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.

 

[Furniture]

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.

The CRCN indicated that if we need an MCDV replacement urgently, we could easily acquire them from a commercial supplier. I think he is 100% correct, as the MCDV is essentially an OSV painted grey with a couple of .50 machine guns.

Does the RCN need that sort of platform? 100%. Does it need to be RCN crewed and RCN owned? Maybe...

 

[FJAG]

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.

Does it really need to be autonomous today? Or can it be minimally crewed for the time being with a program to work towards autonomous?

The USN LUSV and MUSV projects have already delivered prototypes which operate in a test fleet with each ship minimally manned for the time being.

Honestly, unmanned or minimally manned, the concept of a hybrid fleet of command and control ships and a flotilla of widely dispersed relatively inexpensive weapons platforms seems like a direction the RCN should pursue with vigour. I'm not sure if we're tied into the USNs USV program, but I think we should be. The old Navy axiom of "don't put all your eggs in one basket" should be in play for any future surface ship.

CRS 2024 Report on LUSV and UUSV to Congress

 

[Stoker]

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.

Can they carry 3 boats, a dive workshop 20 ft ISO, a decompression chamber and a magazine for C4? Not the mention the dive and REMUS team they'll need. So no it it wouldn't be fine for MCM for Canada.

 

[Underway]

Would an AOPS have made it on station to reach the Chinese ships in time?

MAX wasn't available. REGINA was. Its that simple. You're overthinking it. Also bigger guns bigger statement. That might have something to do with it as well.

 

[Stoker]

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….

Don't worry in a few years we'll have armed to the teeth Corvettes stationed along BC's coast to intercept the godless Chinese forces and Russians if they get frisky.

 

[Underway]

The CRCN indicated that if we need an MCDV replacement urgently, we could easily acquire them from a commercial supplier. I think he is 100% correct, as the MCDV is essentially an OSV painted grey with a couple of .50 machine guns.

This is good extra information to go into our discussion, thanks for bringing that up. This indicates to me that the CONOPS for the Corvette is not the MCDV CONOPS at all.

Can they carry 3 boats, a dive workshop 20 ft ISO, a decompression chamber and a magazine for C4? Not the mention the dive and REMUS team they'll need. So no it it wouldn't be fine for MCM for Canada.

But it could be fine in an MCM flotilla where different ships have different capabilities or roles. Doesn't have to all be on a single platform.

 

[Kirkhill]

I don't anticipate that we will ever take chances. We will plan for the traditional and execute traditionally.

We will continue with the plan to build pre-2022 ships in 2045 while tactics and programming are being revised on 96 hour cycles.

All of the AI autonomy has been demonstrated on platforms of various sizes over the last decade or so. Implementation has been delayed because of the peacetime environment, the need to keep civilians safe, and "the good guys" feel they have adequate resources to manage the threat.

The next steps will come from those that don't perceive peace, that aren't overly fussed about civilians and are looking for ways to defeat our adequate resources on their budgets.

I suspect that the Americans are more highly motivated to experiment these days than us.

 

[Stoker]

This is good extra information to go into our discussion, thanks for bringing that up. This indicates to me that the CONOPS for the Corvette is not the MCDV CONOPS at all.

A member of the replacement project is my old CO. CONOPS is used worldwide.

But it could be fine in an MCM flotilla where different ships have different capabilities or roles. Doesn't have to all be on a single platform.

True but that's not the SOP for the NATO MCM group currently where ships are often tasked out independently sometimes over a fair distance. Seems to me a self contained unit is the way to go rather than dragging a bunch of units together in a MDA.

 

[GR66]

While I'm definitely a cheerleader for unmanned systems to take up the slack from what is likely going to be an ongoing manning crisis for the military, I don't see a USV being capable of being a replacement for the MCDV's. There are too many different types of tasks that they do while autonomous systems are best suited for specialized tasks.

There is lots of talk of using USVs as arsenal ships to supplement the firepower of the manned fleet but that's a break-glass-in-case-of-war capability rather than a full-time, multi-purpose capability like we will require in an MCDV replacement. That's a capability that might lend itself to wartime Reserve manning.

Even then, is that a capability that fits in with Canada's military requirements? Do we expect our Navy to take part in major fleet-on-fleet surface actions or massive land attack missions? Personally I doubt it. In a war with Russia I see our main role being the same as during the two Word Wars...protecting shipments of war stocks from North America to supply the conflict in Europe against enemy submarines.

While there are lots of China scenarios wargamed with major naval engagements, frankly I don't see the logic of the USN (and allies) sailing into the teeth of Chinese land-based aircraft and missile systems to slug it out with the PLAN. Better to stay back and impose a naval blockade of China to choke it of the resources it requires to function. The USN with its carriers, surface fleet and subs (as well as land-based assets around the 2nd Island Chain) should be able to handle any sortie by the Chinese outside their land-based air cover. So again, the most likely threat to the allied strategy will likely be enemy submarines.

