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“The ship can go wherever the Canadian Armed Forces require it to go,” Davie said on its website in response to questions about whether Asterix can be used in combat.

Naval officers acknowledged at a news conference in late January with Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan at CFB Esquimalt that a number of Phalanx guns are in storage but those are being saved so they can be outfitted on the new Joint Support Ships.

It is unclear when the navy will get those new supply vessels as construction has yet to start. Some estimates put the delivery of the first ship at 2022 but there have been suggestions that vessel could come as late as 2024 or 2025.

The Asterix, which is being leased to the federal government by a sister company to Davie, is being prepared to head to sea in March in support of Royal Canadian Navy operations. It is expected to be at sea for up to six months.

DND did not respond directly to specific questions about why it rejected the installation of Phalanx guns on Asterix.

But Pat Finn, assistant deputy minister for materiel, told a Commons defence committee on Feb. 1 that getting Asterix as quickly as possible was the main focus for the department. He said the Davie supply vessel is different from the Joint Support Ships in terms of its robustness. “We did not impose that upon a commercial ship, because of the speed at which we needed it,” he said. “What it needed to do, what kinds of areas it could go to, and the things it can do are quite different. The Asterix, in the context of that service contract to us, is delivering exactly what we asked of it.”