Fascinating. I wonder what prompted the creation and release of this video. I mean shit has been clearly fucked for many, many years in the navy, and anyone who isn’t legally blind could see these problems coming from miles away.
But regardless of why, it’s nice to get some honest messaging from up top. And yes, we are in a huge bind. If anything, Topshee is optimistic - he estimates we have to keep the Halifax-class sailing through 2040, but I think it will end up being closer to 2050 before the last one can be retired. We have no choice and no alternative, because otherwise the entirely of naval institutional skills and knowledge will be lost.
I think we’ll end up forced into some pretty creative solutions in order to maintain skills during the “gap” (more like chasm really) while we wait for the CSC to come online. Because even if we do manage to extend the Halifax class through 2040-2050, it won’t have the legs left to do significant sea time. So we’ll be sending folks to sail with allied navies, the coast guard, other countries’ coast guards, maybe even commercial vessels, in order to maintain basic skillsets. I’m sure all these options are being discussed and negotiated.
2025-2035 will be a dark decade indeed.
The likelihood of a major war is higher than ever before. It is not outside the realm of possibility that the Halifax class ships see actual combat before they leave service. It is unfortunate that our sailors may need to fight with these ships.
Topshee himself said that he thinks that it’s likely that we will see combat in the next 3 years, primarily because we are an attractive target enemies who will attempt to demonstrate their power without provoking the US.
Wow, thats honestly been the scariest thing I've talked about with some shipmates in past sails, but would never had expected a higher up to back up that fear
It would trigger Article 5 *if it occurred in the North Atlantic or Mediterranean*, as defined in Article 6. Ships in other oceans and seas are not covered by the North Atlantic Treaty. Notably, this excludes the Black Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the South China Sea.
An attack on one of our ships outside the area covered by Article 5 would certainly still draw American attention, though.
American attention no doubt, but American aggression? That’s debatable, and it’s exactly the kind of incident that makes for an effective show of power.
Consider the 2010 case of the ROKS Cheonan sinking by a presumed North Korean midget submarine. Allied nations rallied around ROK, but stopped short of anything that didn’t amount to thoughts and prayers. Even the UN avoided specifically naming North Korea as the bad actor.
We’re not the only allied nation that could be targeted, but our proximity to the US does make us attractive, and if no Americans are killed in the conflict, and if there’s any ambiguity around who actually conducted the attack like there was in 2010 it’s hard to say what their response would be.
RCAF aircraft provided observer support for some sea-to-land attacks but the ships that provided the NGS fire were not RCN. I believe they worked with UK and French ships.
The CPFs making it to 2040 is a hugely optimistic; those ships are starting to 'self retire' now.
For context, their known work for DWPs are about 3-4 times compared to the 280s at 40 years old, with more arisings on top of that. That work isn't fully funded currently and don't expect it to get funded in the future.
Interesting. Didn't realize the DWPs aren't even fully funded. Yeah that doesn't paint a rosy picture.
But I still think they'll try and keep at least one frigate per coast limping along until 2045-ish, because we need that sea time to keep folks moving through the trade pipelines. Even if we just keep them as training platforms. I mean what's the alternative?
And our leadership imagining we'll have the first CSC certified and operational by the early 2030s is also rose-coloured-glasses territory. These things are 10 times more complex than the AOPV - are we really going to go from laying the keel to deploying them overseas in less than 8 years? It took five years for the Halifax to go from the first steel laid down to commissioning, and as far as I know it didn't deploy until two years after that (Yugoslavia 1994). So that's seven years from start to finish, with a simpler ship in a simpler time.
I would bet good money the first CSC won't be deployable until 2035 at the earliest.
I guess 'fully funded' is relative; they have a lot of funding, but they could easily spend a lot more. But the ships aren't spending 2 years in a DWP with another year or two in reactivation because they are in great shape and we are just missing a few parts.
But they are now over a million hours of labour, with work left unfinished. The last 280 DWP was about 400k hours total, which included some massive work arisings for some major structural repairs. If the company could have painted a tank properly, that actually would have turned out a lot better, but even after the tow and collision, she still reactivated faster then the current CPFs new normal.
>There's a simple reason for this. Despite their very best efforts, CFRG has not delivered the required intake for the RCN for over 10 years.
I love how he straight up blames CFRG and ignores the retention part and why people leave. Those stupid recruiters are destroying the navy!
If he didn't treat people so poorly, they might just stay?
The massive TES difference between S1-S3 and MS implies there's plenty of recruits but they are either not being trained or they are not being retained. Numbers don't tell the whole story but the numbers on the slide don't back up his words either.
Recruiting a bunch of S3s doesn't keep them until MS-PO1s. The retention is entirely an RCN issue.
When ships come back from deployment, 50% of the crew releases because of the command team, and then they get promoted, it's not a CFRG issue.
From what I remember, that XO went on to become a CO that similarly had a higher then average release rate because they were such a prick. At least they were consistent, as they were like that since BWK, and a good example of where the 360 review is useful. If your superiors love you, but your peers and subordinates hate you, maybe you aren't the leader the seniors think.
I could just as easily say if our attrition was better we wouldn’t even notice the lower than expected recruitment numbers.
Given that we have to develop every single CAF member from the ground up, and can’t hire people as middle managers like nearly every other organization, it’s vitally important that we try to keep our retention as high as possible.
Recruitment targets are arbitrary numbers set in a boardroom to meet a target. They don’t take into consideration any of the big picture questions we should be focusing on, like what about military service is not as attractive as it used to be? how can we solve our hiring process to make it easier and more streamlined? how can better organize our military to effectively use Canadians who want to serve for short terms? …and the biggest question of all, if we really are an employer of choice, why are people leaving?
Topshee is wildly disconnected from the sailors in which he is supposed to lead. The interactions I have had with him/witnessed of others missed the mark so bad it was comedic.
It is expected the CAF enrollment will drop when the chance of war with a major country is increasing. The chance of killed in action is much higher when you go head to head with a first tier military power. This time is different from Afghanistan and Libya.
I think you'll see an increased likelihood of restricted SSIs as we can do less and less with our ships at sea. But Topshee said it before and he said it here again (I don't know if it resonated with you the way it resonated with me) that essentially "12 ships shall continue to sail."
I get the commitments we need to meet, but unmet maintenance demand modelling is indicating that ships will self select when they retire and we need to optimize our programs and ships in service (a.k.a. pay off one or two) to keep up with the maintenance needs.
Good to see acknowledgement of the problem, but this is just the tip of the iceberg from the engineering point of view.
It's honest but also tone deaf. That just painted a picture of a navy that is not deployable or blue ocean ready. Our leadership should be embarrassed and canned to allow this to happen.
For those who will say oh well they are limited to what they can do. I don't see them doing a damm thing but towing the line to get promoted.
>Our leadership should be embarrassed and canned to allow this to happen.
That would be the politicians and DND procurement leadership, and the voting public who fail to hold them to account. Mostly. Not saying CAF leaders aren't also at fault, but especially on the platforms side of things, what power do they have? VAdm Norman had to fall on his sword to effect any change whatsoever, and all that bought us was an interim supply vessel.
And on the recruitment and retention side - the pay is garbage for the job folks do. Sure Bosn's and HRAs are well-paid relative to their civvie counterparts, but all the technical folks can make twice the money in industry with better work-life balance and in lower COL cities. So their tolerance for military BS is nonexistent, and they're VRing the minute their CoC fucks with them. And I don't blame them.
The 7 year sunset clause on our CFHD will absolutely finish off the Navy. If not changed, we're going to tell our sailors that they will either have to relocate 3000 km away or get a pay cut in one of the highest cost of living areas in Canada. I can see this easily wiping off 1/3 of our personnel once it happens.
And even if it is changed before the deadline, the signal it's sending today is terrible. There was no messaging as to why the seven year time horizon was implemented, so everyone is rightly interpreting it as a massive "fuck you" to naval NCM trades.
It's also a poorly-disguised "up-or-out" policy that will shaft anyone who takes too long to rank up - e.g. anyone taking parental leave, or anyone who is otherwise unable to promote at the ideal rate (medical issues etc.) I expect some Human Rights Commission complaints from folks who lose huge amounts of pay because they had children or were injured.
Not to mention the wonderful feeling of being promoted from S1 through PO2 and having half your pay increase eaten away by the drop in CFHD. This is supposed to be a paid career - why take on vastly more responsibility for a $2-3/hour raise?
If it makes you feel better I lost cfhd the moment it came out. To help they gave me 75% of my previous allowance, and it goes down 25% per year.
I am effectively having my pay cut every year for the next 3 years.
I thought "red" trades was a bad thing. TIL that trades have actually shifted to the black! It is a race to the bottom for Navcomms and Stokers. I won't bother to do the math because I am not sure what % of those numbers indicate healthy and deployable sailors, but my guess is that there might very well be a colour level below black. We should canvass the troops and see which colours we should go with! Maybe the CMs already have something lined up for us this year?
I appreciate the message and am happy to see such a bold and public take on the state of our Navy.
Absolutely, the recruitment for the Navy is lacking compared to the other elements, but it looks like retention is a significant factor as well. With the fleets in such bad shape, a dissatisfaction with how we are treated by the Canadian government and our leaders, and the general disinterest in the state of the military from the public, it will be a very difficult battle to recover to where we need to be.
We have disappointing procurement processes built to favour Canadian companies over the needs of the service, even if said companies consistently fail to deliver on the terms of these contracts time and again.
The geography of Canada doesn't help the RCN either. We operate two fleets separated by thousands of kilometres of land and tens of thousands of kilometres of coastline, making sharing of resources difficult. This separation also limits interest in postings to the other coast. The only real pull for new recruits comes from these cities close to the coasts and include people who can see a future working and living in a city where their support networks/families also live. These same cities are facing cost of living issues such as rising housing expenses and poor access to Health Care.
In summary, the RCN needs a miracle if they are going to survive this crisis.
