New Canadian Shipbuilding Strategy

[Colin Parkinson]

One always hopes that your adversaries read and follow your doctrine.....

 

[Stoker]

One always hopes that your adversaries read and follow your doctrine.....

Yep we have to watch out for the red and yellow hoards

 

[FSTO]

AOPS aren't warships though; they are civie ships painted grey with some token armament. Similar to MCDVs, they will have lots of uses for operations, but combat won't be one of them.

I have never confused AOPS and MCDVs with actual warships!

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Yep we have to watch out for the red and yellow hoards

they don't play by traditional rules
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3005523/how-swarm-chinese-fishing-vessels-could-swamp-dutertes-effort

 

[Stoker]

they don't play by traditional rules
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3005523/how-swarm-chinese-fishing-vessels-could-swamp-dutertes-effort

I'm sure if AOPS deploys over there we'll be on our guard.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

China is looking at the Arctic and will use similar tactics. They are already pushing Australia around.

https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/military/as-australia-looks-north-chinas-presence-in-the-antarctic-continues-to-grow/news-story/d93aa030c6846e5bfe98f6fdc12f93c9

 

[Stoker]

China is looking at the Arctic and will use similar tactics. They are already pushing Australia around.

https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/military/as-australia-looks-north-chinas-presence-in-the-antarctic-continues-to-grow/news-story/d93aa030c6846e5bfe98f6fdc12f93c9

I say welcome to Canada.

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

Shouldn't this go in the "Defending Canada's Arctic" thread?

 

[MarkOttawa]

Arctic sovereignty hoo-hah:

1) The Cracking of the NPW Compromise: A Sign of a Conflict to Come or Tempest in a Teacup? (I'm with Prof. Exner-Pirot):
https://www.highnorthnews.com/en/sign-conflict-come-or-tempest-teacup

2) Earlier from Prof. Exner-Pirot: How to write an Arctic story in 5 easy steps
https://www.arctictoday.com/write-arctic-story-5-easy-steps/

3) And earlier post of mine: Arctic Tensions Not Really About the Region but Relations With Russia
https://mark3ds.wordpress.com/2015/05/27/mark-collins-arctic-tensions-not-really-about-the-region-but-relations-with-russia/

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Headline rather makes on squirm--Aussies sensibly buying ship from Damen of Netherlands which is building it in Romania:

New Australian Icebreaker Receives Unique Steering System

...The icebreaker will be able to handle:

• waves up to sea state 9 (14 meters (46 feet) plus significant wave height)
• wind speed up to Beaufort 12 (hurricane)
• air temperature ranging from −30° Celsius to 45° Celsius, and
• water temperatures ranging from −2° Celsius to 32° Celsius.

She will have the capability to:

• travel at an efficient cruising speed of 12 knots, with a maximum sustained speed of 16 knots in open water
• break ice at a continuous three knots in ice of 1.65-meter (5.4-foot) thickness
• transfer personnel and cargo from the icebreaker to the stations using a range of means over water, over ice and by air, including the capability to operate and support four light helicopters or two medium helicopters
• handle, stow and transport up to 1,200 tonnes of solid cargo consisting primarily of containers and break bulk cargo, including large items of plant and equipment using the ships own cargo cranes, and
1,900,000 liters of bulk liquid cargo (Special Antarctic Blend diesel used for station operations)
• support voyages for up to 90 days, which includes the ability to remain within the Antarctic area for up to 80 days
• accommodate 117 personnel with modern services including a specialised medical facility, and
ensure a high standard of environmental compliance.

The vessel will be able to sustain multidisciplinary and concurrent science operations, and support numerous sample and data collection systems, including for sea-floor, sea-ice, sea life and atmospheric research. It will have the capability to deploy, operate and with location precision recover a range of equipment and instruments in a range of conditions...

Length overall: 160.3 meters (526 feet)
Maximum beam: 25.6 meters
Maximum draft: 9.3 meters
Displacement: 25,500 tonnes
Icebreaking: 1.65 meters at three knots
Speed: 12 knots economical, 16+ knots maximum
Range: > 16,000 nautical miles
Endurance: 90 days
Cargo fuel capacity: 1,900,000 liters / 1,671 tonnes
Container capacity: 96TEU
Cargo weight: 1,200 tonnes
Passengers: 117
Crew: 32

https://maritime-executive.com/article/new-australian-icebreaker-receives-unique-steering-system

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Back to the Arctic hoo-hah:

Our Dangerous Dog-Sled and Reindeer Gaps!

“Moscow is moving to claim Arctic territory as barriers between Russia and North America melt,” reported The New York Times this weekend[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/12/world/europe/global-warming-russia-arctic-usa.html ]. The paper is referring to icebergs — apparently they are melting, something about “global warming”? — and as they crumble away, why, there’s nothing left to hold back the Red Menace:

    RESOLUTE BAY, Canada — After finishing a training drill on surviving the bitter cold, the soldiers gathered around Ranger Debbie Iqaluk to hear about an inescapable fact of life in the high Arctic: The ice is melting despite the frigid temperatures.

