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I believe one of the Admirals in a very recent interview stated the CMMC has now evolved to a light frigate?
Continental Defence Corvette
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Given the flexibility of the vocabulary can anybody be sure what those words mean?
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Leave it to Canada to have an identity fluid class of ships. Frankly boxing ships into predefined classes to meet asymmetric mission sets doesn’t make sense anymore for Canada.
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Canada is probably the only country in NATO that actually follows the NATO designations exactly for ship classification. Evidence the DDGH River Class.
As you can see here FFL is both a Light Frigate and a Corvette at the same time, its classification is left to armament or capability, which is code for "call it whatever the hell you want as long as its between 60-150m long".
If the ship ends up longer than 100m and has an armament similar to a CPF then Frigate is the probably the proper choice. Either way the NATO designation will be FFL.
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But we are boxed in by likley infrastructure limitations and likley manning challenges in the future.
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Should make a Canadian only CV classification.
Clear up all confusion.
I'll see myself out.
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The article after that on page 36 is interesting as well.
A River Runs Through It
Jonathan Cassels-"CDNPolicyHawk"
a proposal for the USN to build the River Class
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Yep. I follow him in the former bird app. He’s written some decent stuff this year.
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"BMT, described MODUS as “a family of uncrewed vessels” rather than a single platform, spanning designs from around 20 metres up to 70–80 metres,..."
"...structural pressures facing Western navies. “As equipment gets more and more complex, but budgets remain broadly the same… we have a limited number of hulls,” Rigby said, adding that crewing constraints are also becoming a limiting factor. Autonomy, he said, forms part of a wider “hybrid navy” approach rather than a standalone answer."
ukdefencejournal.org.uk
“We’ve ripped up the rule book on how we traditionally design these vessels,” said Chloe Yarrien, Maritime Autonomous Systems Engineering Lead at BMT, noting that traditional design tools are built around crewed assumptions.
“We wanted sort of 30 to 60 day missions where this vessel could be out on station, working around the clock,”
"...structural pressures facing Western navies. “As equipment gets more and more complex, but budgets remain broadly the same… we have a limited number of hulls,” Rigby said, adding that crewing constraints are also becoming a limiting factor. Autonomy, he said, forms part of a wider “hybrid navy” approach rather than a standalone answer."
BMT shares more detail on MODUS uncrewed ship concept
BMT outlines thinking behind MODUS uncrewed vessel concept for ASW and seabed roles, focused on modular design and long-endurance ops. #UDT2026
ukdefencejournal.org.uk
“We’ve ripped up the rule book on how we traditionally design these vessels,” said Chloe Yarrien, Maritime Autonomous Systems Engineering Lead at BMT, noting that traditional design tools are built around crewed assumptions.
“We wanted sort of 30 to 60 day missions where this vessel could be out on station, working around the clock,”
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Is it possible taking automation too far could have the perverse result of leaving you with too few sailors? If the bulk of your platforms are uncrewed and you use automation to reduce the crew size of the remaining platforms that are crewed then your pool of trained humans becomes smaller."BMT, described MODUS as “a family of uncrewed vessels” rather than a single platform, spanning designs from around 20 metres up to 70–80 metres,..."
"...structural pressures facing Western navies. “As equipment gets more and more complex, but budgets remain broadly the same… we have a limited number of hulls,” Rigby said, adding that crewing constraints are also becoming a limiting factor. Autonomy, he said, forms part of a wider “hybrid navy” approach rather than a standalone answer."
BMT shares more detail on MODUS uncrewed ship concept
BMT outlines thinking behind MODUS uncrewed vessel concept for ASW and seabed roles, focused on modular design and long-endurance ops. #UDT2026
“We’ve ripped up the rule book on how we traditionally design these vessels,” said Chloe Yarrien, Maritime Autonomous Systems Engineering Lead at BMT, noting that traditional design tools are built around crewed assumptions.
“We wanted sort of 30 to 60 day missions where this vessel could be out on station, working around the clock,”
I'm definitely a fan of getting as many automated sensor nodes as we can out there. Single purpose, cheap and plentiful. But perhaps as things get more complex, like the mother ship that deploys, recovers and monitors the sensors and has to operate in shipping lanes, etc. you avoid the added complexity (and cost) of designing an autonomous system that can handle these more complex tasks and instead go to a minimally manned vessel. Ideally something that can be crewed by Reservists.
That way you get the benefit of the automated sensor net and at the same time create an expanded pool of trained sailors that you can draw on when required.
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The maintenance workload does not go away, regardless if the ships are manned or not. Now for one way attack drone boats, they just need to do their job once, maybe twice if there was no access to target the first go around. But for persistent monitoring vessels, unmanned missile attack craft, then they are going to require a lot of work everytime they return.
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I think you would continue a pre-existing trend towards fewer sailors. It is harder to attract sailors now than it used to be. Even at the turn of the last century the Royal Navy was reverting to Laskars from Baluchistan to keep their boilers fed with coal. They couldn't find enough Brits willing to do the job. That was another reason for converting to oil from coal. Oil fired boilers replaced shovels with pumps.
Today there seems to be very few "1st World" people interested in lives at sea, be it Merchant Marine, Coast Guards or Navies. I think the problem is not one of creating too few berths but rather having too few sailors. And it is not just a Navy problem, nor is it just a military problem. We have taught our children to pursue the information economy while we exported the jobs that fed us to other countries.
And our kids have got good at playing video games. Essentially we have encouraged them to generate the skills necessary to command robots from thousands of kilometers away.
I have no idea what my children's world is going to look like after I am gone but I am pretty sure that they are going to need a completely different set of skills to manage it than any that I acquired over my life.
With respect to the maintenance load I think the solution will be a combination of least cost structures, building surplus numbers and bringing the resulting attritable items back to onshore maintenance centres for refurb or disposal and replacement.
How much of these discussions on these boards already revolve around the need to buy 3, 4 or 5 units to ensure one is always on shift? Ansd that is true of both machines and humans. If you don't have to worry about keeping a crew alive and happy, and as a result can swap a million dollar aircraft for 1000 drones at $1000 a piece why wouldn't you go there?
How many of NavCans on-shore radar sites are manned? How many have a maintenance crew in residence? How about the North Warning System? Lighthouses? Navigation aids for all domains?
We already live in a world where critical infrastructure operates unattended.
Satellites?
We no longer rely on driver-mechanics and lighthouse-keepers. We have arrived at the point where we have uncrewed vehicles in service in all domains.
We have robots fighting robots IRL, not just on Battlebots.
......
Increasingly the battle picture is not focused on what can be seen from any one point but the fusion of information from multi-spectral sensor nodes widely distributed that is then curated by AI.
... We may wish the world moved more cautiously but our competitors will always push the pace.
Just as the Ukrainians have been doing with the Russians.
...
I think things are moving fast and irreversably.
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Floating navaids require far more upkeep, than fixed, the sea is a harsh mistress. A buoy has around 8 light bulbs in it in a rotating carousal to maintain the light. Some buoy only need work occasional, others very frequently, exposure to wind and waves determines that.
