Proposal Deadline For Canada’s $60B Navy Frigates Program Pushed To November 17

Canada’s Public Services and Procurement Department has issued a new deadline of November 17 to defense firms and shipbuilders for submitting the proposal for the country’s $60 billion Navy frigates program, CBC News reports.

Participating firms were originally supposed to have their designs submitted for the Liberal government's plan to buy 15 new surface combat vessels in April and again pushed to June.

Changes to the evaluation process have been made in case none of the designs match up with what Canada needs in its new warships, which will replace the navy's 12 frigates and three destroyers.

Public works officials said at the beginning of this month that it will take until the spring of 2018 before the government decides who the winner might be.

At the time, they insisted the delay would not impact the overall schedule, which aims to start construction of the complex warships in the early 2020s.

Ship designers from France, Britain, Italy and the U.S., among others, are bidding on the Canadian program.

National Defence and Public Works has demanded that ship designers hand over virtually all their intellectual property data for the high-tech electronic combat systems that would be installed on the new warships. They asked bidders for all their foreground and background data necessary to maintain equipment such as radar and combat management suites.