- Reaction score
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I don't think AOPs is going to do anything with only a 25mm gun, no self defence capabilities (or even monitoring), and a ship not built or crewed for anything other than getting from A to B.Only the Russians have "real Ice breakers" The AOP's is roughly the equivalent of the CCG 1100 class light icebreaker. In fact because they are new they might be better than the much older 1100's now. The government is not buying nuke subs, so you get AOP's, which I think are decent stepping stones to more Northern capabilities and need to be part of a whole of government approach to the North, along with dragging the Army and RCAF into the game as well.
People have laughed at my suggestion that the Chinese/Russians could land a "scientific expedition for the benefit of mankind", lets say Mould Bay and declare it as part of a international land owned by no one and that our claim is not legal. Exactly what are we going to do in that case? The Russians can resupply it with their nuclear ice breakers when all of ours are in the South and since they are "civilian ships" are we (US and Canada) ready to sink them? Eventually we would have to land troops and push them out, with a Oka style standoff. The AOP's gives us a limited abilty to do that, with the helo deck and small landing craft.
It's still not helo capable and will need some fixes to the design first.
At best it would clear a path for a CPF (assuming we have enough people to get two ships off the wall up north anyway). But at that point ships alone won't do much, and would take them weeks to get there anyway.
Really not a cost effective thing to do if that's our goal; remote monitoring, planes, some long distance missile batteries or some other combo would do a better job.