{"id":14533,"date":"2012-04-11T00:07:33","date_gmt":"2012-04-11T05:07:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=14533"},"modified":"2012-04-10T13:41:41","modified_gmt":"2012-04-10T18:41:41","slug":"hmcs-windsor-scheduled-to-return-to-the-water-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/04\/11\/hmcs-windsor-scheduled-to-return-to-the-water-today\/","title":{"rendered":"HMCS Windsor<\/em> scheduled to return to the water today"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the Royal Canadian Navy’s four submarines, HMCS Windsor<\/em>, is supposed to be getting wet again later today<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Good news, of a sort: One of Canada\u2019s four Victoria<\/em>-class submarines is set to achieve a major milestone Wednesday. It\u2019s going to be in the water. Huzzah!<\/p>\n

After years of extensive refit work, HMCS Windsor<\/em> is set to be lowered \u2014 lowered \u201cextremely slowly,\u201d but lowered \u2014 into the Atlantic Ocean. Assuming it does not instantly sink, explode or simply dissolve like a giant, oddly shaped sugar cube, the Windsor will then begin a long series of tests at sea. It is hoped that the sub will be fully operational by early 2013. Fingers crossed. Canada should have submarines. They are a useful part of a modern navy\u2019s arsenal, and Canada has an enormous coastline. Although the subs have had an uneven history, to say the very least, they finally seem to be getting to a state where they\u2019ll be useful to us. There had been speculation before last month\u2019s federal budget that they\u2019d be scrapped, but at this late point, that would be wasteful. It\u2019s cost a lot to get these incredibly complicated machines as operational as they are (again, fingers crossed).<\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

Purchased second-hand from the British for the rock-bottom price of $750-million in 1998, they\u2019ve fallen well short of expectations. They only entered Canadian service in 2003, and have proven glitchy and outright dangerous \u2014 HMCS Chicoutimi<\/em> caught fire during its maiden voyage in 2004. Lt. Chris Saunders was killed fighting the blaze, and the sub has been out of service undergoing repairs ever since. It, too, is hoped to be back in service next year. All told, the subs have been at sea, collectively, only 900 days since 2003, and have cost billions of dollars to bring up to spec \u2014 money the cash-strapped navy didn\u2019t really have. Costly, under-performing, sucking up needed resources \u2026 sound familiar?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the Royal Canadian Navy’s four submarines, HMCS Windsor, is supposed to be getting wet again later today: Good news, of a sort: One of Canada\u2019s four Victoria-class submarines is set to achieve a major milestone Wednesday. It\u2019s going to be in the water. Huzzah! After years of extensive refit work, HMCS Windsor is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5],"tags":[525,30,745,364],"class_list":["post-14533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-military","tag-halifax","tag-navy","tag-rcn","tag-submarine"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-3Mp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14533"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14535,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14533\/revisions\/14535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}