Replacing the Subs

[Dale Denton]

To the folks asking 'what conditions would the US let us cut up a Virginia class' etc...the conditions probably look something like this.

I think the dollar signs weigh heavier than concerns that existed almost 40 years ago. If they don't, the industrial sector may do the pushing for us. A decent play that many countries do currently, pay for influence in defence $$$. I remember reading somewhere that even in the 80s (Carter?) was in our corner for SSNs, how might a current POTUS hold this us as a success.

 

[Uzlu]

I remember reading somewhere that even in the 80s (Carter?) was in our corner for SSNs, how might a current POTUS hold this us as a success.

In the late 1950s, the Royal Canadian Navy tried to buy nuclear-powered submarines.  Hyman G. Rickover, for one year, offered the Skipjack design.  Canada, however, dithered.  Canada was now interested in the Thresher design.

 

[Eye In The Sky]

I think the dollar signs weigh heavier than concerns that existed almost 40 years ago. If they don't, the industrial sector may do the pushing for us. A decent play that many countries do currently, pay for influence in defence $$$. I remember reading somewhere that even in the 80s (Carter?) was in our corner for SSNs, how might a current POTUS hold this us as a success.

I think any US President would love to see Canada add itself to the nuc submarine community.  And...that will never happen, and I think any reasonable person will admit to that.

For the reasons of our history and the 0.00000009% chance we'll move to a nuc sub capability in the future, I'll maintain my position that the USN will not share any significant tech with us.

We're simply just not a serious, or big enough, player.  :2c:

 

[CBH99]

If I remember correctly - from a very detailed and well written article posted here a while ago about this specific issue - it wasn't that the USN was "completely against" Canada having a nuclear boat capability, it was all of the infrastructure & technical knowledge that was needed to support that capability.

Again, it was a while ago, but I think it was the issue of having US nuclear tech know-how being compromised more along allies than the Soviets, i.e. France & the UK.


There are some pretty impressive, slick, technologically advanced conventional submarines out there now - that are very quickly evolving into being able to do everything a USN nuclear boat can do, at substantially less cost.  And SUBSTANTIALLY less expensive infrastructure to support.

As convenient as it would be to set up an exchange program, or 'lease' some boats with US technical advisors onboard (already exchanges in place for that kind of thing) - I'm guessing a conventional boat will be the way we go.  Easier on the wallet, and easier to sell to the public.  (Who don't know anything about anything, but have a ton of opinions anyway...)

 

[tomahawk6]

You aint crashing through the ice in anything but a nuke. So go big or stay home.  ;D

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/submarines-under-ice.html

 

[daftandbarmy]

You aint crashing through the ice in anything but a nuke. So go big or stay home.  ;D

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/submarines-under-ice.html

Nuclear boats have had issues with ice before, and the story of the (very lucky) HMS Tireless is a good warning to anyone trying to operate ships of any type, extensively, in ice filled waters:

On 13 May 2003, while on exercise in the Arctic and travelling at a depth of 60 metres, Tireless collided with an iceberg. There was no prior warning of the impending collision from passive sonar or other onboard sensors. The submarine's bow was forced down nine degrees and the vessel subsequently broke free of the iceberg at a depth of 78 metres. Some damage was sustained to the upper section of the boat. Before the incident, the Royal Navy had not conducted under-ice operations since 1996.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Tireless_(S88)

 

[Eye In The Sky]

Unfortunately, Western crews and boats will likely be doing under-ice work fairly far into the future; Borei is a capable platform as one example of 'why'.

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/09/06/new-nuclear-powered-sub-to-be-delivered-to-northern-fleet-a67176

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/08/24/russia-test-fires-missiles-from-submarines-in-the-barents-sea-a67009

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/05/22/russian-radio-electronic-shield-now-covers-arctic-officials-say-a65680

 

[Colin Parkinson]

The Newt suit was developed by a Canadian.... sheer, well proven, genius. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newtsuit

Here's our big chance to introduce the word to 'Underwater Starship Troopers'  ;D

BC had quite the vibrant undersea community
Nutton with his Newtsuit,
http://www.stormchaser.ca/Misc/Nuytco/Nuytco.html

10 large tourist subs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantis_Submarines

https://ise.bc.ca/products/
https://aquaticasubmarines.com/

https://www.vancouvermaritimemuseum.com/blog/story-our-yellow-submarine

Not to forget WWI

BC navy- http://espritdecorps.ca/gordon/2015/4/24/the-british-columbia-navy-the-strange-tale-of-canadas-first-submarines
https://bcbooklook.com/2014/10/20/top-secret%C2%AD-we-built-submarines-in-burnaby/

 

[tomahawk6]

Canada is a wealthy country capable of buying nuke subs to assert your arctic claim, so buy 4 or 5 nuke boats from the UK or France to enforce the claim. Or else you have Russian or Chinese boats lurking about. Its a twofer meet a NATO spending guideline that also enhances your own security.

