Reconstitution

[Navy_Pete]

Maybe take one of those AOP's destined for the CCG (that they don't want) and turn it into a training ship, onboard simulator, small bridge ontop of the main, more bunks, classrooms, fit a 57mm as well and a simulated missile system. Not the best choice of hulls, but cheaper and faster than a whole new ship design.

We used to have a 'training fleet' with a few ships dropped down to basics and the lights turned out each night. We could simply mothball a few CPFs and use one per coast as a training 'school' that's floating. Mothballed ships still need basic maintenance and that way we could work on actual equipment and do the same familiarization that you do anyway. Doing the occasional basin trial or other basic system trials/flashups is useful generally.

AOPs has about 20 odd people det that can come on, so still needs a core,fully qualified crew, so would be a net increase in our requirements.

 

[Underway]

Training ship is coming back as a concept. As an engineer all I see is TRANREQ target number one for FEO

 

[Halifax Tar]

Training ship is coming back as a concept. As an engineer all I see is TRANREQ target number one for FEO

So basically the early mid 2000s VDQ ? BLDG 332

 

[daftandbarmy]

Training ship is coming back as a concept. As an engineer all I see is TRANREQ target number one for FEO

Better buy these back

For sale in Vancouver: 4,000 square feet for less than $300K

But you’ll have to pay moorage fees and find a place to park the 152-foot former Navy vessel.

bc.ctvnews.ca

 

[MARS]

We used to have a 'training fleet' with a few ships dropped down to basics and the lights turned out each night. We could simply mothball a few CPFs and use one per coast as a training 'school' that's floating. Mothballed ships still need basic maintenance and that way we could work on actual equipment and do the same familiarization that you do anyway. Doing the occasional basin trial or other basic system trials/flashups is useful generally.

Harbour Training Ship (HTS) Assinboine (formerly HMCS) was one of my first ships and was used exactly like this. We slept on-board, stood duty watches, etc.

From there I was posted to 4 Squadron, - an actual training squadron- which was HMCS MacKenzie, Saskatchewan and Yukon. We are too lean now for the squadron but yeah, at least as a boatswain in the early 90s, a HTS was a highly effective introductory platform

 

[Grimey]

Yes.

We used to have a 'training fleet' with a few ships dropped down to basics and the lights turned out each night. We could simply mothball a few CPFs and use one per coast as a training 'school' that's floating. Mothballed ships still need basic maintenance and that way we could work on actual equipment and do the same familiarization that you do anyway. Doing the occasional basin trial or other basic system trials/flashups is useful generally.

AOPs has about 20 odd people det that can come on, so still needs a core,fully qualified crew, so would be a net increase in our requirements.

Ah, I think you're referring to the old 4 Squadron.......

For the uninitiated, imagine having a 4th of your destroyer/frigate fleet devoted, for the most part, to turning out baby snotters of the NWO and Marine Engineering persuasion. This was a luxury few other navies possessed at the time and even fewer (the JMSDF maybe) have today. Granted, the ships were way past it, being hardly modified Mackenzie-class, but as a training platform they were great. The MSE departments at the time made up a third of the crew (50-60 bods) and pier head jumping was pretty much unheard of.

4 Squadrons demise coincided with a drum beat of CPFs appearing on the Left coast between '92 and 96. Also lost in the same time frame were the Bay-class minesweepers that gave the snotters their first taste of sea (and to me at the time the first anecdotal evidence that NWO's eat their own).

So, a huge amount of training bunks disappeared overnight for both officers and technical rates, to be replaced by virtual simulator-based training and very few training bunks on a frigate.

I think you and I both have 280 time and would likely agree that IROs weren't plagued with the same training bunk limitations as our frigate colleagues.

From my (ten year removed) perspective, the only way out of this mess is for Angus to speak truth to power and plead that the current OPSCHED is untenable, a ship or two on each coast needs to be tied up and at least one becomes a dedicated harbour training vessel.

None of this is really new for the MSE Department. FRP and low recruiting slipped the knife in under the ribs in '94/95, all-out effort on Op APOLLO pushed it in to the hilt, demographics twisted it.

