Canadian River Class Destroyer Megathread

[Baz]

My old-school whole-house diesel generator enters the chat to say “ simplicity and core basics have advantages all their own.”

True that, when you have a single source and a single load. The power grid is necessarily much more complex, as both sources and loads are continuously fluctuating. Yes, the used to manual balance loads, but in Canada alone the generating capacity is around 150,000MW and the average use is around 80,000MW. That's a lot of electrons to manage...

 

[Baz]

apropos of nothing nautical, every time that I read the expression plug and play I shudder. Up until very recently I still had my old Windows 5 computer complete with WordPerfect (still the best word processing programme I have found for creative writing). We are now on Windows 11 yet if you compare the two, most of the improvements have been designed to create obsolescence not ease of function. Yes it is faster but the computer's taking over certain functions from me have made me dumber not more efficient. The same is true of many of the more recent auto improvements to the point where care mfg. is going back to more basic installations. Perhaps our military purchases are reflecting the same trend: adding tech. where it isn't really necessary that will make maintenance and repair more difficult and make the equipment more vulnerable to failure.

Except there is a balance. If you add tech that is needlessly complex and can't be supportable than you've disadvantaged yourself. Conversely, if you don't add tech that your potential foes successfully do, which gives them an edge in combat, then you've also disadvantaged yourself.

This is one of the basic problems of military requirements. There are three significant drivers of change (which are factors both for yourself and your adversaries):

• pure research (academic and practical) driving what could we do
• current operators driving what do we do now, and where are the shortfalls
• manufactures driving what can we actually build and at what cost.

Those need to be continuously learning from each other in a properly functioning military-industrial complex. Unfortunately, Canada has let the historic structures that support that wither on the vine.

As an example of what happens if you don't get this right, look to the outsized impact of the Dreyse Needle Gun and the Battle of Königgrätz (Sadowa) on July 3, 1866. Oversimplification is that the Austrians (and many others) had dismissed the Dreyse as being too complex and hard for soldiers to master, but it allowed the Prussians to fire 5 times for every Austrian single shot, while prone, and two Prussian Divisions "destroyed 38 out of 49 infantry battalions of four Austrian corps at the Swiepwald and Chlum at the centre of the battlefield." A naval similarity might be HMS Dreadnaught, usering in the age of the modern battleship, forcing everyone to replace their now obsolete fleets, and ushering in a arms race only the RN could win (until the realities of the Western front meant the couldn't).

 

[GR66]

I predict our fancy and expensive munitions, stores and equipment will get chewed up at rates that are unreplaceable. And we (everyone really) will be looking for easy (or easier) to produce, in volume solutions.

In essence we will need to create the modern iteration of the Flower Class corvette.

Or we just withdraw from the fight and go home.

Does the modern iteration of the Flower Class necessarily need to be a single ship...or could it be a combination of cheap UAV/USV/UUV detection nodes backed by air and surface-launched long range munitions?