 

[Eye In The Sky]

...and enhances our NORAD capability...

 

[Good2Golf]

Canada is a wealthy country capable of buying nuke subs to assert your arctic claim, so buy 4 or 5 nuke boats from the UK or France to enforce the claim. Or else you have Russian or Chinese boats lurking about. Its a twofer meet a NATO spending guideline that also enhances your own security.

Quick (cynical) answer is why do either?  A) in absolute amounts, Canada is NATO’s 6th largest spender, and B) the USN already does a nice job keeping track of Russian and Chinese nuke boats in the Arctic. 

 

[Czech_pivo]

Quick (cynical) answer is why do either?  A) in absolute amounts, Canada is NATO’s 6th largest spender, and B) the USN already does a nice job keeping track of Russian and Chinese nuke boats in the Arctic.

Re A)
I’ve mentioned this before, compare what we spend in USD in terms of size/capability and then compare it to Spain - it’s painful to see what they get for about the same amount of money.

So, we should asking ourselves, are we truly spending our pay packet efficiently?

I for one, believe that we should be spending more on our armed forces - but efficiently, less Sr ranks, less regional spending for the sake of spending regionally and more boots/ships/planes on the ground/water/air.

 

[CBH99]

Agreed.

**This very much belongs in the Defence Budget thread, but I agree with you 100%, and I think most folks here do also.



I was reading an article just this week about DND employees being moved from NDHQ into the new NDHQ, and other employees being shuffled from other locations into the old NDHQ as they consolidate office locations.  And in that article, it mentioned DND had approximately 17,000 people in the Ottawa area 


Definitely could streamline ourselves & stop wasting tons of $$ on dragging projects out for years, or DECADES even, and all the nonsense that comes with 17,000 of us revolving around NDHQ activities. 

Even 1000 or 2000 of those people back in the units could help fill out those units quite a bit.



More money?  Perhaps.  Most likely.  But lets start spending what we have a lot more efficiently first.






T6,

If only it were that easy.  Truly makes sense, but unfortunately isn't how it works, as we all know.

In the US, they mostly get to say "we need a platform that does A, B, C - and we need X number of platforms" and they get to buy what makes sense, in quantities that they can use.  Not always smoothly, and sure they have lots of inefficiencies also.  But pretty straightforwards, from a military objective perspective.

Socially, most Americans have accepted that they are the protectors and leaders of the free world, and that role comes with a real price tag.

Just last week, the US Congress provided the USAF with 12 additonal F-35A's, on top of what they had asked for.  And every year, it's not uncommon to see the USN with 14 to 16 additional Super Hornets above and beyond what they asked for.  (Not to mention 2 additional LCS for the Navy that the Navy didn't want, and just 2 years ago the US Army asked Congress to STOP BUYING US TANKS as they were running out of storage room.) 

No other country in the west could possibly hope to have their governments provide them with anywhere near so much.

 

[tomahawk6]

Pointless to appeal to national pride ? You're right that the US will be on the frontline of the naval defense of North America until the Democrats sweep to power and they will do as they always do - budget cuts.

 

[CountDC]

Pointless to appeal to national pride ? You're right that the US will be on the frontline of the naval defense of North America until the Democrats sweep to power and they will do as they always do - budget cuts.

Guess the army should have found more storage space to stock up before the dems could get in to cut. 

 

[dimsum]

Pointless to appeal to national pride ? You're right that the US will be on the frontline of the naval defense of North America until the Democrats sweep to power and they will do as they always do - budget cuts.

Well, it's not like the Republicans don't cut budgets as well.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-defense/trump-says-will-look-to-cut-defense-budget-in-future-c-span-interview-idUSKCN1UQ099

 

[GR66]

Silly question, but how really important is it for our subs to operate under the ice?

