New Canadian Shipbuilding Strategy

[JMCanada]

6+6 or even 6+8 would be nice to replace the MCDVs.
6 light frigates capable not only for coastal defence but also to be deployed to NATO drills, combat piracy or sail along the RCDs. With some AAW defense (at least point defense), helo and hangar.
Plus 6-8 OPVs with low crew requirements, similar to the Vigilance, with MCM capabilities (using USV/UUV), and a working deck which might accommodate three to six 40 ton containers to even act like a small-crewed arsenal vessel.

 

[suffolkowner]

I think any larger surface ship the Navy gets should have a VLS for BMD missiles. A Layered system is the best defence against todays and future threats.
With the River Class getting the SPY 7 Radar and having the A-OTHR system in place on land plus the SPY on the east coast. . I think having ships with the capability to be part of the BMD defence layer makes sense. Should form a critical part of the system. The Corvettes don't need to have a fancy radar, just be linked to the other detection systems for launch.

There is a lot involved in the BMD mission. It is not simply a matter of slapping SM-3 cans into strike length VLS. There is a whole radar calibration exercise that will make your eyes water, plus the training a certification bill for the crew is lengthy and persihable.

whats the deal with BMD and ships? Is it about intercepting the missiles in a specific part of the flight path?

 

[SeaKingTacco]

whats the deal with BMD and ships? Is it about intercepting the missiles in a specific part of the flight path?

Obviously, I have no first hand experience, but apparently it is harder than it looks. That was relayed to me by people who have done it.

 

[GR66]

There is a lot involved in the BMD mission. It is not simply a matter of slapping SM-3 cans into strike length VLS. There is a whole radar calibration exercise that will make your eyes water, plus the training a certification bill for the crew is lengthy and persihable.

My understanding is that the "successful" SM-3 BMD intercepts have all been done with freshly calibrated radars operated primarily by contractor staff in ideal weather conditions against non-maneuvering target missiles and no decoy systems.

Intercepting real ICBMs in a realistic scenario with ships in standard readiness is likely to have a pretty low success rate. Frankly having a dozen CDC's with a handful of SM-3's is unlikely to have any significant impact in the face of a full-scale nuclear attack by Russia and/or China which could see thousands of maneuvering re-entry vehicles and accompanying decoys.

Perhaps they might be effective against a smaller scale attack by say North Korea or Iran, but I have trouble envisioning a scenario where either of those countries would waste their limited nuclear arsenals against Canada.

All of that to say that I don't think that BMD should be focused on as a primary capability for the CDC. The time, effort and money would be better spent on other capabilities in my opinion.

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

Everything about intercepting a long range missile in a ballistic trajectory is harder than it looks. It is the proverbial "trying to shoot down a small caliber bullet with an even smaller caliber one".

Think about it this way: It takes months for NASA to calculate even fractionally small corrections of course for the ISS, any satellites or probes. Now you want to calculate the exact course of a ballistic missiles with only minutes of times and limited original info, then calculate the very precise and exact intercept course of your own ballistic smaller missile.

 

[Czech_pivo]

Everything about intercepting a long range missile in a ballistic trajectory is harder than it looks. It is the proverbial "trying to shoot down a small caliber bullet with an even smaller caliber one".

Think about it this way: It takes months for NASA to calculate even fractionally small corrections of course for the ISS, any satellites or probes. Now you want to calculate the exact course of a ballistic missiles with only minutes of times and limited original info, then calculate the very precise and exact intercept course of your own ballistic smaller missile.

Maybe this is an area that AI will enhance, improve or even take over in the future.

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

I doubt it.

The math is known and unless someone comes up with something better than special relativity, the only thing that can enhance this area is better sensors to more quickly and more accurately detect, classify and track the target and more parallel computing power (not smarter computers) to calculate track and intercept faster and more accurately. All of these things are known already and thus, no improvement from AI would occur.

 

[Czech_pivo]

I doubt it.

The math is known and unless someone comes up with something better than special relativity, the only thing that can enhance this area is better sensors to more quickly and more accurately detect, classify and track the target and more parallel computing power (not smarter computers) to calculate track and intercept faster and more accurately. All of these things are known already and thus, no improvement from AI would occur.

AI would be used to expand the current realm of computer power, chips, sensors - not necessarily the math.

 

[SeaKingTacco]

AI would be used to expand the current realm of computer power, chips, sensors - not necessarily the math.

That is a meaningless sentence.

How?

 

[Czech_pivo]

That is a meaningless sentence.

How?

AI used to expand/improve the ability to create faster sensors, chips, computer power.

AI Chips: What They Are and Why They Matter | Center for Security and Emerging Technology

The success of modern AI techniques relies on computation on a scale unimaginable even a few years ago. What exactly are the AI chips powering the development and deployment of AI at scale and why are they essential? Saif M. Khan and Alexander Mann explain how these chips work, why they have...

cset.georgetown.edu

 

[GR66]

I doubt it.

The math is known and unless someone comes up with something better than special relativity, the only thing that can enhance this area is better sensors to more quickly and more accurately detect, classify and track the target and more parallel computing power (not smarter computers) to calculate track and intercept faster and more accurately. All of these things are known already and thus, no improvement from AI would occur.

And this is to track and intercept a single incoming missile. Now figure in thousands of incoming missiles along with decoys and multiple AD launchers of various BMD capabilities spread across the continent and the surrounding maritime domain (and Space if Golden Dome goes forward as planned) all needing to be coordinated in the same few minutes.

