New Canadian Shipbuilding Strategy

[Furniture]

Would an AOPS have made it on station to reach the Chinese ships in time?
Did REG go to that location at a speed greater than the max speed of an AOPS?
The 9-10 knot advantage that REG has over an AOPS warrants the case to send it over an AOPS. What if the Chinese ships had increased their own speed to 21 knots, making it impossible for an AOPS to ever close the gap, then what? Then someone is caught with the pants around their ankles….

Well, as a guy that was on the AOPV that might have been tasked, I can assure you speed was not a consideration. The factors that lead to REG being chosen aren't for me to disclose on these means, but it was not speed.

While ships may sprint at high speeds, to get to the arctic, you need to cruise at speed the AOPVs are more than capable of achieving.

 

[Pelorus]

I would say that issue 1 is that autonomy is not nearly as far along as technology-focused news websites or company press releases would lead you to believe. Look at the major international shipping companies, who would love nothing more than to go autonomous and stop having to pay crews. None of them have really made it past proofs of concept or limited testing.

Issue 2 is that the marine environment is unforgiving. Salt and humidity gets everywhere and corrodes things quickly. In my experience, when a maritime helicopter is stranded on a frigate-height flight deck, the Air Det starts to become pretty concerned about corrosion after roughly 48 hours.

In addition to salt and moisture, motion from sea state causes shipboard connections to become loose, machinery to wear, etc. I can't see any surface vessel designed for extended operations lasting too long without a consistent maintenance routine. Small boat ops in any sort of sea state can be hazardous, so no guarantee you can send over maintainers, tools, parts, etc in a timely manner when something breaks.

As soon as your permanent crew complement is greater than 0, you need space dedicated for humans to eat, sleep, poop, shower, etc. Once you make that concession, the difference between minimally crewed and moderately crewed is somewhat irrelevant.

Automation is the future, but IMO not nearly as soon as some would lead you to believe. Looking at MCDV-sized USVs to replace the MCDVs is way too premature. The CAF cannot afford to be a technology leader at this scale. Let our allies forge the path, and Canada can hopefully provide support and expertise on portions of a larger project, but we shouldn't be seriously looking at unscrewed systems until someone else has figured it out and we can come close to a MOTS purchase.

 

[Rainbow1910]

I understand your misgivings. Given the current situation they are completely valid. However I will counter that strategic naval policy is strategic build policy. And build policy is looking into the future, assessing needs and trying to get them.

We know the MCDV concept of operations or CONOPS (training, patrol, route survey, minehunting, support to other gov't dept). We know that AOPS/Orca's can do some of those, others can be done by any ship. There are also missions that MCDV's were purchased to do that no longer exist (minesweeping, gate vessel...).

The missing information here is the Corvette CONOPS. What is the requirement? Is there something new, or something that isn't required anymore. Cost and crewing are important but if the current MCDV can't provide the capability needed anymore then that criteria needs to be re-examined.

Just thinking here... perhaps its to perform a MCM mission in a contested naval environment (given UXV's could be anywhere)? A battlesweeper. Park itself, use UXV's to do MCM and also defend itself from shore based anti ship missiles and drones of the floating and hovering type. What about the return to the torpedo boat destroyer concept with a UXV destroyer instead? You don't need a huge ship to screen drones out. Perhaps both of these are concerns in the CONOPS where a direct one to one replacement of the MCDV just won't cut it.

That would require a corvette size vessel that goes 25-28kts with a modular payload capability, improved sensors and tailored weapons package.

I understand evaluating a capability you might want and moving towards that, my concern is that we will lose what made the MCDV's great vessels alongside what they brought to the table in the process. Some of the MCDV's missions can be offloaded to other ships but at the same time, these ships have their own problems of being busy with other duties, well worn or otherwise not entirely suited for the roles at hand. If we want to bring in entirely different ships, that is additional funds/manpower required to charter civilian ships or buy/convert them for military operations. More sword is usually a good thing but if it comes at the expense of our more mundane peacetime requirements, I am unsure it is worthwhile.

Not having an idea of the CONOPS is a problem however, even the brain storming I can manage doesn't give me many great options. If you want something that can operate in a contested environment against drones and anti-ship missiles, you need a suitable radar suite, electronic warfare suite, decoys, proper main gun, remote weapon stations, a potent enough missile battery and some level of redundancy as a proper "warship". If you want to use this overseas, you are going to need a sufficiently large hull to have good seakeeping, reasonable speed and the endurance to get to where it has to be used. If you want to use this to screen the CSC, they will have to reasonably be able to keep up with them in the deployments required with raw speed, endurance and seakeeping. Requirements go up even more if they want something to also act as a missile magazine for the CSC as well.

If you want to be a meaningful MCM platform, you need to be have your own crane system and a multi-mission capable deck/boat launching system to sit and handle all of this equipment. You also need the space aboard to command and control all of these unmanned systems in conjunction with the combat management this vessel has to undertake for itself. You'll likely be looking at atleast a drone capable flight deck and hanger, but god forbid they try and cram a proper helicopter and hanger into this thing as well.