Russian SSBNs can launch from their own side of the arctic and it doesn't make much sense for them to risk them by pushing into our waters.

Subs aren't really great for freedom of navigation demonstrations through the NW passage since they would have to be detected to be effective which kinda defeats the purpose of being a sub in the first place.

Russian/Chinese nuclear subs may transit under the arctic icepack on their way to stations to the south, but would under the ice with all the noise, etc. be the best place to try and intercept them with our own subs?  Would we be better using the advantage of quiet diesel subs positioned at the edge of the icepack to intercept them as they come out? 

I totally get the range and endurance argument for nuclear vs conventional subs but with all the political and cost obstacles to going nuclear is it really worth it?  Would we be better off replacing our existing capability and supplementing it with other (cheaper) non-nuclear enablers?  More MPAs?  Maybe armed, unmanned subs or ASW patrol ships? Sensor systems at the NW passage choke points?

 

[daftandbarmy]

Silly question, but how really important is it for our subs to operate under the ice?

Russian SSBNs can launch from their own side of the arctic and it doesn't make much sense for them to risk them by pushing into our waters.

Subs aren't really great for freedom of navigation demonstrations through the NW passage since they would have to be detected to be effective which kinda defeats the purpose of being a sub in the first place.

Russian/Chinese nuclear subs may transit under the arctic icepack on their way to stations to the south, but would under the ice with all the noise, etc. be the best place to try and intercept them with our own subs?  Would we be better using the advantage of quiet diesel subs positioned at the edge of the icepack to intercept them as they come out? 

I totally get the range and endurance argument for nuclear vs conventional subs but with all the political and cost obstacles to going nuclear is it really worth it?  Would we be better off replacing our existing capability and supplementing it with other (cheaper) non-nuclear enablers?  More MPAs?  Maybe armed, unmanned subs or ASW patrol ships? Sensor systems at the NW passage choke points?

Given the dangers and other factors, I would think that maritime operations in the arctic would be a great example of where drone subs could be deployed:

https://www.fanaticalfuturist.com/2017/07/boeing-teams-up-with-americas-biggest-ship-builder-to-build-autonomous-subs/

 

[Dale Denton]

Does the RCN or DRC have any public projects involving Large UUVs? Interesting article below on USN ORCA project. Launch one of these from the back of an AOPS, use it to deploy mines or patrol a small area then meet back up with its mothership? Let them robots go the extra mile. Definitely safer since we don't have the experience operating under the ice anyways.

Silly question, but how really important is it for our subs to operate under the ice?

Russian SSBNs can launch from their own side of the arctic and it doesn't make much sense for them to risk them by pushing into our waters.

Subs aren't really great for freedom of navigation demonstrations through the NW passage since they would have to be detected to be effective which kinda defeats the purpose of being a sub in the first place.

Russian/Chinese nuclear subs may transit under the arctic icepack on their way to stations to the south, but would under the ice with all the noise, etc. be the best place to try and intercept them with our own subs?  Would we be better using the advantage of quiet diesel subs positioned at the edge of the icepack to intercept them as they come out? 

I totally get the range and endurance argument for nuclear vs conventional subs but with all the political and cost obstacles to going nuclear is it really worth it?  Would we be better off replacing our existing capability and supplementing it with other (cheaper) non-nuclear enablers?  More MPAs?  Maybe armed, unmanned subs or ASW patrol ships? Sensor systems at the NW passage choke points?

Its a logical question. I agree, but at the same time those arguments can be made whenever the prospect of a big buy is being mulled over.

"Why buy 'X' expensive thing when we can buy 'Y or Z' cheaper alternative - we still have to buy/build/replace A, B and C"?

Because X is the thing to do the job, and in reality we need more of the alternatives already anyways (MPAs, UUVs). We already have to replace the Subs, why not get the kind we've been trying to get for the past 50 years? Why buy expensive kit if you can't even use it in your own property? Seems like the whole organisation has been arguing that point for long enough where the whole CAF is built around alternatives to stuff we actually wanted and need.

 

[Underway]

Even 1000 or 2000 of those people back in the units could help fill out those units quite a bit.

And have the civilians run DND?  Because that's where the majority of those numbers come from.  Projects are mostly civilians already.