Back to the Future #nlpoli

The Department of National Defence will freeze the size of the Regular Force and sell off property in an effort to cut spending and control budgets, according to David Pugliese.

The man knows what he is talking about. 

Take it as a given that this is what DND is planning to do.

You can also take it as a given that one of the properties on the block is Goose Bay.

Liberal Sen. Colin Kenny said closing bases and selling off surplus property is essential since unwanted or underused facilities are costing the military hundreds of millions of dollars annually to maintain. Up to 25 per cent of DND’s facilities, some of which date back to the Second World War, could be sold or shut down, said Kenny, the former chairman of the senate’s defence committee.

He said Goose Bay in Newfoundland and Labrador is a good example of a site that has become redundant to military needs.

“It’s been kept alive by political pressure,” Kenny noted, “and it’s costing millions to keep operating.”

He said any closure should be accompanied by a financial package to help communities and workers involved and money from the sale of properties should be funnelled back into the defence budget.

People in Goose Bay will get their knickers in a knot.  Provincial politicians will beat their chests and spit and foam and stamp their feet.

And nobody will notice that DND has been down this road before and never sold off bits of stuff he was supposed to sell.

Like the airfield at Eastern Passage, Nova Scotia.

In the 1990s, DND figured out it didn’t need the Shearwater base that was home to the Canadian Force’s maritime helicopter fleet.  So they proposed to sell off the airport and all the prime real estate that went with it.  The helicopters would move to  Greenwood out in the Annapolis valley.

Eventually.

Well, 15 years later, the only bit of the old Shearwater that isn’t still owned by National Defence is one runway.  Everything else is still where it was.

And the taxpayers of Canada are still pumping cash into upgrading and repairing and refurbishing one of the oldest air bases in the country.

Now, to be sure, Shearwater still has an operational purpose.  While the air force could have moved it’s helicopters out to Greenwood,  having the helicopters at Eastern passage makes it just a wee bit easier to marry them up with the navy when the ships deploy.  In fine weather you can fly the Sea Kings on or off the ships.  If the weather is crappy, you can just bring the ships alongside the Shearwater jetty and winch them on or off.

Goose Bay, on the other hand, simply has no operational purpose for the Canadian Forces.

Still,  if you dig around the records of previous efforts to sell off all the surplus military infrastructure, you are bound to find an example that fits the Goose Bay situation.

You see, as much as DND will talk about selling off places like Goose Bay, the odds are it will never happen.

As much as it makes sense, the politicians can’t afford to let it happen.

- srbp -

How the mighty have fallen

From David Pugliese, the collapse of the once fine public affairs operation at National Defence:

It’s generally recognized that from 1998 to 2005, the public affairs branch at NDHQ was among the best  in the federal government. There were of course glitches, internal battles, tensions between journalists and public affairs officers and the occasional screw-up (a brief “gag” type order in 2001 that was quickly corrected) but overall the PR system was generally seen to be quite effective by those at NDHQ and many of those journalists who used it.

At the heart of that system was the philosophy that both civilian managers and military personnel --whether they be in charge of equipment programs, policy, or human resources, or whatever - were the best spokespeople to explain things to the news media.

Your humble e-scribbler was a lowly cog in that machine from 1994 to 200 as a reserve public affairs officer. Pugliese’s praise is high indeed and those who worked during that period recognised all the elements he notes. it was something public affairs officers could be proud of and the people who implemented the system has a commitment, as Pugliese notes, to “openness and transparency.”

Not so any more.

How did this happen? Some say that “risk adverse” bureaucrats are firmly in control  while others blame senior military officers for standing impotently on the sidelines and allowing this to happen. The Conservative government, with its information-control agenda, also gets its share of the blame, according to NDHQ insiders.

I continue to watch from the outside with interest.

Some of us watch from the outside with a profound sense of loss and disappointment.  Let’s not even talk about the empathy for the poor benighted professionals forced to work inside such a stupid system.

-srbp-

The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!

Or maybe not, according to the Russians.

David Pugliese has a neat blog entry on the whole flap of the past 24 hours coming out of the defence ministers odd comments about an interception of unspecified Russian aircraft by Canadian and American interceptors somewhere north of the continent.

Initial reports suggested the plane – which became two planes at some point – were Tu-95 BEARs.  File footage and still photos of BEARs turned up in all sorts of Canadian media.

The National Post ran a photograph of an Su-24 FENCER for a while in its online coverage.

The Russians said the aircraft were TU-160 BLACKJACKs and that the Canadians and Americans had been notified of the flight in advance. The Post is now running a picture of both Tupolev aircraft.

All of this raises a few questions:

1.  What’s the fuss?  The flights have been going on for a year and a half. It’s a far cry from the height of the Cold War.

2.  Did anyone see that?  Odd that NORAD hasn’t released any photos of the intercept mission.  That would clear up right away any of the obvious discrepancies in the story about how many aircraft were involved and what type they were.  For those whose knickers are in a twist over the security implications of the alleged intercept, the confusion in identifying the type should cause concern. 

Not only are the aircraft different visually, but they also look different on radar and have significantly different flying characteristics.  If Canadian operators can’t tell the difference between the two then we may have a much bigger issue if some sort of Cold War breaks out again between the Russians and the rest of us.

3.  And where are those icebreakers again, Peter?  The federal Conservatives were pushing Arctic sovereignty.  They had all sorts of promises about bases and new icebreakers. Nothing has materialised on this supposedly significant file.

Even worse, these guys  - Peter and his boss - can’t seem to sort out replacing a few replenishment vessels for the navy, a task that’s been in train for a while and which is much much higher up the order of priorities given that it affects naval operations along the east and west coast.  These guys are dealing daily with sovereignty issues much more pressing than the odd flight by the Russians.