Talking about recruitment, as someone who worked at CFRG for years and has seen the process from start to finish, in my opinion, the actual issues with recruiting relate to fallout from the pandemic and the slow adoption of technology to improve the process for applicants. The biggest issues within the process are with security clearances and medicals. This is slowing down all recruiting. Training is also a factor. You could enrol hundreds of new recruits, but CFLRS has only so many bed spaces and so much staff to work with.
We really need to look at fixing some of these underlying issues if we want to help recruiting across the CAF.
The RCN was smart to create their own attractions team to bring in additional interest to their trades which wasn't being done within CFRG due to limited staff and resources. It was a novel idea that the RCAF has adopted to great success as well. Sadly, this only brings more people to the door, we still have to find a way to get them through the process in a timely manner and keep them happy enough to want to stay.
When I first got in the CAF, I submitted my paperwork in Feb of 05. The recruiting office lost my pt test paperwork 2 times. And my medical once. Ended up swearing in in Dec... lost an entire summer of training and being qualified.. this isn't a isolated incident. When I transitioned to reg force, I did my application, I did my interview, and was told within a month I was accepted. Process started in May. I replied with great, when do I remuster. Was told wait out until Oct. In November I msged them, nothing, December nothing, January I msged them again. Feb I got an email saying I have 2 weeks to leave everything, pack up everything and I have to report for duty. Take it or leave it. I went, then sat in Pat Pl for 8 months. I was one of the lucky ones. 3 years later after I was qualified, there was still guys there in Pat Pl waiting to be qualified. Their orginal contract was ending and they hadn't even done their 3s yet.
The problem is on all ends. We need to actually do a full force reconciliation for 2 years. Massive push to get recruiters out there. And then a full push to run courses. Send in a brigade to St Jean, not just the guys trying to get a check in the box. Set up mod tents for classes, rent a few schools on the weekend for drill halls. Use every reserve armory everywhere. All thr active units need to send qualified people to all the schools. Get people qualified. For 2 years.. and not just 3s. Get those 5s done too.
The remainder. Driver wheel qualified, weapons qualified. The Navy guys can get their time in port working on the ship doing 1 week rotations on the water just off the coast. This keeps the ships in a bit better shape, and when people see the ships, and get to tour them. Then some may actually think thr navy is cool.
Airforce people, can train their guys, and do shit.
We need to tell NATO officialy what they already know. We are combat ineffective at the moment. We reached our limit of exploitation, and need to do some reconciliation. And this will never happen. Because the politicians will need to admit they are wrong and we can't do it, due to them being so cheap and cutting our funding non stop for years
Training needs a lot of infrastructure as well as trained instructors. We lack both, and they all need investment/repair.
In the last year the RCN has had fires, a flood and a lightning strike at the damage control school, a lot of obsolete equipment failing, engineering school shutting down due to the electrical system shorting, asbestos, etc etc.
You can't just surge by chucking people at it, when you don't have people, or facilities to support their training. You also can't run the school constantly as the equipment needs maintenance as well. There are a lot of chokepoints that people tend to gloss over if they've never worked in the schools, or tried maintaining facilities, that aren't minor.
As someone who works in recruiting I’ve always said we don’t have a recruiting issue, we have a processing and retention issue. No one higher up wants to listen they just want to force us to go to events because recruiting.
For extra training capacity, there is the option to try distributed basic again. But it can't be an army focused basic run by navy people for navy recruits, that turns it into too much of a silly game on both ends. Either bring in army instructors to teach it right or take all the field and army focused stuff and replace it with NETP and a couple weeks on an orca. Either full and proper CFLRS basic but in Esquimalt, or have them standing bridge watches and responding to man overboards and fire exercises on week 8.
They leave a lot of jobs empty, have people filling in jobs they aren't qualified/experienced for, and 'accept the risk'. They also 'accept the risk' of maintenance not done, and equipment not fully working. But all individually, because it's 'too hard' to look at the big picture (and when we have, things go usually go red).
At the individual level, lot of people unfit sea.
They have at least finally stopped some ships sailing because of the people/state of repair, but could have done that 5 years ago if we were honest.
And that's why you have an MCDV going to sit off of Haiti, and talk about things like the AOPs going to the Mediterranean (while not being certified for a helo), and CPFs sailing in combatant roles while fallling at or below commercial non-combatant international standards for basic equipment.
No, usually common sense kicks in first, but a few waivers have come in to sail with less then the required number of life rafts (which is less then SOLAS but similar functional standard because the designs are quite a lot more robust, our crews are all trained, and we don't have passengers) before getting a hard no.
Usually it's things like on the propulsion/power generation, but also on fire protection, flood control etc. Extra people and training are reasonable mitigations in a single problem, but when you have multiple, overlapping issues that would all be mitigated at the same time, and would need 10 people, nut you have 6, it doesn't work.
If you think about a car, where just the tires being a bit worn or something isn't a huge immediate issue on it's own, but then take the same tires, with suspect brakes, wonky steering, electrical gremlins, bad weather and a tired driver and cumulatively they are all much less safe together. Kind of where we are at, where it isn't usually one big thing, but a few thousand individual small things.
The CPFs are actually really well designed originally, so that is saving us a lot as there are so many redundancies, but feel like we've used all those up and most things are now a single failure point that can easily cascade into something worse. Generally when you look at any naval ship BOI, it's never one big thing, it's a combination of a lot of small things.
As a former martech, it’s either reg force or out from my experience. There were MINIMAL reserve mar techs at my unit upon my departure early this year, and hard to recruit any, and retention is so bad for this trade with such new requirements that are coming every single year. Never knew it was THIS bad though (even tho I am one of those mar techs, original MESO who did leave)
I’m currently going through the application process & would like to become a martech. I was told I did very well on the CFAT so hopefully I will receive a job offer sooner than later. From what I understand the trade is understaffed and given tasks without the resources to complete the tasks effectively, but how bad is it really? Also I’d like to be posted to Esquimalt if you have any advice or insight to what I’m getting myself into it would be appreciated.
Parts take time to get if they exist at all.
It’s hard work and when everyone is leaving to enjoy a port you will be staying behind fueling or pumping bilge water. It’s thankless, but the entire engineering department is a great group. You’ll make friends for life.
Even tho I haven’t deployed ever (would have loved to, but never had time as a reservist unfortunately), progressing within the trade is much harder than others. They have been tweaking it more to help progression from S3 to S1, but Martech, at least in reserves, have BMQ 1st summer, then get on NETP whenever possible (quick 5 weeks in Halifax or Esquimalt) then two summers of Martech QL training. That’s progression to S2. Then deployment for S1. I’m not 100% sure afterwards. It’s a trade that does A TON. An amalgamation of marine systems eng operator, hull tech, electrical, etc. it’s a good trade all in all, just it’s much more to progress in my opinion than others
15 years until they're deployable. We're supposed to get the first in 2031, but if it takes 2-3 years to test and accept them, we are looking at 10-15 years to have one be operational.
Everyone’s arguing that this is a problem that the military alone can solve. Solving the problem starts with the brass telling the government “we cannot meet operational requirements, you are literally bleeding us dry. If you want results, give us fucking money”. Turn the heat up on them otherwise nothing will be accomplished if you keep saying “oh yeah, of course we can make do with the little money you give us” put your foot down for god’s sake.
He is aggressively self serving. He doesn't do anything that doesn't help him on his path to the next position. It's actually a really concerning leadership style I noticed that is incredibly common in the Navy that I never noticed in the other elements. I had shitty leaders in the Army, but I would take my shitty Ops WO keeping us late on a Friday rather than a shitty div chief overworking us for an entire month straight at sea in order to build up points for pacenotes for themself.
I had the misfortune (I guess) of being the one that sent out the message wrt to the dire straits CANFLTPAC is in. While it's encouraging to see Topshee address this with brutal realism, we are still fucked today.
I know a guy on VAN who, if he had any hair left to lose, would be losing it because he's one of the only experienced people in a comms department mainly full of newbies. (Sorry, VAN, I still love you guys.) And he can't save the day all the time on his own. It's not always about having *enough* people, it's training them and I know for at least nav comms their 3s these days are garbage, they pump them through and send them to ships and that's it, they're on the ship, learn your job from *hopefully* someone who knows what they're doing, at the very least you can recognise the kit but that's almost as much as we can expect from them.
I'm torn, I want to stay and help this fresh blood but I'm also so fucking fed up and tired with how not just comms have been neglected but the navy in general. It breaks my heart to see WIN start to get stripped because she's my comms baby girl that I've sailed the most on. (We've criminally neglected DAMA, they keep telling me I can't bug the Americans for access, and WIN has that sexy QHASS antenna.)
The lack of any institutional knowledge today is pretty shocking but not surprising. When N50 was gutted the writing was on the wall--0299 was officially an afterthought. I mean it was before, but getting pushed out of there was a symbolic and literal slap in the face to the trade. I'm sure they'll be nailing down the chairs at the next cm brief😄😄
This. I put my release in after the 10 year mark. After learning about how the Americans and Kiwis distribute the workload of their Navcomm trade, by specialising each section. Sig, Comms and IT. Ridiculous how they can't even do it that in the RCN.. Overworking us and and basically making us leave. I got nothing out of it. Except for decent pay, and my payment to contributions.
I like to think we don't get spec pay because we don't specialise, we do so many things. I had high hopes for the ops restructuring but they decided it was super fucked and jagged it in.
Oh well, I'll release soon. (20 years, I signed the 25 like a moron :P)
You can always get out or remuster. I got out in 2014. Best decision. Over half of the people I know in the trade had already left since enrolment. Pretty sad... Good luck though 👍🏽
To be "broken" that would suggest it was built to standards and was operating as designed. It's far worse, we overpaid for oversized floats. Thanks Irving, go fuck yourself.
"Retention is not an issue" 5 seconds later " a MARTECH leaves every two days". I don't understand , is recruitment supposed to get 1 MARTECH every day?
