National Defence committee  Yes, I think the money to support Operation Unifier is important.

National Defence committee  I'm not sure that there's anything specifically more we can do. I know we've been providing some surveillance information, but I don't know that it's the most useful role that we could play.

National Defence committee  I don't know that there's a lot we can do. As we've seen recently in some reporting, I think our navy's ability to deploy operationally has become degraded due to the advanced stage of our naval frigates, as well as limitations on sailors in terms of actually going to sea. Right now we're stretched on having to make unfortunate choices around making contributions to NATO while simultaneously trying to deliver on the commitments we made as part of our Indo-Pacific strategies.

National Defence committee  It would depend a whole lot on how we would go about doing that, but I have a huge concern that it's longer than the current submarines will last.

National Defence committee  I think that, ideally, we would have been planning that five or 10 years ago, but now is better than later, yes.

National Defence committee  I do, but I'd say that I spent more time reading the estimates than I did following the votes, and I recognize that the structure of the parliamentary system means that, a lot of times, specific issues get lumped in with wider voting issues and are not kept individual.

National Defence committee  It's an entirely government-influenced and controlled market, either to supply to our own government or to export to another one. Without a surety.... It's not like producing any type of product that is not controlled by an export control regime or purchased directly by the Department of Defence.

National Defence committee  I heard it was going to be swift in April 2022. It's December 2023.

National Defence committee  We should try and do as much as we can to strengthen the regime of sanctions to interdict illegal material. More broadly, I think we need to recognize that it's ultimately going to be imperfect. Because of that, I think we need to spend at least as much time focusing on our own domestic production as worrying about what we can or can't do to limit what the Russians can do.

National Defence committee  I'd say a couple of things. I think we're seeing the importance now of multi-year funding and commitments, and sustainable, predictable support with that. I think we're also seeing the consequences of not having that in the past in terms of investing in our own armed forces over multiple years, decades and governments, which has directly impacted what they've been able to donate directly.

National Defence committee  I'm not clear on that, because it remains a bit murky. I don't know what kind of serviceable state the ones we aren't currently operating are in or to what standard the Ukrainians would want them. We certainly have expertise in that, but I think—

National Defence committee  My understanding was that some quantity of them are in the process of being further upgraded, so I don't know exactly how many are flyable and able to be donated. I've seen some concerning reporting, too, about how many technicians and pilots are available to operate and service the ones we already have.

National Defence committee  No.

National Defence committee  Yes, I think it is a question of will and urgency. It's not rocket science. It's artillery science.

National Defence committee  I think Ukraine has done a commendable job. We've seen, in the last six months, a bit of a mismatch. There's a desire to see some western concepts and some fairly complex ways of employing combined arms military equipment on sort of a western mould that I don't know is really well suited to the composition of the Ukrainian armed forces, which is now a mobilization army; whereas in the west, in most cases, we've built our concept for employing military force on fully professional armed forces.