As Reagan found out with Star Wars, a comprehensive BMD system is a quick way to bankrupt a country and is unlikely to be effective enough to reliably defend your cities in any case.

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

Anti-Ballistic Missile defense systems have been around almost as long as ballistic missiles have.

So much so that the first "arms limitation" treaty between the US and the USSR was the ABM Treaty, which limited each side to protecting only one site in their country (the USSR chose Moscow, the US chose North Dakota, to protect the Air Force part of the "triad" at Grand Forks AFB). They did not reach that agreement from the kindness of their heart, but because both sides realized such system at the scale required to protect the whole country would quite simply bankrupt both of them.

Reagan's "Star War" project at least put a lot of money into fundamental physics and chemistry research for the most part and didn't go much further than that into practical application before being caned as the Cold War ended.

 

[Dana381]

Everything about intercepting a long range missile in a ballistic trajectory is harder than it looks. It is the proverbial "trying to shoot down a small caliber bullet with an even smaller caliber one".

Think about it this way: It takes months for NASA to calculate even fractionally small corrections of course for the ISS, any satellites or probes. Now you want to calculate the exact course of a ballistic missiles with only minutes of times and limited original info, then calculate the very precise and exact intercept course of your own ballistic smaller missile.

The Iron dome has been doing this for years, I have no idea how they do it but there system even has time to determine appx where the rocket will land and determine if sending an intercept is prudent. I imagine the iron dome has even less time to make its calculations as it intercepts mainly short range rockets.

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

as it intercepts mainly short range rockets.

Exactly: Short range, thus not going into space, not traveling at the huge velocities of space using ICBM and detectable right from the moment of being fired. Also, going into an area about the size of P.E.I. In fact, those missiles don't even reach what is considered "hypersonic" speeds, whereof ICBM's are way past such speeds. The Iron Dome is just a local air defense system expanded to be made into an area one - not even a theatre one.

 

[Navy_Pete]

AI used to expand/improve the ability to create faster sensors, chips, computer power.

AI Chips: What They Are and Why They Matter | Center for Security and Emerging Technology

The success of modern AI techniques relies on computation on a scale unimaginable even a few years ago. What exactly are the AI chips powering the development and deployment of AI at scale and why are they essential? Saif M. Khan and Alexander Mann explain how these chips work, why they have...

cset.georgetown.edu

That article seemed to be about tailoring chips specifically to optimize them for use with AI, noting it has an ungodly computational demand and runs in at $100M a month.

That's doesn't mean they are necessarily better at general computing, just that they've been tailored to make them better at the kind of processing AI is using, because the scale of it makes sense to do that (same as people set up bitcoin mining machines, and there are different computer setups for office use, gaming, networking, etc).

Computer power isn't the limiting factor in targeting even 'basic' missiles with a straight arc from point to target, it's the accuracy of the sensors and the difference a 0.01 degree error on heading or a 1 m error on height/range will give on figuring out the target when you are talking about something running 1000s of kilometers. That's ignoring the fact that it's pretty straight forward to also alter the track and program routes or have flight paths, and you don't have to change it much to make a hit a big miss when you are talking about trying to anticipate where something is going to be that far ahead of time.

Even at relatively short range more advanced missiles will do all kinds of changes to the pattern to make it hard to get a hard kill, and it's not like you can do the same with a city. And even if you do get a hard kill you can still have tonnes of hyper or super sonic debris coming your way.

Now add in loitering munitions, guided artillery, drones etc it's getting easier to kill people faster than it's we're developing effective countermeasures, and usually much more expensive to defend as well.

 

[Czech_pivo]

That article seemed to be about tailoring chips specifically to optimize them for use with AI, noting it has an ungodly computational demand and runs in at $100M a month.

That's doesn't mean they are necessarily better at general computing, just that they've been tailored to make them better at the kind of processing AI is using, because the scale of it makes sense to do that (same as people set up bitcoin mining machines, and there are different computer setups for office use, gaming, networking, etc).

Computer power isn't the limiting factor in targeting even 'basic' missiles with a straight arc from point to target, it's the accuracy of the sensors and the difference a 0.01 degree error on heading or a 1 m error on height/range will give on figuring out the target when you are talking about something running 1000s of kilometers. That's ignoring the fact that it's pretty straight forward to also alter the track and program routes or have flight paths, and you don't have to change it much to make a hit a big miss when you are talking about trying to anticipate where something is going to be that far ahead of time.

Even at relatively short range more advanced missiles will do all kinds of changes to the pattern to make it hard to get a hard kill, and it's not like you can do the same with a city. And even if you do get a hard kill you can still have tonnes of hyper or super sonic debris coming your way.

Now add in loitering munitions, guided artillery, drones etc it's getting easier to kill people faster than it's we're developing effective countermeasures, and usually much more expensive to defend as well.

I found this section below (from the article), of interest and thought that this was where the use of AI could allow for more calculations to occur in a shorter timeframe using less transistors to do so.


AI chips also have other, AI-optimized design features. These features dramatically accelerate the identical, predictable, independent calculations required by AI algorithms. They include executing a large number of calculations in parallel rather than sequentially, as in CPUs; calculating numbers with low precision in a way that successfully implements AI algorithms but reduces the number of transistors needed for the same calculation; speeding up memory access by, for example, storing an entire AI algorithm in a single AI chip; and using programming languages built specifically to efficiently translate AI computer code for execution on an AI chip. (Section V and Appendix B.)