At the International Business Times, Christopher Harress reports on the two Mistral-class helicopter carriers France built for Russia and is now trying to find new homes for:
The Sevastopol (left) and the Vladivostok warships, two Mistral class LHD amphibious vessels ordered by Russia from STX France, are seen in St. Nazaire, France, Dec. 20, 2014. Jean-Sebastien Evrard/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Inside the sprawling dockyard in the ancient town of St. Nazaire in southwestern France sits $1.2 billion worth of unsold naval hardware. Despite having never left the dock, the two Mistral helicopter landing ships, originally built by France for use in the Russian navy, inadvertently have become involved in the growing international dispute between Russia and the West over the annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine.
Now they are causing problems in France.
Two days after managing to negotiate a way out of the deal with Moscow that had become a divisive, ethical and political dilemma in Europe, France faces the fresh challenge of looking for a new buyer that has both the military need and the hard cash for the two 21,000 ton warships.
“I think this will be a difficult product to sell,” said Dakota Wood, senior research fellow of defense programs at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank. “Military ships are highly specialized and designed for a specific purpose that accounts for all the weapons systems and unique specifications that the navy in questions needs. In this case, the spacing and logistics to accommodate the unique aircraft that Russia was going to use. What other country shares those exact specifications?”
With Canada in the middle of a long, long election campaign, there’s no point in pretending that one or both of the ships might end up as part of the Royal Canadian Navy (unlike a few earlier reports), so France is forced to look further abroad for countries that have both the ready money (like Saudi Arabia) and the pressing need (uh, like Saudi Arabia).
Re: “With Canada in the middle of a long, long election campaign, there’s no point in pretending that one or both of the ships might end up as part of the Royal Canadian Navy”.
I don’t think Canada will end up buying the Mistral because 1) it wasn’t “made in Canada” (a big political factor in def acquisition), and 2) buying only-slightly used subs from the British turned out to be a big mistake.
That said, the length of even this long, long election campaign is only the swiftest blink of an eye in Canadian defence acquisition timing terms. The government started looking for a Sea King replacement in 1986, and we got the first Cyclones this year.
Comment by Tony Prudori — August 12, 2015 @ 06:49
I agree with you, Tony. I think the Mistrals would look very nice in our navy, but even if the next government did decide to obtain any, they’d have to be built in Canada, be redesigned down to the keel for “Canadian requirements” and end up costing two to three times as much and take at least twice as long.
It’s the Canadian way.
What makes it even less likely is that we’d not only have to vastly over-pay for the hulls … we’d then need to start yet another helicopter acquisition process. Our long, not-proud-at-all history of helicopter purchases looks something like this:
Comment by Nicholas — August 12, 2015 @ 07:12
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