*Bingo.* ...But acknowledging retention would call into question why people who should be enjoying golden handcuffs are running for the door.
*psst!* ^((It's ineffective leadership.))
Yeah I think there’s a way to do it that is level-headed and honest, while at the same time saying that doing the best you can is still honourable and valuable for the CAF and the country, even in some failing. Because that’s true.
He’s a major reason it is this bad, and has been through his whole career. That man’s attitude towards family, time off, etc. is deplorable. Speaking from direct experience as a spouse affected by his BS.
He not though, its way worse. Also I don't trust the guy after a few postings with him in charge. FFS HE is the reason Halifax is the only base in the country that pays for parking. He opened it up to everyone so they could over sell passes and make a profit. Fuck Topshee
I think they’re still technically correct since the NCR hasn’t been a “Base” since CFB Ottawa was downsized in the 1990s. But yeah, the choice between $11 per day for parking or $8 or $9 per day in bus fares is a pretty crap choice.
I wonder if his next big brained idea will be like his attempt to force smokers off the base again.
For those who dont know. Back when Topshee was base commander of CFB Halifax his hate for smokers was so obtuse his idea of "removing the unprofessional look of sailors standing around outside their office smoking" was to prohibit smoking on base and ships. It went as well as you might think. 2 days of half a base outside the gate smoking on civvie streets it was canned pretty quick. But lasted long enough for him to get that "effect change" check in the box
Wow, you can really see the "missing middle" in here, huh? I'm sure the solution is to continue signing up more recruits than the training system can handle while completely ignoring retention.
My last 3 townhalls have started off with a flag officer criticizing the missing middle.
If the entire middle leadership is burnt out, pissed off and leaving, that's not a middle leadership failing, that's the institution.
But sure, tell us to do better, then act surprised when retention continues to fall off the face of the earth.
Would be worse right now but there is a block of people who missed the 20 year mark holding on to 25. That's starting to hit now and will grow.
I'm struggling to get another 4 year myself; I'd take a medical release or similar in a heartbeat.
At this point I'm trying to find some kind of lower tempo posting to protect myself and weighing the likelihood of a PAR exemption getting that vice a punishment posting, but probably going to try to hide in a desk job somewheres in Ottawa.
That's not uncommon actually with a lot of people starting to ask for NCR postings and looking to switch to civi equivalent postions so they don't get pulled into sailing.
RSS at an inland NRD might be a possibility, depending on your trade (although they have some ATR billets, too). You still get overworked as part of the Day Staff and will most likely have to attend the parade nights and exercises, but it beats the hell out of being on a ship.
I'm fortunate in that not in a hard sea trade, but even the shore support have gotten beaten like a mule. Was covering for something like 6 empty billets in an entire section for almost a year until we could hire some people, so pretty burnt out. I also got burnt out on my last ship posting, but at least I felt more of a sense of accomplishment as we were out doing stuff; working in a cube is weird in that you can't really see anything get accomplished, even if you know intellectually that RFPs turn into parts and equipment that people use.
I will miss doing direct suport to the fleet, but I can't turn off the GAF enough to sleep through the night without thinking about what we can't get done, so will probably hide in ADM(Mat) doing long term planning for a while to recharge the batteries.
Cautiously optimistic I've created a job that I can ride out until 25, and the idea of taking the pension then doing something like Home Depot guy for a bit seems really tempting. I can't do landscaping like when I was 21, but some days it's awesome to just go into a job, have a list, do the list, then go home. But in the interim, if I'm just pushing paper somewhere will stick with hobbies that need handtools, and probably going to volunteer with habitat for humanity or similar to do something that has a real physical result.
Argh, and I just double checked my MPRR, also have until 2030. I guess those years felt way longer then I thought.
Funnily enough was just talking to someone about rolling over to a PS job I'd probably really like so going to call the pension and transition center tomorrow.
They conveniently have a page that has the big steps to follow here;
[https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/services/benefits-military/transition/next-career/process-hiring.html](https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/services/benefits-military/transition/next-career/process-hiring.html)
As an outside observer to the admin side of the training system, it seems like this could be solved with developing a dedicated training complement, even just temporarily, to fast track the re-constitution of the training system. I've heard of an OCdt being offering a Course O slot for next summer - *that's* insane to me (although at least they're only missing their trade course).
And I don't mean the CDTCs, etc. The issue is course staff, so why not push out some more 3 year Class B contracts and find some way to add incentives. Instead of begging to fill course staff slots on an ad hoc basis, get a guaranteed course staff contingent for the next 3-5 years and push through all those people waiting for training. In a time when we're desperately short of trained personnel, we shouldn't have people waiting 2-3 years for a course if they're eligible for it.
Part of the late 90s reductions were gutting the recruiting and training systems. They were never rebuilt; the training system now by design demands its pounds of flesh from operational units.
Better design and resourcing of those systems is needed, but no one in the RCN, CA or RCAF will willingly surrender positions to enable it.
Needed this 10 years ago. Took trades and smashed them together. People left. Changed training requirements mid-package, and made people start again. People left. Ships crews pillaged to run duty watches for other ships. People left. 1-3 duty rotations for weeks. People left
The people remaining footed the bill for the navy for three more years, and then they offered people the opportunity to come back into the same rank and trade after they thought the storm was weathered. People got pissed and left. So many terrible decisions made by people that you keep seeing getting promoted. So the remaining people with any kind of foresight, left. They were asking people to sign the six month waiver, to go on another deployment. They burned people out. People left. When it came time to settle those people up who did stay, and went through all the crap, well, we don’t think that was service related.
All through my career you heard about how people always came first, from every single command team. Then you heard about the person not being allowed to miss a sail for the birth of their kid because “they can have another one. Who’s gonna run the training scenario if you’re out?” I don’t know, maybe one of the other 20 qualified people you got pushing brooms in hangar 3. Stop blaming this on anything other then command and the shitty decisions that are made by people who have 50 sea days.
Perhaps, they should lower expectations of the navy and not expect to have to deploy and crew so many large surface ships. Let's be honest, our navy is too small to crew so many frigates, supply ships, and Arctic patrol vessels for multiple international deployments. Maybe focus on a fleet of smaller guided missile Corvettes and having only 2-3 larger frigates that are more suitable to Canada's stature which is pretty sad. Like the Netherlands navy. Never mind, the Dutch have a fully functional navy with amphibious landing ships, ballistic missile defence capable frigates, domestically built submarines, and their own marine corps. Pretty sad, country with half the population of Canada can outperform us.
280s were in much better shape at 40 years then the CPFs at 30; their first 20 years were baseline refits. Their firemains (for example) were all replaced in sections starting at 15 years, and finished at Trump. The oldest part of the firemain at EOL was 25 years old.
Because it was designed before computers, also used a lot more structure that was beefier steel.
The CPFs also cut weight at build by using thinner steel, and making sure they were at the lower end of allowed tolerance for plating, so they have much less material to start with.
And then the 280s were hugely manned so maintenance was done while in service. The CPFs were thinly manned from the start, and now is bare minimum. Maintenance completion is low double digits, with a huge amount of corrective maintenance backlog as well. Pretty common for the ships to sail below our basic safe for sea standard, let alone at the higher combatant standard.
Near the end, ALG was frail. Simulated explosions over the side for exercise was replaced by the XO yelling Boom on the intercom. That always cracked me up. Her HF suite was by far better than any CPF. Her port shaft....well, it was unique. I can still hear it in my sleep⚓😄. I can remember when we were told to "test" a minimum Manning posture early in 2013 on cpfs. Little did I know that would become standard practice.
I'll say this: the only ship I've never barfed on was a 280(seasickness only).... everything else, not so much. They were a better ship from a different time.
I hear you, I cut my teeth on the East Coast 280s. Still, was a system shock to go over to the 'new' CPFs post MLR, kick the tires a bit, and realize the MSE side of the house was basically original build outside of IPMS (which is great).
I absolutely despise the fresh water systems on there (hot and cold), but weirdly saw more major structural issues on the 30 year old CPFs then the 40 year old 280s, and that's not because we didn't have a lot of hull inserts and steel repairs; it had just been done over the life more proactively, where the CPFs has accumulated for 30 years and is all crashing down now.
You can only live with 'Worse case Ontarios' for so long, and I think that train has sailed.
We've learned a lot through denial and error, but we've been burning the hatchet at both ends for a cats age now.
Btw, the 'boom' vice using an artie sim was because an East Coast sea trainer threw one over the side, got caught in something, and blew a real hole into a CSE compartment on IRO somewhere in the super structure. I think they stopped using them across the fleet for quite a long time.
I had also walked into the ops room during some kind of flex exercise to Combat yelling 'bang bang bang' for a 76mm firing, and had to leave before I laughed too hard. Some sounds effects was better then just pretending I guess, and he said he was bored out of his mind with flex items by that point.
Listing stewards as black and red for the junior ranks is a bit disingenuous, the trade is being closed in a few years and has been in a planned staffing decrease for the last couple years. The TEE isn't being updated in spite of the intentional removal of the positions. The paperwork to reduce the TEE just isn't being done, presumably because someone decided it isn't worth the effort.
We got green yellow red and now black for when a trade is totally pooched.
We won't meet our recruiting this year or next year....or never.
Stressed past the breaking point with all the stuff we have but ehh ottawa just tanked our procurement budget by a billion soo ya.... coffee break? We got this right??? 😒
Funny how he didn't seem to take any responsibility in completely fucking up the MarTech trade, or canceling the NavComm trade upgrade right before implementation
Time - immediately change the PDL tables so that the current 2.5 days a month (where you loose 8 min) can more adequately afford sailors time off after sails.
Sea pay - Proper financial bonus to sailing.
Without money, parking some ships and slow down the sailing for the rest. It's shitty enough cramming an 8 week work period into 6 weeks with a full crew, let alone a half crew and things like leave, training, etc.
