Zetros, French Submarines, and other Random Things
Random Thought
Sometimes, when I am sitting bored I oftentimes get random thoughts in my head that sort of just stir for a while. Sometimes I have things or stories I wanna talk about or say but can never find the place or time on here to get them out.
You would think I would mind you. I have a newsletter, Q&A and then post multiple times a day. I have more than enough time and space to say what I like, though sometimes.dwspite my best efforts I can't seem to quite get them all. You guys like to ask for more content, so ehy not try and get them out?
So consider this a random, totally not planned, spontaneous series where I compile some random thoughts and ideas that can't quite make it into a post or on their own. They have no baring on anything, no reason. They're just Noah expressing his deeper, inner mind for no other reason than because I can.
Not serious, not earth-shattering. Just me in my natural mindset that you've all come to love and enjoy. Anyways. I won't take up your time for too long. If you guys like this, maybe we can add it as a Friday Night Fun event to break from the seriousness?
Anywho.
I kinda regret supporting the Zetros, amd don't know why it isn't talked about in CPSP…
Like there's nothing really wrong with the Zetros as a platform. There ia concerns from people because it's just so much bigger than the LSVW. It creates some issues depending on the variant being discussed becuase of how high up and out of the way certain things are gonna be.
But like overall it's a truck. Yeah, we don't have a great history here but I don't expect there to be anything wrong really with Zetros and I get the idea of trying to slim down the fleet by utilizing a common chassis. The issue is that no matter what we're still gonna be running at least four similar trucks in the future (HX, SMP, FMTV) at best.
Yeah the FMTV fleet will be small and tied to HIMARS, and the SMP will eventually be phased out as it hits the 20+ year mark, likely neplaced by more Zetros. Ideally we would be starting to phase out fleets at the 15-20 year mark. Even more ideal would be a process of agile, continuous procurement to ensure the fleet remains in a nice age range. Whatever. Im not gonna complain about that today
But like the HX was already part of Team 45°N, which is hilarious that despite losing we still managed to add them through ERC. Like I'm sorry but Zetros losses a bit of luster when the ‘common fleet’ isn't really actingthat way in practice. In the funny world of grand schemes it really didn't change much despite a lot of people being behind the idea. Sure it helps, but not like I would like to see it.
And beyond that I'm still kinda upset they're not being made here. A Class 8 truck is something we can do here. We actively do it. I feel like for stuff like that we want to have a big focus on domestic production if posssible, same things like LUV, LFE and DAME. Those are definitely things we could do here, and the fact that we aren't does make me a bit sad.
Especially now that we're talking about exoanding fleets, ordering more, building out the division, blah, blah, blah. Like I don't think its very practical to not be producing our own here, especially when we have the automotive sector to do it if we really wanted.
Sure, contract was signed at a different time. I get it, but that doesn't mean we can't discuss it now down the road. It doesn't mean we can't be a bit upset by it. Like if im a Joly or something, and I want some automotive investment, I bet I could convince the Germans to tie in Zetros here as part of a CPSP bid. I could do it. I could convince them.
Okay, it's not the automotive they want but they're also not gonna getting people like Mercedes or Volkswagen to do cars here with CPSP. I'm just accepting that and moving to the next best thing. Take what you can get, squeeze them out…
Without it though it feels like a choice we might regret. I can't say if anyone will. Maybe I'm just being a bit butthurt, but like I think when were talking about doing things here, what we can build and shit that we should be having more lookbacks at things that maybe we left on the table.
Anyone who says we can't do it is lying. Someone told me we couldn't, like bruh… This isn't building a Gerald Ford my dude. It ain’t that serious. It is a truck. A very fancy truck, but a truck. I refuse to believe anyone saying it isn't possible.
For a long-time I thought the French offered essentially the straight Rubis-class for Canada’s Nuclear Submarine back in 87…
But it was actual a lengthened version of the Rubis. Like I knew there were modifications made obviously, and they gave it the coolest proposal name ever in Amethyst. We should steal that. Amethyst-class sounds so cool. One of the Rubis is called Amethyst to match the rest of the Rubis naming scheme, but It just rolls off the tongue so nicely. Name more stuff after gemstones.
