Colin Parkinson
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Info graphic on the ship via Irving twitter
Arctic/Offshore Patrol Ship AOPS
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MilEME09 said:
Good question. The ships will be operating in the Western and Eastern Arctic during the summer shipping season so figure about four months, probably July until Oct. There obviously are areas they won't go as the ice will be over the 1.2 M limit of the ship and ice moves. That being said I personally been in a Kingston Class with min ice rating and we were able to reach 80N and about 20 Miles away from Hans Island. So they should be able to reach dependent on ice conditions everywhere they want to go.
Colin Parkinson
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I was on the Pearkes (1100, Polar Class 2) with the Radison helping us, traveling west we manged to punch through the ice at Point Barrow, before the main ice sheet arrived, 4 more hours and we would have to go all the way around to the east to get through Panama. That's how fast things can change up there. Handling a icebreaker through mixed ice, mainly 1 year old is the most fun a Quartermaster can have. You have to stay clear of growlers and ice ridges. We had the Camsel sliced up by a Growler.
Colin Parkinson
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https://www.vermilionstandard.com/news/national/smol-naval-ships-all-sight-no-fight/wcm/996fa5b7-99cc-4ee0-96dd-f807dee2feb3
Snip- Though slightly smaller than Canada’s Arctic patrol ships, the Royal Danish Navy’s vessels are armed with an Otobreda 76-mm main gun as well as two 12.7-mm Browning machine guns. The Danish patrol ships are also fitted to fire Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles (ESSM) and have torpedoes. These Danish ships are equipped to protect themselves if necessary.
And while Canada’s Arctic ships are still a long way to being fully operational, two of Denmark’s three Arctic patrol ships have been active off the of Greenland over the last two months. These three Danish patrol ships are only a small part of the country’s recently completed fleet modernization.
Elsewhere tiny, social democratic Norway’s answer to its coastal defence challenges is represented, in part, by its fleet of six ultra-fast Skjold Stealth Missile Corvettes each one wielding a 76-mm cannon, eight Kongsberg surface to surface missiles, plus additional Mistral Surface to Air Missile system. The ship also has the Kongsberg M151 Protector Remote Weapon Station, and two 12.7mm machine guns. Certainly not the Canadian way of coastal defence, eh! - snip
Snip- Though slightly smaller than Canada’s Arctic patrol ships, the Royal Danish Navy’s vessels are armed with an Otobreda 76-mm main gun as well as two 12.7-mm Browning machine guns. The Danish patrol ships are also fitted to fire Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles (ESSM) and have torpedoes. These Danish ships are equipped to protect themselves if necessary.
And while Canada’s Arctic ships are still a long way to being fully operational, two of Denmark’s three Arctic patrol ships have been active off the of Greenland over the last two months. These three Danish patrol ships are only a small part of the country’s recently completed fleet modernization.
Elsewhere tiny, social democratic Norway’s answer to its coastal defence challenges is represented, in part, by its fleet of six ultra-fast Skjold Stealth Missile Corvettes each one wielding a 76-mm cannon, eight Kongsberg surface to surface missiles, plus additional Mistral Surface to Air Missile system. The ship also has the Kongsberg M151 Protector Remote Weapon Station, and two 12.7mm machine guns. Certainly not the Canadian way of coastal defence, eh! - snip
Colin Parkinson
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What there is more than one Russia? Them congealed fermented fish slurpers don't have to deal with the Chinese either.....