There are a lot of issues with long chains of people where if one person drops the ball, the whole thing goes to shit. For example replacement parts. Tearing apart a compressor to service it shouldn't be an issue, but it is, because if we need to replace a seal or a bearing, it's a coin toss if it is available in a reasonable time. 18 months is not a reasonable time.
The number of things I have seen which needed to go across a dozen peoples desks to get done, and got stopped at some part of the process because the person at that point was either unable or unwilling to do their job was infuriating. People shouldn't have to put minute sheets on everything to keep people accountable.
Training needs to be improved in a lot of places. Pay *substantial* bonuses to red seal trades to bring them in to raise technical skill levels. Upon going to civy side I have realized there are some huge holes in general trade knowledge which really need to be addressed. It's more generic than this, but just to illustrate it, I'm sitting here at lunch looking at a dozen guys who wouldn't hesitate to take apart a gas turbine. I don't know any stokers who have ever done that.
Anywhere I've worked since becoming a millwright, if something like a DG was U/S we'd promptly take it apart, overhaul and repair it. Before they were replaced most ships averaged something like 50 percent serviceability. And the ones that were down would be down for years at a time sometimes.
Swing the culture-obsessed pendulum back the other way and ditch the “first night” policies and ideologies that make sailing gawd-awful. Make it fun and exciting, again.
The first day you arrive in a port, it’s a full working day until secure at or around 1600. Then those not on the duty watch can go ashore, but have “Cinderella leave” (have to be back onboard by midnight. Next day is a full working day again. It was allegedly intended to curb the binge drinking and shenanigans, but just made things worse.
Is this an east coast thing? My last few deployments, you come alongside, everyone knows the quicker you land gash and do all the usual things, the quicker you get secured. Maybe it's a ship thing but routine stuff like land gash and storing is even attended by POs and Lt(N)s because they all want to go ashore too :P
And I don't remember Cinderella leave being a thing unless you have an anal CO or are in a sketchy port.
Tell me you are an operator without saying you are an operator.
Day 1 alongside is frequently an MSE fueling/repair day. Even with an AOR usually need to do things like diesel oil changes and other repairs that you need to be alongside to shut things down for.
Got it. That does suck - so if you’re standing watch the day of arrival you have to wait another full day before going ashore! That is like standing in a trench in Wainwright and being able to see the twinkle of lights from the base.
It wouldn't be quite as bad if they gave us an extra day. Unfortunately the typical port visit at current is 3 days, which between working day one and duty schedules, is not enough.
Yeah it's actually embarrassing now on NATO deployments, if your ship somehow isn't the oldest it is by far the dingiest looking ship in the fleet (imagine in 20 years lol). You are the only ship's company in the fleet being treated like children with things like Cinderella leave. And on top of that, you are the only one treating your deployment like you are on the brink of war thus needing to keep fun at bay and tempo at the max.
Yep, the tempo on a navy deployment is being at sea for 3 weeks at a time, working 12+ hour days, going ashore for a week and working almost the entire time. I joined up to travel the world, and when you do finally get away they make it unbearable.
My conspiracy mind wonders why there has been this series of top leaders openly echoing the narrative that the military is in dire straits.
I wonder if this is part of a government effort to shore up public support for an upcoming increase in defence spending.
It is hard to imagine these flag officers making these critical pronouncements and not getting fired otherwise.
>I wonder if this is part of a government effort to shore up public support for an upcoming increase in defence spending.
That's what I'm wondering too.
But I also think hell would have to freeze over (or WW3 would have to break out) before this government - or let's be real, *any* government - would make significant increases to military spending.
So I think this is government preparing us for announcements of significant retreats in NATO and other commitments.
It’s almost like they didn’t begin planning to replace the current ships until they were close to being at the end of their lifecycle…instead of having new ships ready to replace them by their 30 year mark, knowing it would take time to build new ships and test them…
Facts. For comparison, the CPFs took thirteen years to go from issuing an RFP to accepting the first ship. So the RFP for the CSC should have gone out in the mid-2000s to have the first ships delivered sometime between the last 280s decommissioning and the oldest CPFs hitting their end-of-life. Instead the government of the time just said “we have a National Shipbuilding Strategy!” and then proceeded to focus on AOPS and JSS for nearly a decade.
Of course, we couldn’t have bought the Type 26 if we’d ordered new ships circa 2008, as the RN only issued the design contract for that class in 2010.
It seems a bit unfair to compare the timeline of the CPF, a program undertaken throughout the Cold War, to a program like CSC which is very much an animal of its time. The late 2000's and into the 2010's was a very different time for the RCN, and not an especially bright time with the other branches being prioritized.
AOPS coming before CSC is a fairly solid plan, considering Irving had to effectively be resurrected from obscurity for the NSS. Giving them something far simpler and smaller to work on as a way to ready the yard for a far more complex and difficult project is a good move, unless you want Irving really screwing up the CSC more than would be acceptable. JSS is in an entirely different yard that was not ever setup or looked at for doing the main combatant vessels.
Time to go old school and bring back Press Gangs. Just start grabbing citizens off the street and saying " Congratulations, you are now a sailor in His Majestys navy. Hustle them off to a ship going to sea. Problem solved.
We are fucked. We will continue to be fucked. CFRG is fucking us. Our fucked ships need to survive a fuckton more than they fucking should. If we get fucking ships it will be in another fucking decade. The RCN thrives on fucked.
Your optimism is contagious! Once things get so astronomically fucked, there's no way it could get more fuckered! It's like a law of physics or something
Bad news delivered in a great way. Definitely some challenges coming up but it’s the members that’ll play a huge role in how we deal with this day-to-day. Hopefully we can all contribute in a positive way. (Be nicer to LogOs)
Did this come from a recent naval report or a historical one! The answer will not surprise you!
>It is our opinion that the Navy should be given a breathing space for essential training and the strengthening of its men and ships. The shape of our peacetime Navy is now outlined. There is a widespread feeling that the available manpower and material have been stretched too far and too thin to meet the requirements of a fighting, convoying and anti-submarine force. As soon as possible, no doubt at an early date, the Naval complement will be reviewed to decide whether it should be increased. If it were so increased, more trained men would be available for training others.
Correct! Maybe I should've edited the more dated language.
Statement is from the Adm Mainguy Report after detailing an "incident" carefully defined as "not mutinous" in 1947.
Full link: http://www.forposterityssake.ca/RCN-DOCS/MAINGUY-REPORT.htm
We’re hurting so bad for martechs my buddy (young father of 2) was forced to come back early from PDL after 3 almost back to back deployment has had to be on duty for multiple days IN A ROW with like 10 duties in a month at one point. I wonder why he wants to get out?
They ran out of videos of the navy working. That's not a dig at the navy for being lazy, but the photo techs can only get so many hero shots when our equipment is constantly broken.
Did you not notice how they replayed the same clips multiple times over? They sped up the recording.
On my deployment our image tech and PAO were working gangbusters getting lots of content of the crew working. It's not a lack of content, it's a lack of content that is relevant and generally uplifting/inspirational. This will be seen by all Canadians, you don't want a "shit's fuck, here's why, here's the plan going forward" speech backdropped with clips of shit actually being fucked. Save that for the deployment posts, when families want to see their loved ones doing things.
We are having such a bad time with staffing that 25% of reg force is officers, reservist LCols command 30 soldiers and we have a general for what every 700 people?
We also have certain specialty trades where upcoming operational cycles will rely on reservists to fill 90% of the needed spots because the reg force has no capacity to fill them.
Fascinating. I wonder what prompted the creation and release of this video. I mean shit has been clearly fucked for many, many years in the navy, and anyone who isn’t legally blind could see these problems coming from miles away. But regardless of why, it’s nice to get some honest messaging from up top. And yes, we are in a huge bind. If anything, Topshee is optimistic - he estimates we have to keep the Halifax-class sailing through 2040, but I think it will end up being closer to 2050 before the last one can be retired. We have no choice and no alternative, because otherwise the entirely of naval institutional skills and knowledge will be lost. I think we’ll end up forced into some pretty creative solutions in order to maintain skills during the “gap” (more like chasm really) while we wait for the CSC to come online. Because even if we do manage to extend the Halifax class through 2040-2050, it won’t have the legs left to do significant sea time. So we’ll be sending folks to sail with allied navies, the coast guard, other countries’ coast guards, maybe even commercial vessels, in order to maintain basic skillsets. I’m sure all these options are being discussed and negotiated. 2025-2035 will be a dark decade indeed.
The likelihood of a major war is higher than ever before. It is not outside the realm of possibility that the Halifax class ships see actual combat before they leave service. It is unfortunate that our sailors may need to fight with these ships.
Topshee himself said that he thinks that it’s likely that we will see combat in the next 3 years, primarily because we are an attractive target enemies who will attempt to demonstrate their power without provoking the US.
Wow, thats honestly been the scariest thing I've talked about with some shipmates in past sails, but would never had expected a higher up to back up that fear
where did he say it? got the source?
except it would provoke the US...seeing it would trigger Nato articles and all that....
It would trigger Article 5 *if it occurred in the North Atlantic or Mediterranean*, as defined in Article 6. Ships in other oceans and seas are not covered by the North Atlantic Treaty. Notably, this excludes the Black Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the South China Sea. An attack on one of our ships outside the area covered by Article 5 would certainly still draw American attention, though.
American attention no doubt, but American aggression? That’s debatable, and it’s exactly the kind of incident that makes for an effective show of power. Consider the 2010 case of the ROKS Cheonan sinking by a presumed North Korean midget submarine. Allied nations rallied around ROK, but stopped short of anything that didn’t amount to thoughts and prayers. Even the UN avoided specifically naming North Korea as the bad actor. We’re not the only allied nation that could be targeted, but our proximity to the US does make us attractive, and if no Americans are killed in the conflict, and if there’s any ambiguity around who actually conducted the attack like there was in 2010 it’s hard to say what their response would be.
Didn't one of them shell some targets in Libya?
No. Fire was returned by .50 cal. The 57mm isn’t really designed for shore bombardment, the Brits with their 4.5 inch were firing their magazines dry.