    And that means the Russians are coming.

    Her retelling of how she watched as an enormous iceberg fractured, just a few feet from the military base here, was riveting. It is one thing to be told constantly that the melting polar ice cap has opened up the Arctic, disappearing what used to be an impenetrable barrier between North America and Russia. It is quite another to see it firsthand.

    The iceberg took five years to melt, but by 2018 it was gone, taken over by a sea that with each year is melting earlier in the season. That has brought Russia right to Canada’s doorstep, cutting into the “Fortress North America” concept that has long comforted military planners on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.

    NATO is rushing to try to catch up. Last month, hundreds of troops from member countries and partners, including France, Norway, Finland and Sweden, joined Canadian soldiers, reservists and rangers for the Nanook-Nunalivut exercises that aimed in part to help alliance forces match Russian readiness in extreme-cold climes. (The United States sent observers but no troops this year.)...

But here’s the thing: I wish the reporters, photographers and editors involved in this could have just owned it for what it is: A lark. A travelogue, enjoyed on the government dime.

Instead, they take seriously their duty to sing for their supper. And so we have to hear a bunch of dreary, half-baked nonsense about how the ice wall is falling and the White Walkers in fur hats are on the way.

This area of Canada is so desolate that, to quote the article, “Until Russia appeared on the horizon” (!) the main work underway was “soldiers armed with ancient rifles standing guard against polar bears.”

Until Russia appeared on the horizon? How did they appear there again? Right, right, the icebergs melted — and like Tina Fey channeling Sarah Palin, we could suddenly look across a half-frozen sea, littered with dejected and emaciated polar bears, and see Russia, lookin’ right back at us. Damn them! (Does this really make sense to anyone?)

Slogging forward ever further into absurdity, the article seeks out the Defense Minister of Canada, who “in a telephone interview … made clear that the alliance had no intention of ceding the icy expanse.”

Could this be more vague? What are we not ceding exactly — the ocean? The land? The oil and gas presumably out there? (And how did that telephone interview go anyway? “Defense minister, this is The New York Times! Will you be ceding any of Canada’s icy expanse?”)

Too many questions! Onward! Mush, mush!

The article tells us that Russia is reopening military bases in the Arctic — no details of that offered, hey, it’s just The New York Times, what do you want, facts? Google it!

(So I did, here’s a typically breathless CBS News report from almost exactly two years ago in response to a Kremlin p.r. blitz about a new military base in northern Russia. CBS News takes the bait and raves uncritically about “the unveiling of the country’s crown jewel.” Crown jewel! To me, it looks like an old Holiday Inn in Fargo. But to CBS News in 2017 — in the midst of our Russiagate mass psychogenic illness — it is Russia’s crown jewel, because it provides housing for “150 troops”, some of whom may or may not be riding reindeer — I’m not kidding— and unspecified “war planes.” “For now,” the CBS News reporter concludes, “Russia’s flag seems to be firmly planted on the top of the world.” All this melodrama is for, again, a military base Russia has built on its own territory that houses 150 people, some planes, and plus-minus some reindeer. Fine, whatever, I am ready to eyeroll and move on with my life — but there’s more! “Great reporting! I’m glad we did this!” gushes Nora O’Donnell of CBS This Morning. “This is a future battlefront, the Arctic.” Co-host Charlie Rose chimes in enthusiastically, “That’s exactly what it is! The conflict with Russia is now global, every part of the Earth, including the top and the bottom.”)

And the Earth-encompassing struggle continues. As with CBS News two years ago, so with The New York Times this weekend...[read on--but we have nothing like the number if icebreakers the author says]

Tip of the hat to Bob Gould for the “dog sled gap” joke
https://medium.com/@mattbivens_34439/our-dangerous-dog-sled-and-reindeer-gaps-9e819fbbf278

Mark
Ottawa

 

[suffolkowner]

Mark (and others)

Is there an accepted range on the number of icebreakers and their capabilities that we need?
I count 15 icebreakers although 9 are Polar Class 5 and 3 with Polar Class 3 and 3 with Polar Class 2 (?)