I don't need to tell you of all people but all of these additions bring with them additional complexity, upkeep, personnel and cost requirements. All of this has to go somewhere and being crammed into a cramped little corvette has some poor implications, so they'll likely go for a larger hull. All of this design bloat and role creep can serve to absolutely destroy this program, as it has done to many others. Going from there, it sounds like we very much could have the CMMC program spit out a requirement for a vessel like the Type 31 class frigate. The closer we get to a proper frigate, the more concerned I would be that the CSC class will begin to disappear and these will take their place as cheaper "good enough" alternatives if a government wants austerity in the future.

 

[Kirkhill]

To those that would say it is too early I would respond that that depends on how great the need is and how much risk results from nt acting. If you don't have a ship and crew maybe a roboship from mothballs looks appealing. Talk to the Ukrainians.

Wrt CCG hulls being reassigned to RCN(R) crews I would point out that they are government hulls, not CCG hulls. If the government decides those hulls can be put to better use they will be put to better use. Likewise with civilian hulls, they can be expropriated for the duration.

 

[Furniture]

If you don't have a ship and crew maybe a roboship from mothballs looks appealing. Talk to the Ukrainians.

The Ukrainians are fighting in a salt water great lake. They are doing interesting things, but they are in a littoral environment, that does not allow naval reinforcement.

We cannot plan our navy around fighting in Lake Superior against the Russians.

 

[Pelorus]

To those that would say it is too early I would respond that that depends on how great the need is and how much risk results from nt acting. If you don't have a ship and crew maybe a roboship from mothballs looks appealing. Talk to the Ukrainians.

Talk to the Ukrainians about what? Their remote-controlled suicide USVs and UASs? From what I've seen, the closest they've come to "autonomy" is software algorithms that let their drone follow a set of preprogrammed instructions to complete their mission upon jamming or loss of the command signal. Certainly useful, but it's not going to change the world.

I'm impressed with what they've achieved (even with the major factor of Western backing), but this is not even remotely the same scope of what we're discussing in a thread about the NSS.

Nobody in this world has unlimited resources. Need or risk of not acting is counterbalanced by the risk of putting too many of your eggs in a theoretical basket, and having the bottom fall out when you need it the most.

To bring it back to a naval comparison, if the Zumwalt-class and LCSs had lived up to their hype it would have been revolutionary for the USN's surface fleet. Imagine if the Americans had stopped building the Arleigh Burke-class and converted those yards to make more Zumwalts, because the risk of not acting on rail gun technology was too great? They'd be hooped right now.

The evolution of a technology from theory to lab experiment, prototyping, field testing, initial manufacture, deployment, etc. is an interesting one that people way smarter than me spend a lot of time working on. I don't know when we're going to see the first mass production of an autonomous ship, but I'm confident it will be well after the time we need new ships for the RCN to replace the current fleet.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

I understand evaluating a capability you might want and moving towards that, my concern is that we will lose what made the MCDV's great vessels alongside what they brought to the table in the process. Some of the MCDV's missions can be offloaded to other ships but at the same time, these ships have their own problems of being busy with other duties, well worn or otherwise not entirely suited for the roles at hand. If we want to bring in entirely different ships, that is additional funds/manpower required to charter civilian ships or buy/convert them for military operations. More sword is usually a good thing but if it comes at the expense of our more mundane peacetime requirements, I am unsure it is worthwhile.

Not having an idea of the CONOPS is a problem however, even the brain storming I can manage doesn't give me many great options. If you want something that can operate in a contested environment against drones and anti-ship missiles, you need a suitable radar suite, electronic warfare suite, decoys, proper main gun, remote weapon stations, a potent enough missile battery and some level of redundancy as a proper "warship". If you want to use this overseas, you are going to need a sufficiently large hull to have good seakeeping, reasonable speed and the endurance to get to where it has to be used. If you want to use this to screen the CSC, they will have to reasonably be able to keep up with them in the deployments required with raw speed, endurance and seakeeping. Requirements go up even more if they want something to also act as a missile magazine for the CSC as well.

If you want to be a meaningful MCM platform, you need to be have your own crane system and a multi-mission capable deck/boat launching system to sit and handle all of this equipment. You also need the space aboard to command and control all of these unmanned systems in conjunction with the combat management this vessel has to undertake for itself. You'll likely be looking at atleast a drone capable flight deck and hanger, but god forbid they try and cram a proper helicopter and hanger into this thing as well.

I don't need to tell you of all people but all of these additions bring with them additional complexity, upkeep, personnel and cost requirements. All of this has to go somewhere and being crammed into a cramped little corvette has some poor implications, so they'll likely go for a larger hull. All of this design bloat and role creep can serve to absolutely destroy this program, as it has done to many others. Going from there, it sounds like we very much could have the CMMC program spit out a requirement for a vessel like the Type 31 class frigate. The closer we get to a proper frigate, the more concerned I would be that the CSC class will begin to disappear and these will take their place as cheaper "good enough" alternatives if a government wants austerity in the future.

This was a very busy boat on our coast repairing docks, nav aids and research. For ups to 20 miles off the coast they be fine for MCM and route Survey most of the time.