[BartSimpson]

Gunnair Gunnair:

I just noted on my calendar - I agree with Bart.

Wow.

Naw, if it makes you feel better this doesn't count. Military truths are a different thing than the opinions we spar over all the time.

Military truths as applied to kit boil down to: Does it work? Yes or no?

In this case the 'no' is glaringly apparent.

The crap we argue about is rooted in semantics and subjective opinion which is always good for a and a afterwards!

Semper Fi

[Nuggie77]

Welcome to the world of military procurement that is bound by treaties and agreements and the needto appease our allies.
Heaven forbid Canada should buy something straight off the shelf.

[saturn_656]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

saturn_656 saturn_656:

I've seen three ring circuses that are better organized than this procurement program.

Word was Sikorsky damn well knew they couldn't meet a 2008 delivery, but they overpromised to win the job.

Well, if the CF had simply ordered the S-92 instead of demanding that Sikorsky develop a whole new platform that incorporates a plethora of Canadian-manufactured equipment from firms who buy influence in Ottawa then you'd have these helicopters by now.

Instead the CF f*cked up this procurement along the exact same lines they botched the procurement of the Leopard tanks by requiring Canadian-made equipment be crowbarred into a platform that wasn't designed for it.

The most egregious f*ck up with the Leopard involved the optics for the main gun. The German optics adjusted for temperature variations while the Canadian optics didn't. That meant that once the Canadian optics were mounted to the turret they were only accurate at the exact temperature at which they were aligned. At any other temperature they were useless.

Likewise with the CH-148 Sikorsky the CF has so extensively redesigned the H-92 that even the CF auditor general weighed in:

$1:

Canada's auditor general slammed National Defence over the Cyclone purchase two years ago, saying the department underestimated the complexity of developing the helicopter and wrongly defined it as being an "off-the-shelf" purchase.

Meaning that the CF did NOT order a mere 'variant' of the H-92 - they ordered a whole new platform to be developed by Sikorsky just for the CF.

And, as is typical of CF procurements, your government threw out the military-grade avionics package that had already been designed for the H-92 in favor of having a whole new system created from the ground-up by General Dynamics Canada. And then the damned system required the CH-148 to be redesigned yet again when the wiring harness didn't match up to what was previously specified for the CH-148.

Thus your government waived the late fee penalties on Sikorskty because Sikorsky made it clear that the delays originated from the CF specifying their own avionics package and then delivering a package that did not mesh with the airframe that they had also specified.

Memo: Stop with this Canadian content crap and just buy whatever the hell your vendors offer you that is tried and proven. It's cheaper and easier to support.

Normally I would 100% agree with you.

The problem with your argument is that there was no off the shelf H-92 ASW chopper for us to buy. The CH-148 will be the "off the shelf" ASW option for other buyers.

Unless they want to develop their own from scratch.

[peck420]

Nuggie77 Nuggie77:

Welcome to the world of military procurement that is bound by treaties and agreements and the needto appease our allies.
Heaven forbid Canada should buy something straight off the shelf.

What does any of this debacle have to do with Canada's allies?

Our allies were (and are) more then ready to sell us off-the-shelf military equipment that they won't even offer to some of their other allies.

We should have just bought that and moved on.

It was Canada that fucked this one up.

[BartSimpson]

saturn_656 saturn_656:

Normally I would 100% agree with you.

The problem with your argument is that there was no off the shelf H-92 ASW chopper for us to buy. The CH-148 will be the "off the shelf" ASW option for other buyers.

Unless they want to develop their own from scratch.

More likely they'll just continue to buy the Seahawk like Canada should have done instead of insisting on coming up with something that 1) Isn't compatible with any other NATO partner's logistics chain and B) is an unproven platform.

[bootlegga]

saturn_656 saturn_656:

bootlegga bootlegga:

Gunnair Gunnair:

Buy European.

No doubt - I wonder why the NFH-90 wasn't considered;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHIndustries_NH90

It was considered. The MHP was a three way contest between the EH 101, NH 90, and the Superhawk.

DND rejected the NH 90 as not meeting their requirements. Too small I believe.