 

[Underway]

From my (ten year removed) perspective, the only way out of this mess is for Angus to speak truth to power and plead that the current OPSCHED is untenable, a ship or two on each coast needs to be tied up and at least one becomes a dedicated harbour training vessel.

Topper's advantage is he never working in Ottawa before (the city, not the ship) and doesn't have any Ottawa scar tissue.

That's also his disadvantage. Working on the coast your whole career complaining about Ottawa and never actually seeing how the sausage gets made is something unique for Flag officers.

And the OPSCHED is untenable, we all know it. HMCS Ottawa is the last ship on the west coast that will match the current drumbeat. The Regina delay has changed everything and it's all being rewritten as we speak. The current overarching goal is training and force generation, not force employment.

 

[Navy_Pete]

Ah, I think you're referring to the old 4 Squadron.......

For the uninitiated, imagine having a 4th of your destroyer/frigate fleet devoted, for the most part, to turning out baby snotters of the NWO and Marine Engineering persuasion. This was a luxury few other navies possessed at the time and even fewer (the JMSDF maybe) have today. Granted, the ships were way past it, being hardly modified Mackenzie-class, but as a training platform they were great. The MSE departments at the time made up a third of the crew (50-60 bods) and pier head jumping was pretty much unheard of.

4 Squadrons demise coincided with a drum beat of CPFs appearing on the Left coast between '92 and 96. Also lost in the same time frame were the Bay-class minesweepers that gave the snotters their first taste of sea (and to me at the time the first anecdotal evidence that NWO's eat their own).

So, a huge amount of training bunks disappeared overnight for both officers and technical rates, to be replaced by virtual simulator-based training and very few training bunks on a frigate.

I think you and I both have 280 time and would likely agree that IROs weren't plagued with the same training bunk limitations as our frigate colleagues.

From my (ten year removed) perspective, the only way out of this mess is for Angus to speak truth to power and plead that the current OPSCHED is untenable, a ship or two on each coast needs to be tied up and at least one becomes a dedicated harbour training vessel.

None of this is really new for the MSE Department. FRP and low recruiting slipped the knife in under the ribs in '94/95, all-out effort on Op APOLLO pushed it in to the hilt, demographics twisted it.

Absolutely, and agree with everything else as well. I think we could easily have a few partly mothballed ships as a 4 squadron. Virtual training is okay but doesn't replicate the real thing, and at some point you need hands on wrenches, crawling in bilges, and hauling rope to develop skills, and virtual training will never come up with the defects that you'll see on ship and have to troubleshoot.

The 280s still had room for trainees even on deployed ships, we don't have that anymore and will only get worse with future platforms. Reduced crewing requires more skilled people, and other navies have training ships to get their basic skills, and roll onto the big ships as essentially QL5 or higher. Really no room for trainees, especially when all the extras come on for deployments. When you are doing SR with maybe less operators and bunks are available, you are effectively taking people away from their primary jobs to do training, which is a problem when the core crew won't have enough hours in the day to keep up with routine PM and normal ship duties at the start.

A lot of the OPSCHED pressure is completely self imposed though by the CRCN, and I still can't believe we didn't slows things down with COVID to try and catch up, or at least acknowledge it was impossible to keep up with the opsched during COVID without increasing SWPs to allow for all the precautions and complications to try and get the ship out the door COVID free.

I think the 'truth to power' probably needs to start lower down the chain and up to CRCN, as a lot of stuff coming out of that office seem detached from reality/evidence.

 

[TacticalTea]

Topper's advantage is he never working in Ottawa before (the city, not the ship) and doesn't have any Ottawa scar tissue.

Top-who?

And the OPSCHED is untenable, we all know it. HMCS Ottawa is the last ship on the west coast that will match the current drumbeat. The Regina delay has changed everything and it's all being rewritten as we speak. The current overarching goal is training and force generation, not force employment.

I don't understand why it took so long.

The problem - and the immediate solution - have been plainly obvious to everyone for years. Heck it's in the COLREGS, Rule 8(3): Slow down.

