Maritime Coastal Defence Vessels (MCDVs)

[NearingZenith]

Some thoughts. 1000tons and fit all that? First Strike length VLS normally won't fit into a hull that small, second 90m proper warship is going to be approx 2000-2500 tons (Gowind class corvette, River class OPV) etc... so I think the tonnage expectation is off the mark, but if length is the limiting requirement then that's going to be just fine.

Besides fitting everything they want in a <105m ~1000 ton hull, the 40 person crew + automation target seems problematic. The Red Sea conflict is showing the need for proper manning to avoid burnout when operating high tempo 24/7 operations. The HMCS Protecteur fire showed the large amount of crew needed to keep DC teams rotating to fight a hours long fire. If money is invested in equipping the CMMC as a full featured ASW, ASuW, AAW warfare combatant as proposed, it should also be manned as a proper combatant rather than at OPV-levels.

 

[DBNSG]

I am not especially convinced by vague hand gesturing to outsource RCN duties to contracted ships, who's contracts might never materialize in the first place or be easily cut in the future. Considering how badly the Govt managed to get sponged with the Asterix lease, I don't have high hopes for any future endeavors.


Agree entirely on the point of the Kingston class.

As for the CMMC/CSC plan, building at Irving is simply not feasible. Interspersing CMMC construction with CSC construction will only serve to delay both programs, making a scrambled mess of their respective supply chains and destroy any efficiencies inherent to long term, high number shipbuilding. CSC is far too vital to be delayed, stopped, etc by any other program, especially CMMC. Irving is going to struggle with CSC for sometime, switching it up when they are just getting into their stride is sup-optimal.

Another yard besides the big three needs to be brought in to build CMMC, especially if they want them at anything approaching the frankly insane timelines they have put forward. That will require a sub-1000t ship or NSS to be changed to permit another combatant builder to come onboard.

CSC is expensive but any built in Canada CMMC will likely not be especially cheap either, especially coming from an inexperienced yard. I'd be skeptical of it being a truly "cost effective" endeavor.

The Irving's switched the Former Saint John Shipyard property to a wallboard plant. The Drydock is still there . And Dry.

 

[JLB50]

I agree with you that with President Trump there’s no such thing as successful appeasement and everything is a moving target. At the World Economic Forum last week Trump announced that Saudi Arabia agreed to invest $600 Billion in the US over 4 years and in the next breath said he wants it to be $1 Trillion instead. It takes a lot of gall to shake down Saudi Arabia and the Crown Prince in public. Yes, Trump might have been partly joking and $1 Trillion wasn’t a hard demand, but it’s also clear that if Saudi Arabia thought $600 Billion was enough to buy them 4 years of good will with Trump, that’s not going to be the case. Similarly, if the Canadian government went down to Washington to sign a major defence purchase agreement with Trump, by the time they got to the post-signing press conference I’d expect Trump to promote the huge defence purchase in one breath and in the next breath announce that negotiations had begun for the next major defence purchase agreement.

We need to increase defence spending for our own sake and invest in things that make sense for our own defence needs including supporting Canadian defence production where there’s long-term value in doing so. Yes we need to collaborate with the US with continental defence in mind and buy American defence products as necessary, but we shouldn’t be beholden to getting a whole bunch of kit and buying American simply to try to satisfy Trump.

I’ll go one further. We’ve been too polite and too accommodating for too long. We need to reduce our dependence on the Americans and start buying more kit from the Brits, the Europeans, the South Koreans and the Japanese.

 

[deepblue202]

Well if we go KSS III submarines we should look at there FFX batch IV frigates

Hanwha Ocean to Build First Two FFX Batch-IV Frigates - Naval News

South Korean shipbuilder Hanwha Ocean won a contract for the construction of the 1st and 2nd ships of the new FFX Batch-IV...

www.navalnews.com

 

[quadrapiper]

The shore side support footprint for a fleet of AB would itself break the RCN before a single ship left the jetty.

What's unique about the AB shore support?

Or is it more about training pipelines and so on to support the larger ship's companies?

 

[Furniture]

What's unique about the AB shore support?

Or is it more about training pipelines and so on to support the larger ship's companies?

Every aspect of the AB is staffing intensive. The USN has sailors and contractors to throw at every problem.

Have you been to Pearl Harbor or San Diego? They have maintenance facilities that dwarf Halifax and Esquimalt combined.

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

Basically, the replacement of the MCDV with a ship the government calls a corvette will depend on how the said government sees that "corvette": Do they look at it as the high end of patrol vessels (harbour patrol vessel - inshore patrol vessel - offshore patrol vessel - corvette) or as the low end of line escort vessels (corvette - frigate - destroyer - cruiser)?

Regardless of what they chose to call it, deciding which one of those two streams you wish to fit in will determine the end resulting ship's capability.

 

[Underway]

Besides fitting everything they want in a <105m ~1000 ton hull, the 40 person crew + automation target seems problematic. The Red Sea conflict is showing the need for proper manning to avoid burnout when operating high tempo 24/7 operations. The HMCS Protecteur fire showed the large amount of crew needed to keep DC teams rotating to fight a hours long fire. If money is invested in equipping the CMMC as a full featured ASW, ASuW, AAW warfare combatant as proposed, it should also be manned as a proper combatant rather than at OPV-levels.

The concept of operations envisioned is for continental defence and link into NORAD. Strike length VLS packages on smaller hulls that are distrubuted gives better coverage.

It was described as three ships leave harbour, take up station a good distance from each other, link together and provide a networked area air defence region (I'm very much shortening the explaination here).