Yeah, why buy something called the NATO Frigate Helicopter (NFH)?

Thanks for jogging my memory on this!

I don't get that - it's not that much smaller than the Cyclone and it'll be far more interoperable (given that most of NATO operates them), than the Cyclone ever will be.

Everyone else is moving away from big jack-of-all-trade helos to smaller helos - Canada for some reason refuses to get with the times.

This has been nothing but a cock-up from day 1, but then again, many recent DND procurements have been.

[bootlegga]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

saturn_656 saturn_656:

I've seen three ring circuses that are better organized than this procurement program.

Word was Sikorsky damn well knew they couldn't meet a 2008 delivery, but they overpromised to win the job.

Well, if the CF had simply ordered the S-92 instead of demanding that Sikorsky develop a whole new platform that incorporates a plethora of Canadian-manufactured equipment from firms who buy influence in Ottawa then you'd have these helicopters by now.

Instead the CF f*cked up this procurement along the exact same lines they botched the procurement of the Leopard tanks by requiring Canadian-made equipment be crowbarred into a platform that wasn't designed for it.

The most egregious f*ck up with the Leopard involved the optics for the main gun. The German optics adjusted for temperature variations while the Canadian optics didn't. That meant that once the Canadian optics were mounted to the turret they were only accurate at the exact temperature at which they were aligned. At any other temperature they were useless.

Likewise with the CH-148 Sikorsky the CF has so extensively redesigned the H-92 that even the CF auditor general weighed in:

$1:

Canada's auditor general slammed National Defence over the Cyclone purchase two years ago, saying the department underestimated the complexity of developing the helicopter and wrongly defined it as being an "off-the-shelf" purchase.

Meaning that the CF did NOT order a mere 'variant' of the H-92 - they ordered a whole new platform to be developed by Sikorsky just for the CF.

And, as is typical of CF procurements, your government threw out the military-grade avionics package that had already been designed for the H-92 in favor of having a whole new system created from the ground-up by General Dynamics Canada. And then the damned system required the CH-148 to be redesigned yet again when the wiring harness didn't match up to what was previously specified for the CH-148.

Thus your government waived the late fee penalties on Sikorskty because Sikorsky made it clear that the delays originated from the CF specifying their own avionics package and then delivering a package that did not mesh with the airframe that they had also specified.

Memo: Stop with this Canadian content crap and just buy whatever the hell your vendors offer you that is tried and proven. It's cheaper and easier to support.

Well, that's one side of the argument I guess.

The problem isn't only that we wanted Canadian-made technology on the airframe - for the record, most nations do that. The other problem is that Sikorsky wasn't interested in rejigging the Seahawk for Canadian use - simply because the order wasn't large enough to offset the design costs. That's why they offered the S-92, which was entering civilian service and, as was believed at the time, could be fairly easily reconfigured as a warbird.

Now that Saturn jogged my memory, I specifically recall Canada wanting the Seahawk, but they wanted a larger version of it, which would be capable of multiple roles, while the Seahawk as operated by the USN is smaller and more mission-specific. Now the Seahawk can be re-configured for other roles (ASW, SAR, recon/surveillance, etc), but not all at the same time. The way the CF brass explained it, with the Seahawk it's an either or situation.

For the USN, with dozens of large helicopter carriers, aircraft carriers and destroyers the size of cruisers, that's no big deal. If they need an SAR chopper out there and only have ASW bird out there, they just launch another from one from a different ship in the task force. But the RCN has a limited number of smaller hulls and felt it needed multi-role helicopters instead of one-offs like the USN so that the can handle any task assigned to them, without the need of having to return to the ship all the time to reconfigure.

That was originally the rationale behind the EH-101 - it could do everything all at once (just like the existing SeaKings can do), while smaller choppers like the SeaLynx and Seahawk cannot.

However, as evidenced by the adoption of the NFH-90 by most NATO navies, it seems everyone but Canada has gone the way of smaller mission-specific helos, while we alone want huge multi-role helos.

That's the real problem here - the rest of the world has moved into the 21st century and we're still acting like it's the 1980s.

