The Defense Department is actively considering whether to retire some of its older ships, aircraft and other equipment that have become difficult and expensive to maintain, including aircraft in the iconic Snowbirds Demonstration Squadron.
Defence Minister Bill Blair, in an interview with CBC News, insisted no decisions have been made and he is waiting for advice from military leaders.
Blair said the Snowbirds’ 1960s-era CT-114 Tutor jets have been in service for too long. He said he had asked air force commanders whether the planes, which have an extended lifespan until 2025 and are currently undergoing additional upgrades, had finally “aged out.”
“The reality is that the Tutor aircraft are already well beyond their intended use,” Blair said. “There are even some safety issues that I am deeply concerned about and, although I have received assurances that they will be safely addressed during this flying season, my concerns remain.”
Blair did not go into detail about safety issues. The plane has crashed multiple times. Air Force spokeswoman Capt. Jennifer Casey said a passenger died May 17, 2020, when a Snowbird he was riding in crashed after takeoff near Kamloops, British Columbia.
The Air Force recently installed new avionics that the Pentagon says will allow the demonstrator aircraft to keep flying until 2030, nearly 70 years after it was purchased.
Defence sources said the Navy’s 1990s-built minesweepers, known as Maritime Coastal Defence Vessels (MCDVs), may also be targeted for decommissioning.
“Many of our nation’s ships are becoming increasingly expensive, almost prohibitively expensive, to maintain and even staff,” Blair said, adding that he was awaiting recommendations from naval commanders.
Gen. Wayne Eyre, soon-to-retire Canadian Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief, said the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) is reviewing a list of old equipment that needs to be replaced, how long it will take to replace, and whether it makes sense to retire that equipment in the meantime.
Eyre did not go into details, saying the final decision would rest with the minister and his successor, Lieutenant General Jenny Carignan, who will soon become a general.
The Navy has publicly advocated for replacing its four Victoria-class submarines, and the Liberal government announced it would go ahead with the plan at the recent NATO summit in Washington.
The Defense Ministry received a series of questions about ships, aircraft and other equipment nearing the end of their useful lives but did not respond.
Eyre said the tough choices aren’t so much about budgets as they are about the aging and durability of equipment.
“As capabilities get older, you have a smaller pool of spare parts to maintain them,” he said. “Opening up an assembly line for some of those spare parts might not make a lot of sense if it’s a very small, very small fleet globally.”
The recent federal budget included money to maintain older warships, such as the Navy’s Halifax-class frigates, but Eyre said not all of the military’s needs are being met and there is a “gap” between required maintenance costs and the amount of cash available.
Christian Leuprecht, a professor at the Royal Military College of Canada, said the ageing crisis currently plaguing the military has been in the making for decades and is the result of successive governments “unwilling to make the hard choices.”
He said the military and government needed to choose carefully which equipment to decommission and when.
“Allies are finding that Canada is effectively downsizing its capabilities because it doesn’t have the funding, political will or manpower to create new capabilities or even maintain the ones we currently have,” Leuprecht said. He added that he believes personnel shortages within the Canadian military make the situation worse, with fewer engineers to keep older aircraft and ships operational.
There may be no better example of the federal government’s reluctance to replace military equipment in a timely manner than the Snowbirds’ Tutor jets, first ordered by the military in 1961.
The jets began making demonstration flights in 1967. They adopted the name Snowbirds in 1971 and were officially designated as an air show team in 1975.
The Tutor also served as the Air Force’s main jet trainer for decades before being retired from that role in the early 2000s. Of the 191 aircraft originally ordered, approximately 26 are believed to be in the Air Force’s inventory or storage.
In 2003, the Air Force was explicitly asked to quickly replace its Tutor aircraft, which, although well-maintained, were considered old.
A study by the Defence Ministry’s Director of Major Services Procurement warned at the time that the aircraft’s service life was expected to run until 2010 but could be extended for another 10 years if absolutely necessary.
Report warns keeping tutors carries ‘significant’ risks
“With each passing year, the technical, safety and financial risks associated with extending Tutor beyond 50 years will increase,” said the report, written in August 2003. “These risks are significant but not easily quantifiable.”
But the Snowbirds kept on flying.
A Ministry of Defense report in autumn 2014 declared the aircraft “technically airworthy” but noted “significant concerns, including arising from financial constraints.”
The same assessment states that the lifespan of the tutors could be extended until 2025.
“We want to keep the Snowbirds. We just want to get better planes,” Blair said, adding that he had inquired with air force commanders about the feasibility of maintaining the air demonstration team using existing fighter jets, as other allies do.
“I guess that’s something I’d like to explore.”
If Canada’s commitments with NORAD and NATO make that option impossible, he said he wants to begin the search for Tutor’s replacement as soon as possible.