This wasn't envisioned as going to the Red Sea, that's the CSC's job. Its more being missile trucks on smaller distrubuted platforms for BMD or somesuch.

Basically, the replacement of the MCDV with a ship the government calls a corvette will depend on how the said government sees that "corvette": Do they look at it as the high end of patrol vessels (harbour patrol vessel - inshore patrol vessel - offshore patrol vessel - corvette) or as the low end of line escort vessels (corvette - frigate - destroyer - cruiser)?

Regardless of what they chose to call it, deciding which one of those two streams you wish to fit in will determine the end resulting ship's capability.

Absolutely. I'm just posting what the RCN's ask is going to be.

 

[GR66]

Well if we go KSS III submarines we should look at there FFX batch IV frigates

Hanwha Ocean to Build First Two FFX Batch-IV Frigates - Naval News

South Korean shipbuilder Hanwha Ocean won a contract for the construction of the 1st and 2nd ships of the new FFX Batch-IV...

www.navalnews.com

Those are a no-go due to their length.

South Korea formally begins FFX Batch IV frigate construction program

The South Korean government, through the Defence Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA), has formally begun a new project wherein two new frigates will be bu

www.bairdmaritime.com

Hanwha Ocean will construct the frigates, which will have the same overall dimensions as the ROKN's earlier Chungnam-class ships

From Wikipedia the Chungnam-class frigates are 129m long. The CMMC's are to be no longer than 105m in order to fit in the existing harbour infrastructure.

I see absolutely no way that the requested specs can fit in a vessel of 1,000 tons. Looking at existing Corvette designs that have specs approaching what they are looking for they all fall more into the 2,500 ton range...and the crews are 100+ not 40, especially if you're embarking UAV's, etc.

Would be more realistic to have an up-gunned OPV with the required sensors and a more limited self-defence weapons suite and have the strike-length VLS tubes in a separate arsenal ship that can be paired with the OPV to create the AAD region when required?

 

[DBNSG]

The concept of operations envisioned is for continental defence and link into NORAD. Strike length VLS packages on smaller hulls that are distrubuted gives better coverage.

It was described as three ships leave harbour, take up station a good distance from each other, link together and provide a networked area air defence region (I'm very much shortening the explaination here).

This wasn't envisioned as going to the Red Sea, that's the CSC's job. Its more being missile trucks on smaller distrubuted platforms for BMD or somesuch.


Absolutely. I'm just posting what the RCN's ask is going to be.

So a small flotilla that can sail up the St Lawrence maybe all the way up the Ottawa to let folks sleep at night

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

Every warship we have, including the new JSS, are capable of sailing up the St. Lawrence river, all the way to the head of the Great Lakes. None can get to Ottawa, which lies on the Outaouais river, an unnavigable river for vessels other than pleasure crafts, and at the end of the rideau canal, which is itself unfit for anything other that pleasure crafts nowadays.

 

[YZT580]

The Irving's switched the Former Saint John Shipyard property to a wallboard plant. The Drydock is still there . And Dry.

this is dragging out some very weak memories but wasn't one of the conditions for the government bailing out the Irving people in St. John's a guarantee that the yard would close; conveniently leaving only Davies on the east coast. Part of our boom and bust cycle after the frigates were done. Paul Martin was the prime minister then

 

[Navy_Pete]

this is dragging out some very weak memories but wasn't one of the conditions for the government bailing out the Irving people in St. John's a guarantee that the yard would close; conveniently leaving only Davies on the east coast. Part of our boom and bust cycle after the frigates were done. Paul Martin was the prime minister then

No, that was Irving taking the money and running.

 

[deepblue202]

This was shown a few pages back would this be a better fit.

75 METER SWIFT CORVETTE – Swiftships

swiftships.com

 

[Navy_Pete]

Again, question for everyone thinking we'll get MCDV replacements, where are the sailors coming from, when the RCN is shrinking and we don't have enough for the new ships and subs on the books without a massive growth?

Putting money towards new platforms but not addressing our recruiting shortfall, retetntion, lack of training facilities/throughput and overstreched support arm doesn't deliver any effective capability.

 

[Cloud Cover]

Again, question for everyone thinking we'll get MCDV replacements, where are the sailors coming from, when the RCN is shrinking and we don't have enough for the new ships and subs on the books without a massive growth?

Putting money towards new platforms but not addressing our recruiting shortfall, retetntion, lack of training facilities/throughput and overstreched support arm doesn't deliver any effective capability.

To be honest with everything going on, could it be we are much closer to mandatory national service program?

 

[suffolkowner]

To be honest with everything going on, could it be we are much closer to mandatory national service program?

Why do we need mandatory service if we are turning away over 70000

 

[Navy_Pete]

To be honest with everything going on, could it be we are much closer to mandatory national service program?

Sure, but if we look to our allies like Sweden that is doing that, they are doing a massive investment in infra and training facilities to support that; we've cut that budget, and there are a lot of empty positions and general long term, systematic underinvestment in the training system in general.

It was a few years ago, but the electrical fire in the 1930s building for navy tech training from a short in one of the main power panels, and the fire at the DC school in Halifax (from the boiler chimney that hadn't been cleaned in a long time) sort of represented that all fairly well.

 

[Cloud Cover]

Why do we need mandatory service if we are turning away over 70000

Good point.

 

[Rainbow1910]

This was shown a few pages back would this be a better fit.

75 METER SWIFT CORVETTE – Swiftships

swiftships.com

Lack of a mission deck kills any competitor before it can get off the ground.