[BartSimpson]

Boots, my take on what you said right here:

The US helicopters look like this:



Canada wanted this:



Like my grandmother used to say, "A jack of all trades is a master of none"

This helicopter may end up being capable of many things but I guarantee that it will suck at almost every one of them.

Except crashing.

I suspect it will probably excel at that.

[saturn_656]

We need a Swiss Army knife, not a scalpel/butter knife/steak knife/hunting knife/ka-bar/etc.

We don't have the resources for multiple specialist birds so we need one multirole bird.

[BartSimpson]

saturn_656 saturn_656:

We need a Swiss Army knife, not a scalpel/butter knife/steak knife/hunting knife/ka-bar/etc.

We don't have the resources for multiple specialist birds so we need one multirole bird.

What Bootlegga said already addresses what you're saying here:

bootlegga bootlegga:

However, as evidenced by the adoption of the NFH-90 by most NATO navies, it seems everyone but Canada has gone the way of smaller mission-specific helos, while we alone want huge multi-role helos.

That's the real problem here - the rest of the world has moved into the 21st century and we're still acting like it's the 1980s.

[Xort]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

The most egregious f*ck up with the Leopard involved the optics for the main gun. The German optics adjusted for temperature variations while the Canadian optics didn't. That meant that once the Canadian optics were mounted to the turret they were only accurate at the exact temperature at which they were aligned. At any other temperature they were useless.

Do you have a source for this?

The last time I was in a Canadian leopard in Canada both the air temp and the powder temp adjustments worked.

[saturn_656]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

saturn_656 saturn_656:

We need a Swiss Army knife, not a scalpel/butter knife/steak knife/hunting knife/ka-bar/etc.

We don't have the resources for multiple specialist birds so we need one multirole bird.

What Bootlegga said already addresses what you're saying here:

bootlegga bootlegga:

However, as evidenced by the adoption of the NFH-90 by most NATO navies, it seems everyone but Canada has gone the way of smaller mission-specific helos, while we alone want huge multi-role helos.

That's the real problem here - the rest of the world has moved into the 21st century and we're still acting like it's the 1980s.

Yep, everyone is buying minime helos *cough* EH 101 *cough*

That is the helo we needed (minus rotor hub issues) but never bought because it was politically embarrassing for the Liberals.

[bootlegga]

saturn_656 saturn_656:

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

saturn_656 saturn_656:

We need a Swiss Army knife, not a scalpel/butter knife/steak knife/hunting knife/ka-bar/etc.

We don't have the resources for multiple specialist birds so we need one multirole bird.

What Bootlegga said already addresses what you're saying here:

bootlegga bootlegga:

However, as evidenced by the adoption of the NFH-90 by most NATO navies, it seems everyone but Canada has gone the way of smaller mission-specific helos, while we alone want huge multi-role helos.

That's the real problem here - the rest of the world has moved into the 21st century and we're still acting like it's the 1980s.

Yep, everyone is buying minime helos *cough* EH 101 *cough*

That is the helo we needed (minus rotor hub issues) but never bought because it was politically embarrassing for the Liberals.

I don't know that we needed it, but the brass definitely wanted it.

The NFH-90 probably would have served just as well and because it's in service with far more users than the EH-101, it would have been better interoperability-wise.

[saturn_656]

Four NATO navies are flying the ASW version of the NH 90, whereas two NATO navies fly the 101.

I don't see much difference. It's not as if the NH 90 is some sort of NATO-wide standard piece of equipment we must buy.

[bootlegga]

saturn_656 saturn_656:

Four NATO navies are flying the ASW version of the NH 90, whereas two NATO navies fly the 101.

I don't see much difference. It's not as if the NH 90 is some sort of NATO-wide standard piece of equipment we must buy.

Actually, it's five (Germany, Italy, France, Norway and the Netherlands), as well as another ally, Australia.

FTR, I never said it was a standard piece of equipment that we had to buy, but given how much credence the bigwigs at DND HQ make about interoperability (the reason we have bought a lot of equipment recently and the impetus behind the F-35 purchase), it makes to buy something that other allied navies are already using, not go our own way and likely be the sole operators of the Cyclone.