daftandbarmy
Army.ca Dinosaur
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MilEME09 said:
Further, and further, as time goes on... according to the climate doomsayers anyways
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Colin P said:
And none of this matters one bit for us. None of those ships can sail anywhere our current fleet of ships can't sail and it really doesn't matter anyways as they don't really have any real capabilities other than self-defence, those ships wouldn't last a second against a modern nuclear submarine and would make for some nice target practice. The AOPV is perfect for constabulary missions in our territorial waters and if we wanted complete coverage of our Arctic Waters, the only real option is Nuclear Submarines. Actual military defence of our Arctic Waters is fairly straight forward and a simple FLOCARK (I don't know what the Navy uses for terrain analysis but I am certain they have a similar procedure for Charts) shows that it is fairly defensible terrain from a Naval standpoint:
There are really two ways to get in to our Arctic:
#1: Sail past Alert in to Baffin Bay; and
#2: Through the Northwest Passage, either Straight in to Baffin Bay or head around the South side of Baffin Island (Improbable due to how canalizing the waterway is and I am certain it isn't very deep there).
The great thing about our Arctic Archipelago is that all roads lead to the Davis Strait, a lot of which doesn't freeze over and is in fact open water. You could set up a picket line from Greenland to Northern Quebec and have a pretty good idea of what is happening in our Arctic as what goes in must come out and it all leads to one spot. Setting up Passive and Active Sensors in those two areas would give you early warning capability as well so you could surge out of Halifax if required.
The real danger if we are talking conventional warfare and not full scale nuclear warfare (we are fubared anyways if this is the case) is an adversary getting submarines in to Hudson Bay and and using that entire body of water as a gigantic staging area to launch a massive cruise missile strike. A conventional submarine armed with Kalibr Missiles could strike Washington from Hudson Bay with gas in the rocket to spare. Heck you could even insert SOF clandestinely there and go run roughshod over our entire Hydro Generating Capacity along James Bay and take down the entire Power Grid along the Eastern Seaboard, it would be impossible to find them and there is nobody up there to stop them causing havoc anyways.
The only real option to defend our Arctic if we actually wanted to and didn't cede that duty to the Americans would be to procure a fleet of nuclear submarines though so this is really an exercise in futility.
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Humphrey Bogart said:And none of this matters one bit for us. None of those ships can sail anywhere our current fleet of ships can't sail and it really doesn't matter anyways as they don't really have any real capabilities other than self-defence, those ships wouldn't last a second against a modern nuclear submarine and would make for some nice target practice. The AOPV is perfect for constabulary missions in our territorial waters and if we wanted complete coverage of our Arctic Waters, the only real option is Nuclear Submarines. Actual military defence of our Arctic Waters is fairly straight forward and a simple FLOCARK (I don't know what the Navy uses for terrain analysis but I am certain they have a similar procedure for Charts) shows that it is fairly defensible terrain from a Naval standpoint:
There are really two ways to get in to our Arctic:
#1: Sail past Alert in to Baffin Bay; and
#2: Through the Northwest Passage, either Straight in to Baffin Bay or head around the South side of Baffin Island (Improbable due to how canalizing the waterway is and I am certain it isn't very deep there).
The great thing about our Arctic Archipelago is that all roads lead to the Davis Strait, a lot of which doesn't freeze over and is in fact open water. You could set up a picket line from Greenland to Northern Quebec and have a pretty good idea of what is happening in our Arctic as what goes in must come out and it all leads to one spot. Setting up Passive and Active Sensors in those two areas would give you early warning capability as well so you could surge out of Halifax if required.
The real danger if we are talking conventional warfare and not full scale nuclear warfare (we are fubared anyways if this is the case) is an adversary getting submarines in to Hudson Bay and and using that entire body of water as a gigantic staging area to launch a massive cruise missile strike. A conventional submarine armed with Kalibr Missiles could strike Washington from Hudson Bay with gas in the rocket to spare. Heck you could even insert SOF clandestinely there and go run roughshod over our entire Hydro Generating Capacity along James Bay and take down the entire Power Grid along the Eastern Seaboard, it would be impossible to find them and there is nobody up there to stop them causing havoc anyways.
The only real option to defend our Arctic if we actually wanted to and didn't cede that duty to the Americans would be to procure a fleet of nuclear submarines though so this is really an exercise in futility.
