Good afternoon. Thank you for inviting me to present to the committee today.
My name is John R. McDougall, and I am President of the National Research Council of Canada, or NRC. I am accompanied today by Mr. Jerzy Komorowski, Director General of the Institute for Aerospace Research at NRC.
NRC is an agency of the Government of Canada. Our mandate is set out under the NRC Act and makes us responsible, among other things, to undertake, assist or promote scientific and industrial research in different fields of importance to Canada.
NRC research spans a wide range of disciplines from aerospace and agriculture, to ocean engineering and photonics. We also offer an array of technology development and commercialization services to our partners and clients, including our industrial research assistance program that works with close to 8,000 small and medium-size Canadian businesses each year.
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The NRC Institute for Aerospace Research, or NRC Aerospace, is Canada's national aerospace laboratory. We maintain national research and development facilities in Ottawa and Montreal, but we work with governments, universities, and aerospace companies across Canada and internationally to advance research and technology development in this important industry. Our work and our expertise are focused on the design, manufacture, performance, and use and safety of air and space vehicles.
In late October 2009, NRC was asked by Industry Canada, the Department of National Defence, and Public Works and Government Services Canada to conduct an independent review of the statement of operational requirement for the new fixed-wing search and rescue aircraft that DND intends to procure. This statement of operational requirement was produced by DND in 2006. NRC's review resulted in a report that was submitted to Public Works on March 12, 2010, and the report is now available in both official languages on the DND website.
To complete the review, we assembled a team of highly qualified staff from NRC's flight research laboratory. This team was led by an airworthiness expert with a master's degree in aeronautical engineering, a fixed-wing pilot's licence, and more than 18 years of flying experience. He was joined by a human factors specialist with a doctorate in neuroscience and 10 years' experience in human factors analysis for Defence Research and Development Canada, and three former Canadian Forces pilots with close to 60 years of collective military experience. Two were search and rescue pilots during the course of their military careers, while the other was a senior test pilot at the Canadian Forces Aerospace Engineering Test Establishment in Cold Lake, Alberta.
We began the review in November 2009. The team thoroughly examined the statement of operational requirement references provided to them by Public Works. In January 2010, the team travelled to Trenton, Ontario, to interview DND personnel. In late January 2010, our human factors specialist travelled to Canadian Forces Base Comox in British Columbia to observe search and rescue technicians in action aboard the Buffalo aircraft.
We produced an interim report on February 5, 2010, which we delivered to Public Works. The Department of National Defence responded to this report on February 15, and we met with them on February 19 to discuss their comments. We delivered a draft final report on March 5, incorporated comments from Public Works on March 9, and submitted our final report on March 12.
In very general terms, the principal conclusion of the report was that the statement of operational requirement, as written, was over-constrained. By this we mean the application of the statement of operational requirement would likely make it difficult to achieve the overarching objective of acquiring an aircraft to provide the level of search and rescue service equal to that currently provided.
The report provided an analysis and discussion of each of the high-level mandatory capabilities identified in the statement of operational requirement, with observations and recommendations for each. The report contained 15 principal recommendations that were intended to solidify the actual requirements for the aircraft while providing bidders with flexibility on how they could propose meeting the requirement. These recommendations advised that the 2006 statement of requirement for Canada's new fixed-wing search and rescue aircraft should be amended to reflect a capability approach, rather than a platform-centric one, which would be a major rewrite.
Second, they advised that the Government of Canada should review the current policy, in which the Canadian Forces provide all primary fixed-wing search and rescue service. The government would do this by conducting an in-depth analysis of the cost and potential benefits of providing part of the fixed-wing search and rescue solution through contracted support for elements such as aircraft, aircrew, and maintenance, including civilian sources. Use of civilian helicopters is already in place to provide initial levels of support to the military rotary-wing search and rescue community.
Third, the Government of Canada should develop policy to define the required level of service for search and rescue, in terms of response time that ought to be provided by either the Canadian Forces or another provider, without reference to the existing aircraft. Where possible, such policy should be developed on the basis of available historical and forecast search and rescue incident locations.
Fourth, DND should change the statement of operational requirement to allow bidders more flexibility in meeting the requirement. For example, this could include the consideration of other options for Main Operating Bases or the consideration of a proposal with more than a single type of aircraft.
As mentioned earlier, the authors of NRC's report concluded that utilizing some contracted fixed-wing search and rescue response could possibly provide a cost-effective alternative to alleviate some of the costs associated with establishing or relocating a main operating base or requiring an aircraft with high cruise speed for all scenarios.
The fifth recommendation is that DND change many of the rated requirements in the statement of operational requirement to mandatory requirements. Examples of this include a ramp that can be deployed while airborne to airdrop search and rescue technicians or equipment and the capability for the aircraft to use short gravel runways and to conduct operations from austere airfields and to operate in icy weather conditions.
The sixth recommendation is that DND avoid using the term “off the shelf” in the statement of operational requirement, unless the department anticipates that aircraft can be procured in the form in which they are currently produced with no design changes.