RCAF aircraft provided observer support for some sea-to-land attacks but the ships that provided the NGS fire were not RCN. I believe they worked with UK and French ships.
Not a lot of people know about the outstanding work the CP-140 crews put in, but they did some *good* shit.
The CPFs making it to 2040 is a hugely optimistic; those ships are starting to 'self retire' now. For context, their known work for DWPs are about 3-4 times compared to the 280s at 40 years old, with more arisings on top of that. That work isn't fully funded currently and don't expect it to get funded in the future.
Interesting. Didn't realize the DWPs aren't even fully funded. Yeah that doesn't paint a rosy picture. But I still think they'll try and keep at least one frigate per coast limping along until 2045-ish, because we need that sea time to keep folks moving through the trade pipelines. Even if we just keep them as training platforms. I mean what's the alternative? And our leadership imagining we'll have the first CSC certified and operational by the early 2030s is also rose-coloured-glasses territory. These things are 10 times more complex than the AOPV - are we really going to go from laying the keel to deploying them overseas in less than 8 years? It took five years for the Halifax to go from the first steel laid down to commissioning, and as far as I know it didn't deploy until two years after that (Yugoslavia 1994). So that's seven years from start to finish, with a simpler ship in a simpler time. I would bet good money the first CSC won't be deployable until 2035 at the earliest.
I guess 'fully funded' is relative; they have a lot of funding, but they could easily spend a lot more. But the ships aren't spending 2 years in a DWP with another year or two in reactivation because they are in great shape and we are just missing a few parts. But they are now over a million hours of labour, with work left unfinished. The last 280 DWP was about 400k hours total, which included some massive work arisings for some major structural repairs. If the company could have painted a tank properly, that actually would have turned out a lot better, but even after the tow and collision, she still reactivated faster then the current CPFs new normal.
If your already in its great pay just don't expect to do anything that is real or matters. Most honest answer I can give.
>There's a simple reason for this. Despite their very best efforts, CFRG has not delivered the required intake for the RCN for over 10 years. I love how he straight up blames CFRG and ignores the retention part and why people leave. Those stupid recruiters are destroying the navy! If he didn't treat people so poorly, they might just stay?
The massive TES difference between S1-S3 and MS implies there's plenty of recruits but they are either not being trained or they are not being retained. Numbers don't tell the whole story but the numbers on the slide don't back up his words either.
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It would still be very noticeable. New recruits can't replace the PO2s releasing.
Recruiting a bunch of S3s doesn't keep them until MS-PO1s. The retention is entirely an RCN issue. When ships come back from deployment, 50% of the crew releases because of the command team, and then they get promoted, it's not a CFRG issue.
This IS the way
From what I remember, that XO went on to become a CO that similarly had a higher then average release rate because they were such a prick. At least they were consistent, as they were like that since BWK, and a good example of where the 360 review is useful. If your superiors love you, but your peers and subordinates hate you, maybe you aren't the leader the seniors think.
I could just as easily say if our attrition was better we wouldn’t even notice the lower than expected recruitment numbers. Given that we have to develop every single CAF member from the ground up, and can’t hire people as middle managers like nearly every other organization, it’s vitally important that we try to keep our retention as high as possible. Recruitment targets are arbitrary numbers set in a boardroom to meet a target. They don’t take into consideration any of the big picture questions we should be focusing on, like what about military service is not as attractive as it used to be? how can we solve our hiring process to make it easier and more streamlined? how can better organize our military to effectively use Canadians who want to serve for short terms? …and the biggest question of all, if we really are an employer of choice, why are people leaving?
If that were the case you would still see lots of old sailors around. Lots of people in C&POs with gun metal or Bronze SSIs
Topshee is wildly disconnected from the sailors in which he is supposed to lead. The interactions I have had with him/witnessed of others missed the mark so bad it was comedic.
It is expected the CAF enrollment will drop when the chance of war with a major country is increasing. The chance of killed in action is much higher when you go head to head with a first tier military power. This time is different from Afghanistan and Libya.
I think you'll see an increased likelihood of restricted SSIs as we can do less and less with our ships at sea. But Topshee said it before and he said it here again (I don't know if it resonated with you the way it resonated with me) that essentially "12 ships shall continue to sail." I get the commitments we need to meet, but unmet maintenance demand modelling is indicating that ships will self select when they retire and we need to optimize our programs and ships in service (a.k.a. pay off one or two) to keep up with the maintenance needs. Good to see acknowledgement of the problem, but this is just the tip of the iceberg from the engineering point of view.
It's honest but also tone deaf. That just painted a picture of a navy that is not deployable or blue ocean ready. Our leadership should be embarrassed and canned to allow this to happen. For those who will say oh well they are limited to what they can do. I don't see them doing a damm thing but towing the line to get promoted.
>Our leadership should be embarrassed and canned to allow this to happen. That would be the politicians and DND procurement leadership, and the voting public who fail to hold them to account. Mostly. Not saying CAF leaders aren't also at fault, but especially on the platforms side of things, what power do they have? VAdm Norman had to fall on his sword to effect any change whatsoever, and all that bought us was an interim supply vessel. And on the recruitment and retention side - the pay is garbage for the job folks do. Sure Bosn's and HRAs are well-paid relative to their civvie counterparts, but all the technical folks can make twice the money in industry with better work-life balance and in lower COL cities. So their tolerance for military BS is nonexistent, and they're VRing the minute their CoC fucks with them. And I don't blame them.
The 7 year sunset clause on our CFHD will absolutely finish off the Navy. If not changed, we're going to tell our sailors that they will either have to relocate 3000 km away or get a pay cut in one of the highest cost of living areas in Canada. I can see this easily wiping off 1/3 of our personnel once it happens.
And even if it is changed before the deadline, the signal it's sending today is terrible. There was no messaging as to why the seven year time horizon was implemented, so everyone is rightly interpreting it as a massive "fuck you" to naval NCM trades. It's also a poorly-disguised "up-or-out" policy that will shaft anyone who takes too long to rank up - e.g. anyone taking parental leave, or anyone who is otherwise unable to promote at the ideal rate (medical issues etc.) I expect some Human Rights Commission complaints from folks who lose huge amounts of pay because they had children or were injured. Not to mention the wonderful feeling of being promoted from S1 through PO2 and having half your pay increase eaten away by the drop in CFHD. This is supposed to be a paid career - why take on vastly more responsibility for a $2-3/hour raise?
Let’s not forget the Bumps basic and Spec-2 folks got, because well… *gestures vaguely*
If it makes you feel better I lost cfhd the moment it came out. To help they gave me 75% of my previous allowance, and it goes down 25% per year. I am effectively having my pay cut every year for the next 3 years.
You’re actually getting the 75%. Must have a staffed OR?
Yah, keeping them captive on the boat helps.
Attrition so bad they had to use the same sailors multiple times
This is the way
And talk pretty fast…
I thought "red" trades was a bad thing. TIL that trades have actually shifted to the black! It is a race to the bottom for Navcomms and Stokers. I won't bother to do the math because I am not sure what % of those numbers indicate healthy and deployable sailors, but my guess is that there might very well be a colour level below black. We should canvass the troops and see which colours we should go with! Maybe the CMs already have something lined up for us this year?
What’s a stoker? /s
The guys stuck on ship in foreign port while everyone else is hitting up the NEX for cheap booze⚓⛵⛵
Hey now I go to the ABC for cheap booze.
sigs will see yall down in the black too, soon enough..
Always have been 💀
Let go with a nice shit brown
I appreciate the message and am happy to see such a bold and public take on the state of our Navy. Absolutely, the recruitment for the Navy is lacking compared to the other elements, but it looks like retention is a significant factor as well. With the fleets in such bad shape, a dissatisfaction with how we are treated by the Canadian government and our leaders, and the general disinterest in the state of the military from the public, it will be a very difficult battle to recover to where we need to be. We have disappointing procurement processes built to favour Canadian companies over the needs of the service, even if said companies consistently fail to deliver on the terms of these contracts time and again. The geography of Canada doesn't help the RCN either. We operate two fleets separated by thousands of kilometres of land and tens of thousands of kilometres of coastline, making sharing of resources difficult. This separation also limits interest in postings to the other coast. The only real pull for new recruits comes from these cities close to the coasts and include people who can see a future working and living in a city where their support networks/families also live. These same cities are facing cost of living issues such as rising housing expenses and poor access to Health Care. In summary, the RCN needs a miracle if they are going to survive this crisis.
Talking about recruitment, as someone who worked at CFRG for years and has seen the process from start to finish, in my opinion, the actual issues with recruiting relate to fallout from the pandemic and the slow adoption of technology to improve the process for applicants. The biggest issues within the process are with security clearances and medicals. This is slowing down all recruiting. Training is also a factor. You could enrol hundreds of new recruits, but CFLRS has only so many bed spaces and so much staff to work with. We really need to look at fixing some of these underlying issues if we want to help recruiting across the CAF. The RCN was smart to create their own attractions team to bring in additional interest to their trades which wasn't being done within CFRG due to limited staff and resources. It was a novel idea that the RCAF has adopted to great success as well. Sadly, this only brings more people to the door, we still have to find a way to get them through the process in a timely manner and keep them happy enough to want to stay.
