Ottawa wants new transports in a hurry
CBC News ^ | Tue, 22 Nov 2005
The government confirmed Tuesday that it's shopping for about 16 military transport planes to replace the oldest of its Lockheed C-130 Hercules aircraft, and it wants them in a hurry.
The expected bill: $4 billion to $5 billion.
Defence Minister Bill Graham said aircraft companies will be invited to offer planes meeting a short list of performance requirements – "a document on one page that says, 'Here's what the troops need' " – rather than the thousands of pages of specifications normally issued in big military purchases.
He denied that the requirements are rigged to favour the latest Hercules model, the C-130J, at the expense of Boeing's much bigger C-17 Globemaster and the European-built Airbus A400 military transport.
But he acknowledged that not every plane fits the bill.
"If they're going to come forward with a Piper Cub, I'm sorry, that doesn't fit the requirements," he told reporters in Ottawa.
Replacing a famous military transport
The four-engine Hercules, in production since 1954, is one of the world's most successful military transports, perhaps rivalled only by the wartime Douglas DC-3, known to British and Canadian fliers as the Dakota.
The Hercules can carry 17 tonnes of cargo or 90 soldiers with light equipment. It has been a fixture of every U.S. war since Vietnam and played a key role in the 1976 Israeli raid on Entebbe, in which commandos swooped down to free hostages held at Uganda's international airport.
Canada, which got its first C-130B in 1960, has flown Hercs from the Arctic to Afghanistan. It operates some of the oldest C-130s in military service anywhere, some of them now flying only intermittently.
Of the 32 planes in the current fleet, most are C-130Es built in the 1960s, but nine are C-130Hs, a model bought as recently as 1996.
The chief of defence staff, General Rick Hillier, said he hopes to have new planes delivered within 36 months of signing a contract, a short time for such a purchase.
A rush to retire worn-out 1960s planes
With luck, a few will arrive even earlier, making it possible to retire C-130Es that are now 36 to 38 years old and worn out, he said.
Regardless of what plane is chosen, Canada will continue to fly its nine C-130Hs, Hillier said.
With 16 new planes, it would have 25 such transports, enabling it to handle domestic and foreign missions plus training and maintenance at the same time, he said.
Asked whether the government would consider buying a smaller number of giant C-17 Globemasters, he said the armed forces couldn't do its diverse jobs with so few planes.
"Quantity has a quality all its own," he said.
http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/11/22/plane-purchase20051122.html