The seventh recommendation is that DND remove specific speed and range requirements from the statement of operational requirement for the new aircraft. As mentioned, the authors recommended using a capability-based approach based on search and rescue incident data that are already available.
The eighth recommendation is that DND use alternative analytical methods to determine the minimum cargo compartment dimensions, rather than those specified in the 2006 statement of operational requirement. These methods could be based on a retrospective study of injuries to search and rescue technicians.
With that, I'd be happy to respond to any questions related to the content of the NRC report. Questions that would pertain to work being done by Public Works and Government Services Canada or the Department of National Defence after March 12 should presumably be referred to them.
Thank you very much, monsieur le président.
:
While I note this is a technical report, I want to say to you, as president of the National Research Council, Mr. McDougall, that I have to congratulate your team on an extremely thorough and valuable report to this committee. It's a real eye-opener in many respects.
You basically suggested that the government, or DND, is saying that we're going to keep the bases where they are, that we're going to keep the standby posture exactly the way it is, that we're going to deliver a level of service equal to what we have now, and that these three assumptions now put constraints on the possibilities of action.
Would it also be fair to say that they foreclose the possibility of change? We had evidence before our committee in St. John's last week from someone who had done an international study on response times, and it seems that some countries like Norway have 15 minutes wheels up, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all hours of the day and night. Australia has 30 minutes. The United States coast guard has 30 minutes. Other countries, like the U.K. and Ireland, have 15 minutes up to 8 o'clock at night and then 45 minutes thereafter. So it almost forecloses any possibility of meeting world standards.
I think your report says that because of maintaining the posture of 120 minutes from 8 to 4, when 83% of the incidents occur, we have to have faster and more expensive planes. Because we're keeping the bases in the same place, we can't consider adjusting those bases, even if a small adjustment would decrease the minimum speed required and the maximum range, which could allow money to pay for the increased costs of shortening the response times. Is that a fair statement?
Thank you to our witnesses for being here.
Before we move on, I just want to correct something. I don't think he really meant to...but we aren't just genning up a plan to use Hercs in fixed-wing SAR. We've been using Hercs in fixed-wing SAR for years, so this is nothing new.
Now, Mr. McDougall, we talked about cost and so on, and you made some statements in your report, which is very good and very thorough, about basing a mixed fleet and so on. I'd just like to confirm that cost consideration was not part of anything you looked at. Yours was strictly technical, and the cost decisions and the cost implications are to be borne by decision-makers. Is that correct?
Mr. John McDougall: I confirmed that with my team.
Hon. Laurie Hawn: Regarding some of the other points in your study, all of which were good and have validity, we talked about the design and the dimensions of the back end of the airplane and so on, and you made some valid points about studying what SAR techs do and where and how they move and so on. That was useful discussion; however, in terms of its usefulness to the challenge that we have for buying a relatively off-the-shelf fixed-wing SAR airplane, we're probably not going to redesign existing airplanes that will be contenders to meet those things. Obviously we'll go with what it is and make an assessment of how good it is.
You have a very specific mandate, and I think you have very carefully answered within the specifics of your mandate. The parts that strike me, and that trouble me at the same time, began, I guess, with the word “de-constraining”. That's an awful word, sort of a created word, and usually awful created words are words that are intended to hide something in that they don't quite say as they...as what might be.
I think you said in your statement that really it was your task to look at the...or your criticisms had to do with the fact that a lot of what you were talking about didn't have to do with performance-based; you mentioned that there were a lot of political considerations that went alongside considerations of performance.
And yes, it isn't your mandate to look into what those political considerations are and how that full decision is made, but what strikes me in an instance like this is that...and I hope that, with other witnesses, we will get into what those political considerations are that affect a decision that one might assume would be substantially performance-based. Otherwise, you really....
Performance-based, I would assume, is sort of the horse ahead of the cart--where the horse should be--and then you have other considerations, once you know what that best performance might be, and you end up taking those other things into consideration.
Is that a fair characterization of where your mandate is very limited--you were talking about technical things--that in fact those things that are non-performance-based are beyond your mandate, and that the decision then also includes political considerations, which are outside of your mandate?
Is that all correct?
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If I might, just let me clarify a little bit what “performance-based”, when we talk about it, really means.
The nature of engineering is about risk, and risk management, basically. In order to manage risk, one has to understand where it comes from and how it is constrained. So what we have basically identified here is that there are some things that you should know as policy-setters that you would take into account in making decisions. There are other things that are more related to the absolute capability to do a job, which are where the mandatory requirement recommendations come from.
So we have a circumstance where our job was to identify places where, as I said, in our view, the statement of operating requirements was unduly limiting the ability for options. That's really what it came down to. We pointed that out, and that's the essence of the report: if you want to create more options, you can do it, but if you're going to do that, then it means you have to make your decisions within the context of the risk tolerance that exists.
So it's about risk tolerance, at the end of the day, which is not our decision; it's a political decision.