The Royal Canadian Navy announced the retirement of 12 naval vessels by the end of next year. In typical Canadian fashion, no replacements.

This means 12 fewer Navy ships ­showing the Canadian flag abroad or in Canadian waters, 12 fewer naval ­officers per year gaining invaluable command and leadership experience and ­numerous ­junior officers and ships companies’ ­losing training time at sea.

The RCN is left with 12 warships at the end of their designed life span and in poor condition. The shipbuilding plan to replace them is absurd with a timeline far into the future.

In these dire international times, the shipbuilding industry must be put on a war footing. To expedite the building programs, the building must be conducted in two or more shipyards simultaneously, as has been done traditionally in the past.

This would save vast sums of capital by reducing technical inflation costs, and would benefit the steel industry by using tons of steel in the near term.

Additionally, a light frigate program could be started to replace the 12 recently retired ships by utilizing the numerous secondary shipyards to produce modules which would be transported and assembled in the main yards to produce the final warships. The government is good at talk, now it must get on with it.

Robin Allen

Victoria

Navy ships are always built for political purposes. In democracies, navies deploy at the direction of the political masters.

Warship construction in Canada has always suffered the vagaries of politics. Canada scrambled to create one of the largest navies in the world during the Second World War.

Since then, Canada has built “batches of ships” and sailed them until near obsolescence, and then scrambled again to renew the fleet as is the case now with the paying of the Maritime Coastal Defence Vessels and soon the Halifax Class frigates.

Yes, the coastal defence vessels were built to commercial standards. Yes, they were armed for a time with weapons........

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