• Thanks for stopping by. Logging in to a registered account will remove all generic ads. Please reach out with any questions or concerns.

Arctic/Offshore Patrol Ship AOPS

What’s really funny is when warships try to be electronically something else act like a warship. Nothing like an AIS “fishing boat” scurrying to and fro at 25 knots to get somebody that has any semblance of a tactical plot interested.
We once 'posed' as a cruise ship during Joint Warrior on one of the 280s with a shit tonne of decorative lighting on the upper decks (which may have included a fake palm tree) music and possibly a banyan. I don't think anyone was fooled but if you are going to drink the JW coolaid and pretnend to belong to some made up country at war with another made up country may as well have some fun with it.
 
On the Gatineau in '95, we snuck up behind a tanker - less than 300 yards away at night following them to get closer to a US CVN. We got to about 80 miles, then started a 'sprint' towards them. As I recall, for 'exercise' purposes, we were given an 8 pack of Harpoons which we 'fired' at CPA - 5 at the CVN and 3 at the Tico in company.

The Umps declared that 1 hit the Tico and 3 hit the CVN, and put it out of service for 3 hours.

:-)

The games we play!

Deceptive lighting is something that mostly fell off the table in the late 90s in my experience.
 
You might be surprised. Lots of emissions control scenario you end up bumping into each other. This is why USV's are so challenging, you don't want your radar on to be detected by the enemy, but you want your radar on to detect USV's and other ships as well. Tough decisions.
Between NVGs and IR, as well as airborne and satellite based sensors, I doubt two SAGs would actually get too close before one of them knew about the other.

I'm not saying it's impossible, but on the balance of probabilities I doubt the Nav lights would be the main issue.
 
At least during tactical manoeuvres, you have enough people watching to avoid conflict, unlike a domestic tranist where the crew mistakes a tanker for a rock.
 
Captain Drew Graham (Director of Naval Requirements) recently did a Speakers Event for the Naval Association of Canada and had some interesting information to put forward to the public regarding unmanned and modular payloads for AOPS. All of the information and photos below are taken from his slideshow, that I will link at the bottom for anybody interested.

N0vqOvd.png


Slideshow image provided for a general idea of this below mentioned system, not photos of the system itself as far as I know.

Containerized On Board Reelable Array (COBRA)

- Designed for the AOPS.

- Active/Passive deployable sonar array.

- Receiver to take on information from sonar buoys.

- COBRA will head to the Defence Capabilities Board in March, 2025 to push it into the next developmental phase.

- Able to connect with AOPS operations room and feed data into it.

AOPS UAS, effectively a UAS program exclusively for AOPS.

- Primary use for ISR and ice spotting, software included for gauging ice thickness and makeup.

- Procuring up to 12 of these aircraft.

- Smaller and shorter ranged than ISTAR.

- 2025 to 2027 introduction timeline.

UEA (Underwater Environmental Awareness)

- Large underwater uncrewed vehicle, effectively a submarine with its own deployable towed array sonar.

- Will deploy RDFAS (Rapidly Deployable Forward Deployed Anonymous Sensors) to act as a sensor net in an area, largely to detect submarines and surface vessels.

- Able to be deployed from vessels like AOPS using containers as storage.

- Primarily designed for long duration (up to 30+ days) Arctic patrol missions.

- Secondary goals of route surveys, providing modern navigation data in remote areas.

- Funded currently, with an introduction timeline of 2031 to 2035.

 
Interesting discussion about the USCG lease of the Aiviq

 
Back
Top