I don't think either of these scenarios call for something like an unmanned/minimally manned arsenal ship. To me they best place to put our money in unmanned systems is detection systems in mass. Smaller UUV's and USV's that can work in conjunction with the rest of the allied fleet to expand the detection net and are expendable.

 

[Pelorus]

Does it really need to be autonomous today? Or can it be minimally crewed for the time being with a program to work towards autonomous?

The USN LUSV and MUSV projects have already delivered prototypes which operate in a test fleet with each ship minimally manned for the time being.

Honestly, unmanned or minimally manned, the concept of a hybrid fleet of command and control ships and a flotilla of widely dispersed relatively inexpensive weapons platforms seems like a direction the RCN should pursue with vigour. I'm not sure if we're tied into the USNs USV program, but I think we should be. The old Navy axiom of "don't put all your eggs in one basket" should be in play for any future surface ship.

CRS 2024 Report on LUSV and UUSV to Congress

My intention is not to be pessimistic about the concept overall, as I think it's definitely the future, but rather simply to be realistic about the current state of things and the likely timeline as it relates to our own procurement programs.

Some quotes from the report that I think are pertinent:

Navy UVs in General
An April 2022 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on uncrewed maritime systems (i.e., Navy UVs) stated:

While the Navy’s shipbuilding plan outlines spending more than $4 billion on uncrewed systems over the next 5 years, its plan does not account for the full costs to develop and operate these systems.

Once conceived, the Navy must build these vehicles with the information technology and the artificial intelligence capabilities needed to replace crews. While the Navy has established strategic objectives for these efforts, it has not established a management approach that orients its individual uncrewed maritime efforts toward achieving these objectives. As such, the Navy is not measuring its progress, such as building the robust information technology needed to operate the vehicles. GAO has previously found that portfolio management—a disciplined process that ensures new investments are aligned with an organization’s strategic needs within available resources—enables agencies to implement strategic objectives and manage investments collectively. However, if it continues with its current approach, the Navy is less likely to achieve its objectives. In addition, the Navy has yet to:

• establish criteria to evaluate prototypes and
• develop improved schedules for prototype efforts.

With detailed planning, prototyping has the potential to further technology development
and reduce acquisition risk before the Navy makes significant investments. Since uncrewed systems are key to the Navy’s future, optimizing the prototyping phase of this effort is necessary to efficiently gaining information to support future decisions.

It's been a couple years since I've seen the Sea Hunter USV at sea, so I'm sure things have progressed somewhat, but it was very clearly a prototype being closely monitored/controlled by a shore-based control station and being babysat by a crewed support vessel nearby in case something went wrong.

From everything I've seen to date, minimally crewed really just means less capable or the humans required to be part of the decision-making process are located ashore or on a different vessel and working remotely, and maintenance is deferred until it can return to shore and be serviced by humans.

When we hear that the USN are ready to award a contract for a production line of USVs or UUVs, that's a great time to have an independent and critical look at the state of the technology, the CONOPs for the system, and decide then if those things make it a good purchase to achieve an effect that we're looking for.

 

[Pelorus]

All of the AI autonomy has been demonstrated on platforms of various sizes over the last decade or so.

Are you sure about this? While I don't spend nearly as much time reading technology articles as you, I don't recall seeing concrete examples of autonomy (outside perhaps test cases in controlled environments with limited variables) for the following basic list of autonomous warship requirements that I've brainstormed just now:

• Multi-ship contact avoidance, or contact avoidance in pilotage or navigationally constrained waters;
• Proper sensor fusion that can reliably identify and assess surface, air, and subsurface contacts against incomplete, erroneous, or spoofed data;
• Navigation execution that proactively considers environmentals (wind, currents, etc.) to avoid hazards in pilotage areas;
• Navigation planning that considers hazards, shipping density, threat areas, and local regulations (environmental, traffic schemes, pilot boarding stations, etc);
• Decision-making during navigation, to include changes to routing and speed, and subsequent fuel economy based off of a change to mission or other external factor;
• Planning and executing anchoring, mooring, berthing, or slipping in a variety of environmental conditions
• Launching or recovering boats, aircraft, or other small payloads in challenging environmental conditions, and storing them in a way that protects them from the environment and allows them to be maintained and redeployed at an unspecified future date;
• Conducting any sort of corrective maintenance on mechanical or electronic systems, or embarked sub-systems or payloads;
• Battle damage assessment and response;
• Force protection that doesn't result in smoking every oblivious fishing boat or dockyard worker that gets too close;
• Tactics execution in any sort of multi-threat environment that requires prioritization of multiple threat axis;
• Execution of a mission in a completely denied GPS and comms environment;
• Etc.