Absolutely, and agree with everything else as well. I think we could easily have a few partly mothballed ships as a 4 squadron. Virtual training is okay but doesn't replicate the real thing, and at some point you need hands on wrenches, crawling in bilges, and hauling rope to develop skills, and virtual training will never come up with the defects that you'll see on ship and have to troubleshoot.

It's nothing against virtual training, but if any amount of training is non-virtual (which there will be) and has lesser capacity than your virtual training, then inevitably you're going to get a bottleneck. The great thing about shipboard training is that the capacity is scalable, unlike simulators that have fixed capacity.

Why that scalability hasn't been exploited? Again, beyond me.

 

[Underway]

Top-who?

The CRCN VAdm Topshee, which alot of people call Topper. Just like anyone with the last name Campbell is automatically called Soupy.

 

[TacticalTea]

The CRCN VAdm Topshee, which alot of people call Topper. Just like anyone with the last name Campbell is automatically called Soupy.

I know, that's just a pet peeve of mine, not a fan of disfiguring names, in writing or speaking. I wasn't being too serious though. S'all good.

 

[FSTO]

Harbour Training Ship (HTS) Assinboine (formerly HMCS) was one of my first ships and was used exactly like this. We slept on-board, stood duty watches, etc.

From there I was posted to 4 Squadron, - an actual training squadron- which was HMCS MacKenzie, Saskatchewan and Yukon. We are too lean now for the squadron but yeah, at least as a boatswain in the early 90s, a HTS was a highly effective introductory platform

HTS Columbia on the west coast. We learned how to launch and recover the sea boat and the engineers could do full power trials and all sorts of grimy stuff.

My first ship ever was HTS St Croix

 

[Jarnhamar]

I'm not sure why the Navy is complaining. Less people means more food, more hot water, and more plunder.

Hell it sounds like you don't even need to bother with being qualified.

 

[dimsum]

I'm not sure why the Navy is complaining. Less people means more food, more hot water, and more plunder.

Hell it sounds like you don't even need to bother with being qualified.

I think more people would want to join if plunder was involved. Offsets the cost of living in Victoria/Halifax.

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

I'm not sure why the Navy is complaining. Less people means more food, more hot water, and more plunder.

Hell it sounds like you don't even need to bother with being qualified.

If I were allowed to actually keep the plunder I acquired during my time, I would never have to work another day in my life:

The dolphins enjoyed their snacks

 

[Halifax Tar]

If I were allowed to actually keep the plunder I acquired during my time, I would never have to work another day in my life:

The dolphins enjoyed their snacks

Would this have been you ?

Yaaaaaar drug busts on the high seas...

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

Would this have been you ?

Yaaaaaar drug busts on the high seas...

 

[dapaterson]

The Lonely Island enters the conversation.

 

[Halifax Tar]

The Lonely Island enters the conversation.

 

[Navy_Pete]

I think more people would want to join if plunder was involved. Offsets the cost of living in Victoria/Halifax.

I'm not sure why the Navy is complaining. Less people means more food, more hot water, and more plunder.

Hell it sounds like you don't even need to bother with being qualified.

So, funny story, RCN crews are no longer able to claim salvage rights. It happened sometime in the 70s on some kind of abandoned container ship and was split between the crew. The guy I worked with was really happy to get a payout as an OD, but I guess a lot of the senior people just retired.

Pretty funny example of one of those expectations that was in place that became a rule when someone realized no one ever actually wrote down that they couldn't do it. I'm not sure where it's actually written down though so if it was in an old set of orders or pub may have since been canceled/superceded. Might short term help with crew satisfaction but medium term cause massive attrition.

The great thing about shipboard training is that the capacity is scalable, unlike simulators that have fixed capacity.

Why that scalability hasn't been exploited? Again, beyond me.

Shipboard training requires additional LOE, interferes with ongoing work on ship, and also requires more people. It still gets done, in small scale, but with how much work is jammed into SWPs (due to crazy OPSCHED) it can be hard to fit in around other things. That's where shore based trainers are great (like the diesel trainers that you can run up) but is one of those expensive infrastructure bits that we don't necessarily have for all items, or space in the schools to add on more.