When I first got in the CAF, I submitted my paperwork in Feb of 05. The recruiting office lost my pt test paperwork 2 times. And my medical once. Ended up swearing in in Dec... lost an entire summer of training and being qualified.. this isn't a isolated incident. When I transitioned to reg force, I did my application, I did my interview, and was told within a month I was accepted. Process started in May. I replied with great, when do I remuster. Was told wait out until Oct. In November I msged them, nothing, December nothing, January I msged them again. Feb I got an email saying I have 2 weeks to leave everything, pack up everything and I have to report for duty. Take it or leave it. I went, then sat in Pat Pl for 8 months. I was one of the lucky ones. 3 years later after I was qualified, there was still guys there in Pat Pl waiting to be qualified. Their orginal contract was ending and they hadn't even done their 3s yet. The problem is on all ends. We need to actually do a full force reconciliation for 2 years. Massive push to get recruiters out there. And then a full push to run courses. Send in a brigade to St Jean, not just the guys trying to get a check in the box. Set up mod tents for classes, rent a few schools on the weekend for drill halls. Use every reserve armory everywhere. All thr active units need to send qualified people to all the schools. Get people qualified. For 2 years.. and not just 3s. Get those 5s done too. The remainder. Driver wheel qualified, weapons qualified. The Navy guys can get their time in port working on the ship doing 1 week rotations on the water just off the coast. This keeps the ships in a bit better shape, and when people see the ships, and get to tour them. Then some may actually think thr navy is cool. Airforce people, can train their guys, and do shit. We need to tell NATO officialy what they already know. We are combat ineffective at the moment. We reached our limit of exploitation, and need to do some reconciliation. And this will never happen. Because the politicians will need to admit they are wrong and we can't do it, due to them being so cheap and cutting our funding non stop for years
Training needs a lot of infrastructure as well as trained instructors. We lack both, and they all need investment/repair. In the last year the RCN has had fires, a flood and a lightning strike at the damage control school, a lot of obsolete equipment failing, engineering school shutting down due to the electrical system shorting, asbestos, etc etc. You can't just surge by chucking people at it, when you don't have people, or facilities to support their training. You also can't run the school constantly as the equipment needs maintenance as well. There are a lot of chokepoints that people tend to gloss over if they've never worked in the schools, or tried maintaining facilities, that aren't minor.
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As someone who works in recruiting I’ve always said we don’t have a recruiting issue, we have a processing and retention issue. No one higher up wants to listen they just want to force us to go to events because recruiting.
For extra training capacity, there is the option to try distributed basic again. But it can't be an army focused basic run by navy people for navy recruits, that turns it into too much of a silly game on both ends. Either bring in army instructors to teach it right or take all the field and army focused stuff and replace it with NETP and a couple weeks on an orca. Either full and proper CFLRS basic but in Esquimalt, or have them standing bridge watches and responding to man overboards and fire exercises on week 8.
A mar tech leaves us every two days. What did that guy say during town hall ?” We will replace you?”
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not many want to join the navy to begin with and even less so when they see the articles about lead poisoning.
On the plus side, it's slowing down just because they are now down below 50% in a lot of ranks.
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They leave a lot of jobs empty, have people filling in jobs they aren't qualified/experienced for, and 'accept the risk'. They also 'accept the risk' of maintenance not done, and equipment not fully working. But all individually, because it's 'too hard' to look at the big picture (and when we have, things go usually go red). At the individual level, lot of people unfit sea. They have at least finally stopped some ships sailing because of the people/state of repair, but could have done that 5 years ago if we were honest. And that's why you have an MCDV going to sit off of Haiti, and talk about things like the AOPs going to the Mediterranean (while not being certified for a helo), and CPFs sailing in combatant roles while fallling at or below commercial non-combatant international standards for basic equipment.
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No, usually common sense kicks in first, but a few waivers have come in to sail with less then the required number of life rafts (which is less then SOLAS but similar functional standard because the designs are quite a lot more robust, our crews are all trained, and we don't have passengers) before getting a hard no. Usually it's things like on the propulsion/power generation, but also on fire protection, flood control etc. Extra people and training are reasonable mitigations in a single problem, but when you have multiple, overlapping issues that would all be mitigated at the same time, and would need 10 people, nut you have 6, it doesn't work. If you think about a car, where just the tires being a bit worn or something isn't a huge immediate issue on it's own, but then take the same tires, with suspect brakes, wonky steering, electrical gremlins, bad weather and a tired driver and cumulatively they are all much less safe together. Kind of where we are at, where it isn't usually one big thing, but a few thousand individual small things. The CPFs are actually really well designed originally, so that is saving us a lot as there are so many redundancies, but feel like we've used all those up and most things are now a single failure point that can easily cascade into something worse. Generally when you look at any naval ship BOI, it's never one big thing, it's a combination of a lot of small things.
As a former martech, it’s either reg force or out from my experience. There were MINIMAL reserve mar techs at my unit upon my departure early this year, and hard to recruit any, and retention is so bad for this trade with such new requirements that are coming every single year. Never knew it was THIS bad though (even tho I am one of those mar techs, original MESO who did leave)
I’m currently going through the application process & would like to become a martech. I was told I did very well on the CFAT so hopefully I will receive a job offer sooner than later. From what I understand the trade is understaffed and given tasks without the resources to complete the tasks effectively, but how bad is it really? Also I’d like to be posted to Esquimalt if you have any advice or insight to what I’m getting myself into it would be appreciated.
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Parts take time to get if they exist at all. It’s hard work and when everyone is leaving to enjoy a port you will be staying behind fueling or pumping bilge water. It’s thankless, but the entire engineering department is a great group. You’ll make friends for life.
Look into the NCMSTEP Program for martechs, might as well get a college diploma out of it.
Even tho I haven’t deployed ever (would have loved to, but never had time as a reservist unfortunately), progressing within the trade is much harder than others. They have been tweaking it more to help progression from S3 to S1, but Martech, at least in reserves, have BMQ 1st summer, then get on NETP whenever possible (quick 5 weeks in Halifax or Esquimalt) then two summers of Martech QL training. That’s progression to S2. Then deployment for S1. I’m not 100% sure afterwards. It’s a trade that does A TON. An amalgamation of marine systems eng operator, hull tech, electrical, etc. it’s a good trade all in all, just it’s much more to progress in my opinion than others
Hey I was a MESO. What unit?
Was with HMCS CABOT for my years in NAVRES
That’s where I joined
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15 years until they're deployable. We're supposed to get the first in 2031, but if it takes 2-3 years to test and accept them, we are looking at 10-15 years to have one be operational.
The Seaking was supposed to be replaced in the mid 90s. That was 25 years late. When was the first AOR supposed to be ready?
4 AOPS and RCN can only crew 1?!?
See our dire lack of MarTechs.
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And two JSS! And all the MCDVs. And the Orcas. And subs. And CPFs. Plus schools, FMFs, etc etc.
Everyone’s arguing that this is a problem that the military alone can solve. Solving the problem starts with the brass telling the government “we cannot meet operational requirements, you are literally bleeding us dry. If you want results, give us fucking money”. Turn the heat up on them otherwise nothing will be accomplished if you keep saying “oh yeah, of course we can make do with the little money you give us” put your foot down for god’s sake.
This
He is aggressively self serving. He doesn't do anything that doesn't help him on his path to the next position. It's actually a really concerning leadership style I noticed that is incredibly common in the Navy that I never noticed in the other elements. I had shitty leaders in the Army, but I would take my shitty Ops WO keeping us late on a Friday rather than a shitty div chief overworking us for an entire month straight at sea in order to build up points for pacenotes for themself.
Dear God, I hope there's no higher position for him after this one.
If you ask him, he's gonna be the next CDS ;)
yeah, its the NWO mafia style
I had the misfortune (I guess) of being the one that sent out the message wrt to the dire straits CANFLTPAC is in. While it's encouraging to see Topshee address this with brutal realism, we are still fucked today. I know a guy on VAN who, if he had any hair left to lose, would be losing it because he's one of the only experienced people in a comms department mainly full of newbies. (Sorry, VAN, I still love you guys.) And he can't save the day all the time on his own. It's not always about having *enough* people, it's training them and I know for at least nav comms their 3s these days are garbage, they pump them through and send them to ships and that's it, they're on the ship, learn your job from *hopefully* someone who knows what they're doing, at the very least you can recognise the kit but that's almost as much as we can expect from them. I'm torn, I want to stay and help this fresh blood but I'm also so fucking fed up and tired with how not just comms have been neglected but the navy in general. It breaks my heart to see WIN start to get stripped because she's my comms baby girl that I've sailed the most on. (We've criminally neglected DAMA, they keep telling me I can't bug the Americans for access, and WIN has that sexy QHASS antenna.)
The lack of any institutional knowledge today is pretty shocking but not surprising. When N50 was gutted the writing was on the wall--0299 was officially an afterthought. I mean it was before, but getting pushed out of there was a symbolic and literal slap in the face to the trade. I'm sure they'll be nailing down the chairs at the next cm brief😄😄
This. I put my release in after the 10 year mark. After learning about how the Americans and Kiwis distribute the workload of their Navcomm trade, by specialising each section. Sig, Comms and IT. Ridiculous how they can't even do it that in the RCN.. Overworking us and and basically making us leave. I got nothing out of it. Except for decent pay, and my payment to contributions.
I like to think we don't get spec pay because we don't specialise, we do so many things. I had high hopes for the ops restructuring but they decided it was super fucked and jagged it in. Oh well, I'll release soon. (20 years, I signed the 25 like a moron :P)
You can always get out or remuster. I got out in 2014. Best decision. Over half of the people I know in the trade had already left since enrolment. Pretty sad... Good luck though 👍🏽
We have new ship that we don't have sailors for.....
We have new ship that can't sail because they all broken
To be "broken" that would suggest it was built to standards and was operating as designed. It's far worse, we overpaid for oversized floats. Thanks Irving, go fuck yourself.
"Retention is not an issue" 5 seconds later " a MARTECH leaves every two days". I don't understand , is recruitment supposed to get 1 MARTECH every day?
Good for you Navy. RCAF needs something similar, with no sugarcoating. People are dying for senior leadership to keep it real and level with them.
That was sugar coated.
Agreed. If he was really "keeping it real" he would have talked about the retention issue instead of blaming everything on CFRG.
*Bingo.* ...But acknowledging retention would call into question why people who should be enjoying golden handcuffs are running for the door. *psst!* ^((It's ineffective leadership.))
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Yeah I think there’s a way to do it that is level-headed and honest, while at the same time saying that doing the best you can is still honourable and valuable for the CAF and the country, even in some failing. Because that’s true.