Again, automation is the future, and shows promise in the near future with small, disposable payloads like UASs, suicide USVs, UUVs designed for specific discrete tasks, etc. But this is the Canadian Shipbuilding Strategy thread, and any discussion of automation or "AI" being ready in the 2020s to be seriously considered as a replacement for an MCDV or other crewed vessel is complete sci-fi fantasy.

 

[Czech_pivo]

Don't worry in a few years we'll have armed to the teeth Corvettes stationed along BC's coast to intercept the godless Chinese forces and Russians if they get frisky.

Final someone speaking my language, lol.

 

[Kirkhill]

Are you sure about this? While I don't spend nearly as much time reading technology articles as you, I don't recall seeing concrete examples of autonomy (outside perhaps test cases in controlled environments with limited variables) for the following basic list of autonomous warship requirements that I've brainstormed just now:

• Multi-ship contact avoidance, or contact avoidance in pilotage or navigationally constrained waters;
• Proper sensor fusion that can reliably identify and assess surface, air, and subsurface contacts against incomplete, erroneous, or spoofed data;
• Navigation execution that proactively considers environmentals (wind, currents, etc.) to avoid hazards in pilotage areas;
• Navigation planning that considers hazards, shipping density, threat areas, and local regulations (environmental, traffic schemes, pilot boarding stations, etc);
• Decision-making during navigation, to include changes to routing and speed, and subsequent fuel economy based off of a change to mission or other external factor;
• Planning and executing anchoring, mooring, berthing, or slipping in a variety of environmental conditions
• Launching or recovering boats, aircraft, or other small payloads in challenging environmental conditions, and storing them in a way that protects them from the environment and allows them to be maintained and redeployed at an unspecified future date;
• Conducting any sort of corrective maintenance on mechanical or electronic systems, or embarked sub-systems or payloads;
• Battle damage assessment and response;
• Force protection that doesn't result in smoking every oblivious fishing boat or dockyard worker that gets too close;
• Tactics execution in any sort of multi-threat environment that requires prioritization of multiple threat axis;
• Execution of a mission in a completely denied GPS and comms environment;
• Etc.

Again, automation is the future, and shows promise in the near future with small, disposable payloads like UASs, suicide USVs, UUVs designed for specific discrete tasks, etc. But this is the Canadian Shipbuilding Strategy thread, and any discussion of automation or "AI" being ready in the 2020s to be seriously considered as a replacement for an MCDV or other crewed vessel is complete sci-fi fantasy.

We may have different test standards. My standards are fairly low. I don't require that the bear dances well, only that the bear dances.

Also, definitions of AI may vary. I don't require full autonomy. Enhancements that take the load off the operator, aboard the platform or remote or even pre-programmed, I consider all to be advancements.

I am not looking at a laser firing Zumwalt sailing and fighting autonomously as a goal.

We have taxis and ferries operating autonomously in harbours with offboard supervision. We have vessels like the LUSVs and the EPFs (Apalachicola) being sailed for longer and shorter durations with hand offs to different supervisors, on and off board.

Depending on the degree of autonomy the vessel can be crewed, remotely crewed, functioning on auto-pilot, semi-autonomous or fully autonomous.

My sense of the current state of play is that if EPFs were to be docked, uncrewed in Manila or Singapore, they could be despatched on a point to point mission with load of TEU-40s on the deck following the same protocols as the Mariner and Nomad on RIMPAC and the Apalachicola trials.

Would there be a risk that would be unacceptable in peace time? No doubt. Would that same risk be unacceptable in the Spratlies under different circumstances?

Autonomous shipping

www.imo.org

The degrees of autonomy identified for the purpose of the scoping exercise were:

• Degree one: Ship with automated processes and decision support. Seafarers are on board to operate and control shipboard systems and functions. Some operations may be automated and at times be unsupervised but with seafarers on board ready to take control.
• Degree two: Remotely controlled ship with seafarers on board. The ship is controlled and operated from another location. Seafarers are available on board to take control and to operate the shipboard systems and functions.
• Degree three: Remotely controlled ship without seafarers on board: The ship is controlled and operated from another location. There are no seafarers on board.
• Degree four: Fully autonomous ship: The operating system of the ship is able to make decisions and determine actions by itself.

...

My sense is that the technology is in place to sail vessels autonomously if civil risk can be managed appropriately. And I think the likelihood of ships of that type sailing in the next 96 hour development cycle is quite high. Somebody is going to be doing that long before our last CSC hits the water for its first time in 2045.

We may not want to sail a 26,000 tonne JSS/AOR autonomously, or even an 8,000 tonne CSC but 10 tonne satellites from a 1000 tonne MCDV or even a 1000 tonne OSV on its own, those I could see.

....

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www.yara.com

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