What may have looked like some kind of virtuous media spin performance to some actually winds up being a giant national embarrassment no matter how you look at it.

Farce – as the Russians called it – doesn’t begin to describe it.

-srbp-

Oram blames Danny for JSS cancellation

When Newfoundland and Labrador becomes the focal point and our shipyard becomes seemingly the best and only shipyard that can be used to do this particular contract, all of a sudden they first talk about going offshore and now they decide to cancel the project.  There is something going wrong somewhere.

"Something wrong with JSS contract, Oram says", Telegram, Tuesday, 25 August 2008

Newfoundland and Labrador business minister Paul Oram is blaming the strained relationship between his boss and the Prime Minister for the federal government's decision to scrap the joint support ship contract.

Premier Danny Williams said much the same thing in a radio talk show Tuesday.

Now of course that isn't what they meant, but, in truth, the very notion that the federal government would deliberately scrap an important contract because Danny and Steve don't get along is ludicrous in itself.  Silly as the thought is, both ministers offered it up to news media with a completely straight face.

In the Telegram story quoted above, Oram related a conversation he claims to have had with federal industry minister Jim Prentice while both ministers attended the Farnborough air show in July.  In the conversation, Prentice reportedly said that the federal government was considering having the hulls built outside Canada and the topsides and other fitting out work done in the country.

That part of the story is likely accurate since it jives with media reports that predate Oram's junket to the world's premiere air show. Oram would have had those reports long before Farnborough if his media clipping service and Our Man in a Blue Line Cab were doing their jobs.

Ottawa Citizen defence columnist David Pugliese reported in late May that both finalist shipyards had advised government they could produce only two of the three required ships for the $2.9 billion budgeted by treasury board for the project.

Pugliese blogged in early August that National Defence was examining a number of alternatives, including building the ships overseas.  That was seen at the time as politically unpalatable given that two shipyards in the country were technically capable of doing the work.

That's where Oram's account of the Prentice exchange and the likely one start to diverge.  While Oram claims the offshore option was considered because yards couldn't do the work, the thread that runs consistently through the story - and the one devoid of the political silliness Oram was trying to flog - is that there was enough money budgeted for either of the Canadian yards to be able to complete the project as tendered.

Big difference.

The joint support ships contract will likely come back and come back quickly since the vessels are needed urgently to replace the worn-out auxiliary oil replenishment vessels currently in service.  One of the consistent criticisms of the project is that the ships were supposed to do too many jobs for one hull.

In addition to providing logistics support for deployed naval forces (food, fuel and ammunition resupply), the JSS was supposed to serve as a transport ship capable of carrying an infantry company plus equipment to an overseas deployment.  At one point, the navy reportedly considered leasing a mothballed American amphibious assault ship for army support role while building conventional stores ships to replace the existing vessels.

There's no question these ships are needed, no matter what the configuration involved. Whatever the reason, the project was dealt a serious blow with the cancellation.  Coupled with the reported financial problems inside the current federal administration, it may not be back on track for some time to come.  In the meantime, the existing hulls will reach the end of the workable life in 2012. 

Something needs to be sorted out and sorted soon.

That will likely need to be done by federal politicians.

This contract may well serve voters as a good test to use when sorting through their federal candidates in the next election. If they are toeing a line - especially the childish ABC one - it might be an idea to leave them on the bench and look for a better alternative.

Unfortunately, the provincial government - through administrations of all stripes - doesn't seem to understand either the importance of defence industries to the provincial economy or what it takes to be effective in dealing with the federal government on defence issues.  Oram's not the first provincial cabinet minister to make asinine comments and sadly he likely won't be the last.

When politicians leap into complex issues they clearly know nothing about - as Oram clearly doesn't - they only serve to bugger up the works at worst or get ignored at best.

The men and women of the Canadian Forces, a great many of them from this province,  can do without that kind of "help".

The men and women of businesses like Marystown can do without it as well.

-srbp-

De Trenton a Bagotville?

During the last federal election future defence minister Gordo promised battalions for everyone.

In Bagotville Quebec on Friday, he delivered a new air force wing. Not exactly a rapid reaction army battalion, as originally promised but something new.

The official National Defence news release makes it sound like a bit of an odd creature comprising air force personnel that would deploy in a humanitarian crisis. Even the defence minister's speaking notes are vague on the nature of the new organization, which he termed an air expeditionary wing. It will apparently consist of aircraft of an unspecified type along with army personnel, mostly medical and logistics from the sound of it. O'Connor said that Canada's allies are creating this type of organization.

Well, sort of, Gordo.

The American air force uses air expeditionary wings but primarily as collections of air force squadrons to support joint military operations. They aren't self-contained entities with attached soldiers and sailors. They also aren't necessarily permanent organizations. They are pulled together for the mission.

What this Canadian air wing sounds like is a headquarters apparatus that will have aircraft attached to it for mission purposes, while the aircraft will be located somewhere else. The Canadian Forces have been down that road before.

But what about the "battalion" promised to Trenton? Check this story from the Belleville Intelligencer, dated in late June:

"We're trying to acquire land at this moment," he said. "We have to wait and see whether we're successful in acquiring the land.

"I want to resolve the land issue first. If and when we acquire that land, then we can announce what we're proposing to do."

One rumour circulating locally reports the government may move the airborne project to CFB Bagotville, Que., should the Trenton deal fail. When asked for comment on the rumour, O'Connor expressed confidence in the land talks.

Did the Trenton land deal fail that quickly?

Meanwhile, the people in Goose Bay are wondering when Gordo will be heading to their town to deliver on his election pork promises.

-srbp-