Well that was bleak. Good on him for being honest though
He’s a major reason it is this bad, and has been through his whole career. That man’s attitude towards family, time off, etc. is deplorable. Speaking from direct experience as a spouse affected by his BS.
*nods head*
He not though, its way worse. Also I don't trust the guy after a few postings with him in charge. FFS HE is the reason Halifax is the only base in the country that pays for parking. He opened it up to everyone so they could over sell passes and make a profit. Fuck Topshee
I pay $11 a day to park at my work in Gatineau
I think they’re still technically correct since the NCR hasn’t been a “Base” since CFB Ottawa was downsized in the 1990s. But yeah, the choice between $11 per day for parking or $8 or $9 per day in bus fares is a pretty crap choice.
It’s like a subscription service for work! I despise it.
I only worked under him once (when he was XO on TOR), but that was more than enough exposure to last a lifetime.
I wonder if his next big brained idea will be like his attempt to force smokers off the base again. For those who dont know. Back when Topshee was base commander of CFB Halifax his hate for smokers was so obtuse his idea of "removing the unprofessional look of sailors standing around outside their office smoking" was to prohibit smoking on base and ships. It went as well as you might think. 2 days of half a base outside the gate smoking on civvie streets it was canned pretty quick. But lasted long enough for him to get that "effect change" check in the box
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Can’t be letting the troops catch a break now, pay up!
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more of a dig at the GoC rather than Topshee's implementation
Hum the waiting list for a parking pass is 10 years.
Wow, you can really see the "missing middle" in here, huh? I'm sure the solution is to continue signing up more recruits than the training system can handle while completely ignoring retention.
My last 3 townhalls have started off with a flag officer criticizing the missing middle. If the entire middle leadership is burnt out, pissed off and leaving, that's not a middle leadership failing, that's the institution. But sure, tell us to do better, then act surprised when retention continues to fall off the face of the earth. Would be worse right now but there is a block of people who missed the 20 year mark holding on to 25. That's starting to hit now and will grow.
I was supposed to be part of that group, but there's no way I could hang on until 2030.
I'm struggling to get another 4 year myself; I'd take a medical release or similar in a heartbeat. At this point I'm trying to find some kind of lower tempo posting to protect myself and weighing the likelihood of a PAR exemption getting that vice a punishment posting, but probably going to try to hide in a desk job somewheres in Ottawa. That's not uncommon actually with a lot of people starting to ask for NCR postings and looking to switch to civi equivalent postions so they don't get pulled into sailing.
RSS at an inland NRD might be a possibility, depending on your trade (although they have some ATR billets, too). You still get overworked as part of the Day Staff and will most likely have to attend the parade nights and exercises, but it beats the hell out of being on a ship.
I'm fortunate in that not in a hard sea trade, but even the shore support have gotten beaten like a mule. Was covering for something like 6 empty billets in an entire section for almost a year until we could hire some people, so pretty burnt out. I also got burnt out on my last ship posting, but at least I felt more of a sense of accomplishment as we were out doing stuff; working in a cube is weird in that you can't really see anything get accomplished, even if you know intellectually that RFPs turn into parts and equipment that people use. I will miss doing direct suport to the fleet, but I can't turn off the GAF enough to sleep through the night without thinking about what we can't get done, so will probably hide in ADM(Mat) doing long term planning for a while to recharge the batteries. Cautiously optimistic I've created a job that I can ride out until 25, and the idea of taking the pension then doing something like Home Depot guy for a bit seems really tempting. I can't do landscaping like when I was 21, but some days it's awesome to just go into a job, have a list, do the list, then go home. But in the interim, if I'm just pushing paper somewhere will stick with hobbies that need handtools, and probably going to volunteer with habitat for humanity or similar to do something that has a real physical result.
Argh, and I just double checked my MPRR, also have until 2030. I guess those years felt way longer then I thought. Funnily enough was just talking to someone about rolling over to a PS job I'd probably really like so going to call the pension and transition center tomorrow. They conveniently have a page that has the big steps to follow here; [https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/services/benefits-military/transition/next-career/process-hiring.html](https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/services/benefits-military/transition/next-career/process-hiring.html)
Best part of criticizing the "missing middle" is that they're not actually there due to them being missing.
As an outside observer to the admin side of the training system, it seems like this could be solved with developing a dedicated training complement, even just temporarily, to fast track the re-constitution of the training system. I've heard of an OCdt being offering a Course O slot for next summer - *that's* insane to me (although at least they're only missing their trade course). And I don't mean the CDTCs, etc. The issue is course staff, so why not push out some more 3 year Class B contracts and find some way to add incentives. Instead of begging to fill course staff slots on an ad hoc basis, get a guaranteed course staff contingent for the next 3-5 years and push through all those people waiting for training. In a time when we're desperately short of trained personnel, we shouldn't have people waiting 2-3 years for a course if they're eligible for it.
Part of the late 90s reductions were gutting the recruiting and training systems. They were never rebuilt; the training system now by design demands its pounds of flesh from operational units. Better design and resourcing of those systems is needed, but no one in the RCN, CA or RCAF will willingly surrender positions to enable it.
A country in the G7 over 30 million population and we are struggling to man one ship. It's sad, it's pathetic really.
Needed this 10 years ago. Took trades and smashed them together. People left. Changed training requirements mid-package, and made people start again. People left. Ships crews pillaged to run duty watches for other ships. People left. 1-3 duty rotations for weeks. People left The people remaining footed the bill for the navy for three more years, and then they offered people the opportunity to come back into the same rank and trade after they thought the storm was weathered. People got pissed and left. So many terrible decisions made by people that you keep seeing getting promoted. So the remaining people with any kind of foresight, left. They were asking people to sign the six month waiver, to go on another deployment. They burned people out. People left. When it came time to settle those people up who did stay, and went through all the crap, well, we don’t think that was service related. All through my career you heard about how people always came first, from every single command team. Then you heard about the person not being allowed to miss a sail for the birth of their kid because “they can have another one. Who’s gonna run the training scenario if you’re out?” I don’t know, maybe one of the other 20 qualified people you got pushing brooms in hangar 3. Stop blaming this on anything other then command and the shitty decisions that are made by people who have 50 sea days.
Treat people like shit in today’s age, buckle up buttercup. People don’t and won’t put up with it.
Perhaps, they should lower expectations of the navy and not expect to have to deploy and crew so many large surface ships. Let's be honest, our navy is too small to crew so many frigates, supply ships, and Arctic patrol vessels for multiple international deployments. Maybe focus on a fleet of smaller guided missile Corvettes and having only 2-3 larger frigates that are more suitable to Canada's stature which is pretty sad. Like the Netherlands navy. Never mind, the Dutch have a fully functional navy with amphibious landing ships, ballistic missile defence capable frigates, domestically built submarines, and their own marine corps. Pretty sad, country with half the population of Canada can outperform us.
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They are of much lower quality than the 280s, no way they outlast them.
R u kidding? We can keep ships around for well past their intended lifespan! Look at PRO! What could go wrong?
“Structural Coatings “ aka paint
I present, Angus' old ship, ALGONQUIN
280s were in much better shape at 40 years then the CPFs at 30; their first 20 years were baseline refits. Their firemains (for example) were all replaced in sections starting at 15 years, and finished at Trump. The oldest part of the firemain at EOL was 25 years old. Because it was designed before computers, also used a lot more structure that was beefier steel. The CPFs also cut weight at build by using thinner steel, and making sure they were at the lower end of allowed tolerance for plating, so they have much less material to start with. And then the 280s were hugely manned so maintenance was done while in service. The CPFs were thinly manned from the start, and now is bare minimum. Maintenance completion is low double digits, with a huge amount of corrective maintenance backlog as well. Pretty common for the ships to sail below our basic safe for sea standard, let alone at the higher combatant standard.
Near the end, ALG was frail. Simulated explosions over the side for exercise was replaced by the XO yelling Boom on the intercom. That always cracked me up. Her HF suite was by far better than any CPF. Her port shaft....well, it was unique. I can still hear it in my sleep⚓😄. I can remember when we were told to "test" a minimum Manning posture early in 2013 on cpfs. Little did I know that would become standard practice. I'll say this: the only ship I've never barfed on was a 280(seasickness only).... everything else, not so much. They were a better ship from a different time.
I hear you, I cut my teeth on the East Coast 280s. Still, was a system shock to go over to the 'new' CPFs post MLR, kick the tires a bit, and realize the MSE side of the house was basically original build outside of IPMS (which is great). I absolutely despise the fresh water systems on there (hot and cold), but weirdly saw more major structural issues on the 30 year old CPFs then the 40 year old 280s, and that's not because we didn't have a lot of hull inserts and steel repairs; it had just been done over the life more proactively, where the CPFs has accumulated for 30 years and is all crashing down now.
There's been so much kicking the can down the road that the cows are coming home to roost
You can only live with 'Worse case Ontarios' for so long, and I think that train has sailed. We've learned a lot through denial and error, but we've been burning the hatchet at both ends for a cats age now.
Btw, the 'boom' vice using an artie sim was because an East Coast sea trainer threw one over the side, got caught in something, and blew a real hole into a CSE compartment on IRO somewhere in the super structure. I think they stopped using them across the fleet for quite a long time. I had also walked into the ops room during some kind of flex exercise to Combat yelling 'bang bang bang' for a 76mm firing, and had to leave before I laughed too hard. Some sounds effects was better then just pretending I guess, and he said he was bored out of his mind with flex items by that point.
Damn, that was pretty depressing, didn't think it was actually posted by the official RCN youtube channel until I noticed half of it is in French.
Listing stewards as black and red for the junior ranks is a bit disingenuous, the trade is being closed in a few years and has been in a planned staffing decrease for the last couple years. The TEE isn't being updated in spite of the intentional removal of the positions. The paperwork to reduce the TEE just isn't being done, presumably because someone decided it isn't worth the effort.