In the pipeline

The 3 Davie refits coming online with a Polar Class of 4 plus 6 AOPS with a Polar Class of 5 and the Diefenbaker with a Polar Class of 2

 

[Colin Parkinson]

As confirmed by a CCG Captain, the Russians have better charts of our arctic than we do. If Russia makes a move on our arctic bit, it will likely be done in concert with China. They will take a bite, using non-military and para-military resources, backed by the military. Bringing it back to this thread, the AOPs are very much a step in the right direction, although you will notice that other nation building similar ships for similar mission choose heavier armament. My guess that the AOPs and their crew will be eventually tossed into a situation where they are the only RCN assets in the area and will not always have aviation support. Now the AOPS supported by RCN nuclear powered subs would be a significant force to contend with. However is not happening, so we are back to an AOP's perhaps with a CCG vessel in support as the first responders to any intrusion, you want to give that Captain and crew all the resources to do that job and enough firepower to ensure that the other side does not feel tempted to push to hard. 

 

[Cloud Cover]

The RCN will never have an SSN fleet.
The AOPs is not a combat ship. There is no plan to have ice capable, combat capable ships for the RCN within the lifetime of anyone who is alive today.
Canada will almost certainly never fight a battle in the arctic or otherwise successfully deter a determined arctic resource claimant.

If we “lose” or cede the arctic, will it make any really noticeable and tangible  difference to people in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal and the south more generally? If the answer is “none”, or nothing that cannot be purchased in a product,  then don’t expect anything serious be done about the arctic.
If the answer is yes, it’s ours!!, nobody can seriously expect the Canadian political and regulatory system to function in a manner that defends it and then enables it to be likely that resources will be extracted from the arctic. There would be significant delay, cost, lawsuits and bungling and bankruptcies.

Canada should be under no illusions here: under Russian and Chinese management, the resources will be both coveted and extracted. There is hardly any reason to doubt this will happen and just about the same amount of inevitability that we won’t stop it, and cannot stop it.

Reality applied. Time for this country to understand its place in the world of now and the future.

 

[MarkOttawa]

Colin P, Cloud Cover: If anyone tried to commit what amounts to territorial aggression against our territory that would involve NATO and, in particular, the US which has its own direct interests and simply would not tolerate such action. There would be a real risk of conflict with the Americans leading to...? Would Russia/China be willing to run that risk for what, for some time, will remain largely quelques arpents de neige?

In any event the Russkies have plenty of glace in, and in a while under, the ocean there to keep them fully occupied without looking elsewhere. The Chinese, for their part, have far more important concerns in the East and South China Seas, the western Pacific generally, and the Indian Ocean.

This fixation on threats to territory in the Arctic is a uniquely and neurotic Canadian obsession based on no serious analysis. The real military problems there relate to its being used as an aerial (and to some extent underwater) pathway for great powers to attack each other--not what's in the region itself.
Mark
Ottawa

 

[Cloud Cover]

That's the problem with the typical Canadian response: our friends will help us.  Good luck with that.
You're right it's a Canadian neurotic thing, and it's probably not worth much fuss.
The US isn't doing much about China and Russia in the Caribbean, don't think they  will be much different in practice up North unless they stake a claim themselves.

 

[Swampbuggy]

All of the above being said, the AOPS could potentially see the 57mm when they’re divested from the CPF’s. Maybe PHALANX or Harpoons too, if the need existed. At that point they’d be as well equipped as any other ice capable surface vessel in terms of firepower. Subsurface would have to be dealt with by the USN or maybe an AIP RCN boat, if the technology keeps improving.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Colin P, Cloud Cover: If anyone tried to commit what amounts to territorial aggression against our territory that would involve NATO and, in particular, the US which has its own direct interests and simply would not tolerate such action. There would be a real risk of conflict with the Americans leading to...? Would Russia/China be willing to run that risk for what, for some time, will remain largely quelques arpents de neige?

In any event the Russkies have plenty of glace in, and in a while under, the ocean there to keep them fully occupied without looking elsewhere. The Chinese, for their part, have far more important concerns in the East and South China Seas, the western Pacific generally, and the Indian Ocean.

This fixation on threats to territory in the Arctic is a uniquely and neurotic Canadian obsession based on no serious analysis. The real military problems there relate to its being used as an aerial (and to some extent underwater) pathway for great powers to attack each other--not what's in the region itself.
Mark
Ottawa

Is a Chinese/Russian/someone else research/weather station planted onto land claimed by Canada such an aggression that our allies are going to help us? We don't use much of our north and people will eventually start chewing on it, likely sooner than anticipated. We are equipping our AOP's for the 1990's mentality, not the 21st century.

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

Can someone, please, move this damn discussion to the Defending Canadian Arctic Sovereignty thread, so we can get back to discussing Shipbuilding Strategy matters as required.

 

[MarkOttawa]

Colin P: Why run any such risk of riling the Eagle when one has much more important fish to freeze? Look at things from the Russian/Chinese perspective. We're not in an "Ice Station Zebra" world, for now. In any event nothing Canada on its own could do could deter any major power if it chose to risk war; that's why we have allies:
http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/66962%7C0/Ice-Station-Zebra.html

Mark
Ottawa

Mark
Ottawa