compress it as we're doing right now—and that's the problem—we spread it out, and then we get ready to start putting in the surface combatant.
The problem we face of course is that because we have always done it in group blocks, we need to meet that obsolescence today, so we have two pressures coming in. On the one hand is the immediate requirement, and on the other hand is the recognition that we have a rare opportunity to get it right, but it's going to take a little bit of pain and political patience. That's one thing, of course, that we have difficulty dealing with as a democratic state.