Yeah, maybe I'm the dumb one and this is common knowledge but I didn't know they lengthened the hull by about 6 meters. I should have guessed it because I knew the modifications made to the Canadian-proposal to try and meet our requirements (longer endurance, increased weapon storage, modifications to surface from under the Ice) but I guess it just never crossed my mind until someone pointed out that fact a few weeks ago.
Maybe it's just on me for not thinking these kinds of things through, like I'm sure some of you are thinking “Well of course they would Noah!”
But like sometimes my mind doesn't always think that way. It does for other things I really wanna disect, but for historical stuff I don't find my mind does that kinda analytical thinking that I would do for say CDC. Is that weird? Maybe it is… I don't know.
Why dont any of you make Merch?
This is a legit question, and I know a bunch of you Industry folks follow me so I'm calling you out. Why do zero of you have Merch available? I would buy it. I know lots of people who would but it. It's 2026, believe me. If your company is big enough people will buy the merch.
And I know enough of you are both in my age category and chronically online enough to know it too. You should be fighting for it. It's on you to get it done.
A simple sweater at least. I got a cool sweater from the guys at Kongsberg and I love it. You all need to be more like them. I got a bunch of trinkets from them and it was awesome. They know how to treat a boy.
But why not? At least something basic for me to buy. I like stuff like that. I would support it. I would buy vehicle plushies. I have kids, and a wife. We can add more to our house collection. Also, on this topic, you should all send me your brochures thst you have at the end of trade shows. All of it. I don't care how much it is. I eill pay the shipping.
I LOVE physical media. I love CANSEC mostly for the brochures. I certainly don't go to talk to people because everyone is too busy most of the time to go longer than five minutes. I love having them around though and being able to lay them out together. It's awesome.
So instead of throwing them away just give me the boxes. I'll find uses for them.
Canadabuys should die
That is all. Im spoiled now by Dominion and AURION because it's a million times nicer. Canadabuys is garbage and the fact it basically just acts as a feeder to Ariba is also garbage. I don't want to go to Ariba. It sucks.
No one likes them. No one. BuyandSell wasn't perfect, but at least it worked fine. Canadabuys has a mental breakdown if I try to even search through departments, and I don't even need to use it to survive like all of you!
Seriously… I got into this space looking at RFI/RFP on BuyandSell, when the public could readily download and access documents for themselves? Now? That's not possible. You need Ariba, and most people can't or won't go that far. It's an unintended barrier to access, and makes the space more closed off.
So please… someone just put the poor thing out of it's misery.
The Defence Capabilities Blueprint also sucks
Do it more than once a year for christs sake. I will personally update it for free. So long as it gets updated, I dont care. We have a public tool for tracking and documenting existing projects, and we only update it every December? This year it didn't update to the new year!
You wanna know how useless it is? The Canadian Patrol Submarine Project, largest in history, still isn't on it despite two yearly updates happening after it's RFI dropped… how the fuck is it not on there but shit like the Canadian Arctic Suite of Sensors is?
Like I don't use the blueprint much myself, but it would be an amazing resource for the average person to have available. I wanna direct people to it, to tell them that there is a resource available but I can't because it is garbage.
You update it once a year. There is literally zero excuse. None. Please change that.
I miss my Blue
Look I know it wasnt the nicest for the site and hurt a lot of your eyes, but I still miss my blue colouring. I thought it looked unique and pretty. Now we have Grey. I am not ditching my red though. I will fight everyone for that.
This is a lot of ranting, I know. However these are the thoughts that have dominated my head this week. Im sure there will be a lot more projects and peocurement and hot takes if I do this again. However I do like doing little casual things.
Things have been busy the last few weeks. Last week we had four major announcements, one this week, at least one next week. It can be drowning to me when I don't have more casual time to do content and just sorta chill and be a bit silly. I need a bit of silliness on here.
You all need silliness. Everyone has been fsirly serious lately. We need to take a step back and be a bit funny and such. See, I take my job as Canada’s Defence Clown very seriously. So that means I have to try and make you all laugh sometimes. So maybe we do little stuff like this more.