ninme

(Hey Bubblehead! “Thbbbpt!”)

Times Colonist - Willcocks: Submarine purchase gives navy that sinking feeling

The submarines cost about $790 million when Canada bought them. There’s no ready tally of the money sunk into them since, but the repairs and refits to the Victoria [which is in drydock where he's writing this] have more than equalled its purchase price.

And since Canada took possession in October 2000, the HMCS Victoria has actually been in service for 115 days — about four months out of seven years. For every day of use, there have been three weeks of repairs and refitting.

By the time the sub is ready to go — if it meets the new deadline — it will have been out of service 96.5 per cent of the time since delivery. It doesn’t seem like a success story.

What’s weird is that no one seems particularly perturbed that we spent hundreds of millions of dollars on submarines that mostly haven’t worked in seven years. (Perhaps that’s because a Liberal government made the purchase and the Conservatives are keen on building public support for the military.)

HMCS Victoria isn’t an anomaly. Only one of the three other submarines is functioning today.

The Chicoutimi [which had a fire which killed a sailor on its trip back from Britain] has been tied up since the fire; work will start on a major overhaul after the Victoria is done in 2009, meaning it will first see service 13 years after the purchase.

And just to be clear, these overhauls weren’t part of the plan. When the navy bought the used submarines — which had been mothballed by Britain for four years — officers talked about them being in service by the end of 2001.

Poooor little Canadian submarines… Dey got da shniffles and dey can’t shake ‘em.