National Defence committee  I'm in complete agreement with Commander Lerhe. The strategy's intent is to develop the national industrial base. I've been writing about the shipbuilding strategy, and the problem is that you get differing views on what the strategic priority is among the goals: develop the indu

National Defence committee  Actually, I do. The history of the navy shows that the fleet maintenance facilities are vitally important in the maintenance of the fleet, keeping it ready, rectifying short-notice deficiencies, things that have to be fixed if the ship is going to get out on time to do the assig

National Defence committee  Do you want to go, Eric?

National Defence committee  I'm looking for a ship that has a fairly good size and what's called low design density. The more complexity you pack into the hull, the higher the complexity goes, which makes it more expensive to maintain, repair, and upgrade. I want a fairly big ship that's got reserve space f

National Defence committee  Yeah, we are getting into areas here of industrial policy, what we see as the vision for the future of the industrial base. I think for surface ship construction, there's no difficulty here. We are quite capable of exploiting the capabilities we currently have, those that we're

National Defence committee  One of the lesser known sideline capabilities of the Arctic and offshore patrol ships will be to host containerized research laboratories and all sorts of other facilities on board. The research community here in Halifax is quite excited about this prospect. Quest, of course, was

National Defence committee  The short term, for me, is one to two years. In that timeframe we should be looking to fill up the inventory of spare parts, supplies, ammunition, and information systems, so that what we have can be operated reliably and sustainably. In the medium term, we should be looking at

National Defence committee  I agree with practically everything Professor Lerhe said, but you asked about NATO navies, and I think they are busy bankrupting themselves at the moment. One of the philosophies of modern naval force organization and structure is looking for a uniformity of capability across th

National Defence committee  I think the answer to that question is yes, unequivocally yes. The distances to the High Arctic from our principal naval bases and Coast Guard bases, and the lack of facilities in the High Arctic to support and sustain operations are serious material deficiencies that would cri

National Defence committee  If something does develop in the Arctic, Canada's response is going to be primarily maritime. It's what we would call a maritime theatre of operations. That's because it's dominated by the water or ice, depending on the conditions, and the lack of logistical facilities to sustain

National Defence committee  The right of passage is one thing, the freedom of navigation. The Canadian government's position is that these are internal waters, and there are others who hold that they are international straits and they have the right to go through there at any time and at points of their cho

National Defence committee  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

National Defence committee  In a naval context, no, we are not.

National Defence committee  No, it's for all of the purposes of the navy. We did first a global survey to get some general benchmarks. Then we compared the Canadian navy with other navies, NATO and non-NATO, that categorized themselves accordingly to what we at the time viewed ourselves, and we came up with

National Defence committee  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 wi