As for the actual topic, I'm amazed at how smoothly this replacement project actually went.
It seemed to go relatively seamlessly, with 5 aircraft being replaced by 9 newer aircraft - not only refreshing the fleet, but nearly doubling capacity.
Government certainly can get things done when they want to!
(Or the folks in this project management office just really knocked the ball out of the park!)
Begs the question of why we make our other procurement projects so expensive & delayed
Right up there with Super Hercs, C17s and Chinooks. We could probably add in Griffons and Challengers.
I might be inclined to suggest that these are all transport projects but then I look at the Logistics Vehicle Modernization Project and the dog's breakfast it became. And of course there is no sea transport project.
The projects are all Air Force projects but then CF35, CC295, CH148 and CH149 and the Twin Otter Replacement.
Does anybody know if there is breakdown of the DND budget by capability that captures each of the systems individually? Something that would, for example, take the Super Hercs as a capital project and add in all the lifecycle costs (acquisition, operations, maintenance, personnel, disposal and replacement) and tracks that on an ongoing basis?
If the Department and the Auditors (Auditor General and PBO) as well as Treasury, have all decided that Life Cycle Costing is the way to go then it would seem logical to me that they would track those life cycle costs throughout the life of the platform. That then would describe the full Capability Cost represented by the platform.
The next Key Performance Indicator that I would be interested in is the percentage of the Annual Defence Budget that each Capability represents.
That would seem to me to be the most relevant way of comparing allocations rather than looking at an open-ended future and trying to assign a singular number to describe the cost of an individual capability.