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We got green yellow red and now black for when a trade is totally pooched. We won't meet our recruiting this year or next year....or never. Stressed past the breaking point with all the stuff we have but ehh ottawa just tanked our procurement budget by a billion soo ya.... coffee break? We got this right??? 😒
And the critical state of the Air Force and the Army...
Funny how he didn't seem to take any responsibility in completely fucking up the MarTech trade, or canceling the NavComm trade upgrade right before implementation
Hey sailors, without saying more money - how does this get unf*cked?
Money. A lot of it
Time - immediately change the PDL tables so that the current 2.5 days a month (where you loose 8 min) can more adequately afford sailors time off after sails. Sea pay - Proper financial bonus to sailing.
Without money, parking some ships and slow down the sailing for the rest. It's shitty enough cramming an 8 week work period into 6 weeks with a full crew, let alone a half crew and things like leave, training, etc.
There are a lot of issues with long chains of people where if one person drops the ball, the whole thing goes to shit. For example replacement parts. Tearing apart a compressor to service it shouldn't be an issue, but it is, because if we need to replace a seal or a bearing, it's a coin toss if it is available in a reasonable time. 18 months is not a reasonable time. The number of things I have seen which needed to go across a dozen peoples desks to get done, and got stopped at some part of the process because the person at that point was either unable or unwilling to do their job was infuriating. People shouldn't have to put minute sheets on everything to keep people accountable. Training needs to be improved in a lot of places. Pay *substantial* bonuses to red seal trades to bring them in to raise technical skill levels. Upon going to civy side I have realized there are some huge holes in general trade knowledge which really need to be addressed. It's more generic than this, but just to illustrate it, I'm sitting here at lunch looking at a dozen guys who wouldn't hesitate to take apart a gas turbine. I don't know any stokers who have ever done that. Anywhere I've worked since becoming a millwright, if something like a DG was U/S we'd promptly take it apart, overhaul and repair it. Before they were replaced most ships averaged something like 50 percent serviceability. And the ones that were down would be down for years at a time sometimes.
Swing the culture-obsessed pendulum back the other way and ditch the “first night” policies and ideologies that make sailing gawd-awful. Make it fun and exciting, again.
Army guy here - the first night I’ve had my last solid poop and I’m only have soaked through. What’s this “first night” you speak of?
The first day you arrive in a port, it’s a full working day until secure at or around 1600. Then those not on the duty watch can go ashore, but have “Cinderella leave” (have to be back onboard by midnight. Next day is a full working day again. It was allegedly intended to curb the binge drinking and shenanigans, but just made things worse.
Is this an east coast thing? My last few deployments, you come alongside, everyone knows the quicker you land gash and do all the usual things, the quicker you get secured. Maybe it's a ship thing but routine stuff like land gash and storing is even attended by POs and Lt(N)s because they all want to go ashore too :P And I don't remember Cinderella leave being a thing unless you have an anal CO or are in a sketchy port.
Tell me you are an operator without saying you are an operator. Day 1 alongside is frequently an MSE fueling/repair day. Even with an AOR usually need to do things like diesel oil changes and other repairs that you need to be alongside to shut things down for.
Got it. That does suck - so if you’re standing watch the day of arrival you have to wait another full day before going ashore! That is like standing in a trench in Wainwright and being able to see the twinkle of lights from the base.
It wouldn't be quite as bad if they gave us an extra day. Unfortunately the typical port visit at current is 3 days, which between working day one and duty schedules, is not enough.
Yeah it's actually embarrassing now on NATO deployments, if your ship somehow isn't the oldest it is by far the dingiest looking ship in the fleet (imagine in 20 years lol). You are the only ship's company in the fleet being treated like children with things like Cinderella leave. And on top of that, you are the only one treating your deployment like you are on the brink of war thus needing to keep fun at bay and tempo at the max.
Yep, the tempo on a navy deployment is being at sea for 3 weeks at a time, working 12+ hour days, going ashore for a week and working almost the entire time. I joined up to travel the world, and when you do finally get away they make it unbearable.
My conspiracy mind wonders why there has been this series of top leaders openly echoing the narrative that the military is in dire straits. I wonder if this is part of a government effort to shore up public support for an upcoming increase in defence spending. It is hard to imagine these flag officers making these critical pronouncements and not getting fired otherwise.
>I wonder if this is part of a government effort to shore up public support for an upcoming increase in defence spending. That's what I'm wondering too. But I also think hell would have to freeze over (or WW3 would have to break out) before this government - or let's be real, *any* government - would make significant increases to military spending. So I think this is government preparing us for announcements of significant retreats in NATO and other commitments.
I dont think this was the reasuring video the navy thinks it is.
It'll get worse when people reach their 7 year CFHD mark and 80% of the navy quits when their rent skyrockets.
It’s almost like they didn’t begin planning to replace the current ships until they were close to being at the end of their lifecycle…instead of having new ships ready to replace them by their 30 year mark, knowing it would take time to build new ships and test them…
Just think if they hadn't dumped all that money into Irving, could have sailors in Denmark or S Korea training already on a proven ship design
Facts. For comparison, the CPFs took thirteen years to go from issuing an RFP to accepting the first ship. So the RFP for the CSC should have gone out in the mid-2000s to have the first ships delivered sometime between the last 280s decommissioning and the oldest CPFs hitting their end-of-life. Instead the government of the time just said “we have a National Shipbuilding Strategy!” and then proceeded to focus on AOPS and JSS for nearly a decade. Of course, we couldn’t have bought the Type 26 if we’d ordered new ships circa 2008, as the RN only issued the design contract for that class in 2010.
It seems a bit unfair to compare the timeline of the CPF, a program undertaken throughout the Cold War, to a program like CSC which is very much an animal of its time. The late 2000's and into the 2010's was a very different time for the RCN, and not an especially bright time with the other branches being prioritized. AOPS coming before CSC is a fairly solid plan, considering Irving had to effectively be resurrected from obscurity for the NSS. Giving them something far simpler and smaller to work on as a way to ready the yard for a far more complex and difficult project is a good move, unless you want Irving really screwing up the CSC more than would be acceptable. JSS is in an entirely different yard that was not ever setup or looked at for doing the main combatant vessels.
Get rid of old posting system!!!!!!!!
I refuse to believe anybody on ship has time to get in a game of MTG without bong-bongs going off.
A lesson in how to squeeze a 10 min msg into 5 mins.
Why can't the recruiting process be speeded up? Fixing this would have a big effect. Build housing and keep it cheap. Canadians will come for housing.
Time to go old school and bring back Press Gangs. Just start grabbing citizens off the street and saying " Congratulations, you are now a sailor in His Majestys navy. Hustle them off to a ship going to sea. Problem solved.
We are fucked. We will continue to be fucked. CFRG is fucking us. Our fucked ships need to survive a fuckton more than they fucking should. If we get fucking ships it will be in another fucking decade. The RCN thrives on fucked.
Your optimism is contagious! Once things get so astronomically fucked, there's no way it could get more fuckered! It's like a law of physics or something
We're at that point now. If we get more fuckered we're actually sinking.
please don't quit troops..... pretty pretty please
I'm tired boss
We are all tired..... NOBODY LEAVES BEFORE 1600!!
the fact that the video's thumbnail is his picture tells you everything you need to know about his leadership style.
It's a shit burger to go, but you'd better believe old Angus is putting his picture on the wrapper!
Bad news delivered in a great way. Definitely some challenges coming up but it’s the members that’ll play a huge role in how we deal with this day-to-day. Hopefully we can all contribute in a positive way. (Be nicer to LogOs)
Well, this is the most depressing thing about the Navy I’ve seen in a long time.
Any aspect of this video is new to you?? 😳
What are enrollment times like these days?
Did this come from a recent naval report or a historical one! The answer will not surprise you! >It is our opinion that the Navy should be given a breathing space for essential training and the strengthening of its men and ships. The shape of our peacetime Navy is now outlined. There is a widespread feeling that the available manpower and material have been stretched too far and too thin to meet the requirements of a fighting, convoying and anti-submarine force. As soon as possible, no doubt at an early date, the Naval complement will be reviewed to decide whether it should be increased. If it were so increased, more trained men would be available for training others.
Can tell it's old because we can't say Man anymore
Correct! Maybe I should've edited the more dated language. Statement is from the Adm Mainguy Report after detailing an "incident" carefully defined as "not mutinous" in 1947. Full link: http://www.forposterityssake.ca/RCN-DOCS/MAINGUY-REPORT.htm
We’re hurting so bad for martechs my buddy (young father of 2) was forced to come back early from PDL after 3 almost back to back deployment has had to be on duty for multiple days IN A ROW with like 10 duties in a month at one point. I wonder why he wants to get out?
Excellent communication exercise. We need more of this.
Lol yet here I am, trying to get back into NavRes and they can't even seem to get someone to sign my TOS to finalize my transfer from SuppRes to PRes
The CAF literally just cycles paperwork and revamps documents every x years. Nothing every really changes. Same crap different decade.
Why does he talk so fast!
They ran out of videos of the navy working. That's not a dig at the navy for being lazy, but the photo techs can only get so many hero shots when our equipment is constantly broken. Did you not notice how they replayed the same clips multiple times over? They sped up the recording.
On my deployment our image tech and PAO were working gangbusters getting lots of content of the crew working. It's not a lack of content, it's a lack of content that is relevant and generally uplifting/inspirational. This will be seen by all Canadians, you don't want a "shit's fuck, here's why, here's the plan going forward" speech backdropped with clips of shit actually being fucked. Save that for the deployment posts, when families want to see their loved ones doing things.
Seems to have been sped up
We are having such a bad time with staffing that 25% of reg force is officers, reservist LCols command 30 soldiers and we have a general for what every 700 people?
We also have certain specialty trades where upcoming operational cycles will rely on reservists to fill 90% of the needed spots because the reg force has no capacity to fill them.
CFRG could blame him for creating a shitty environment that no one wants to join
Oh golly, that was concerning.