Look at you! 2 weeks into you're navy training and you're already schooling the rest of us with your sound naval tactics (and to answer your question, we do NOT have anything wrt charts at the tactical level, and if there is anything at the operational or strategic, I don't know about it).
Naval tactics is a lot more of a "fly by the seat of your pants, and hope the TRU doesn't get shot down" kind if thing.
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Been that way for a long time. I think the ships discussed above were part of the discussion on a small ship replacement for the MCDV. My bad if not.
Colin Parkinson
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I think you find the terrain and weather friction far more of a factor than anywhere else. Arctic warfare is likely 7/10th survival, 2/10th finding the enemy and 1/10th fighting. Attempts to place shallow water sensor nets for whales have failed, any sensor net needs to be deep to avoid ice damage, but then it needs to be able to reach the surface to get power/transmit. You need a shore station either remote or manned to operate them, if remote, be prepared not to be able to fix problems for weeks, even a whole season. We also have limited supply depots as well. I suspect the most likely scenario is we discover a manned "research station" with armed guards and well armed ship protecting it or "polite armed men in whilte camo". How do we react if they ignore diplomatic efforts?
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Colin P said:
Send in the Rangers.....right?
Colin Parkinson
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I don’t mean to dis-respect people, but I really see a “beaten wife syndrome” in the forces, the fight to maintain any capability in the face of either wilful disdain or outright hostility from successive governments has so conditioned people into an acceptance of inadequate resources and defense of that inadequacy that is not entirely rational. I can’t fathom any rational argument to build a naval ship the size of the AOPs without the means to project power or defend itself, while other allied navies using similar ships do. Going by our history, these ships will be called upon to do far more than we ever envisioned and we are not setting up the future crews for success.
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Colin P said:
Well luckily, we have this base up there called CFS Alert which just so happens to sit at the mouth of Cape Sheridan. I've been to the North a number of times so have some familiarity of the challenges of operating up there on land (not in the Maritime Environment though).
Threats in the Arctic by Submarine have been recognized since right after WWII, which is why the Americans created and built the Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) to cover the the GIUK Gap (Picture Below).
However, it is a badly kept secret that SOSUS (later complimented with SURTASS) has been expanded to cover other areas near Greenland, the Atlantic Ocean and I have read elsewhere, Hudson Bay. The Americans used to run the program out of Argentia when they had a Station there but when they closed it, handed the responsibility over to HMCS Trinity in Halifax, which was only stood up as a unit in 1994. Which is why the Jeff Delisle spy case was such a big deal because it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that he probably gave info to the Russians concerning locations, frequency bands, etc. with respect to SOSUS, SURTASS and the Integrated Underwater Surveillance System (IUSS).
Any operation in the Arctic cannot be looked at through a purely Canadian lens and must take in to consideration NATO and most importantly, American concerns. The Americans don't want us meddling in the Arctic militarily and Canadian warships and submarines operating up there would undermine their own programs. We have already proven that we probably can't be trusted with the intelligence.
Colin P said:
The big thing in the RCN since the 1990s has been Maritime Interdiction Operations or MIO against smugglers, narco-traffickers and terrorist organizations. The AOPS is perfectly suited for this sort of operation or can fill a SAR or Constabulary Role in home waters. It is also probably a political move to not arm them more heavily because then the narrative becomes "Why do we need frigates or major warships when we have these other ships with similar (albeit nowhere near as effective) systems?"
Having switched from the Army to the Navy the one thing I've immediately noticed is the Navy is very small, it is probably way too small for a country of our size and stature and if there is one service that needs to be expanded, it is the Navy. I've been saying this for years though and it is just being confirmed further now.
A ship operating in the Arctic in the ice is no use as a warship, it can't manoeuvre and can't really fight. All it would make is a nice inviting piece of target practice for a submarine in those conditions. The only option to provide an effective military solution to kinetic operations in the ice flow are Nuclear Submarines or Aircraft that can target surfaced subs.
