[Newsbot]

Title: Canada navy ship stopped in Hawaii after taking on water
Category: Military
Posted By: DrCaleb
Date: 2024-07-23 19:47:26
Canadian

[DrCaleb]

Wait, an icebreaker in Hawaii?

[bootlegga]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

Wait, an icebreaker in Hawaii?

Technically, it is an AOPS - Arctic and Offshore Patrol Vessel.

https://www.canada.ca/en/department-nat ... ships.html

These vessels are the so-called 'slushbreakers' Harper ordered after finding out how much real icebreakers cost. So instead of getting good offshore patrol vessels and icebreakers, we got a ship that struggles to do either task well.

To top it off, they cost about five times more per ship than the Norwegian and Danish vessels they are modelled after. These vessels also highlight how inept Irving Shipbuilding is, and why we would probably be better off getting South Korea or Finland to build our new River Class destroyers.

[DrCaleb]

I don't know why we don't subcontract more of our stuff. Turns out we don't have any good small arms manufacturers anymore, because we didn't buy enough of their stuff.

US Nuclear subs look so much better than whatever we have now.

I heard a stat that if the UK had used the big passenger ships to ferry troops to Europe in WWII, the country would have used all the coal they had in only a few months. Why do we still use diesel electric subs when we export nuclear technology worldwide?

Economics should trump our false pride for driving so many industries out of the country. If another country can make widgets cheaper than we can, let them. Put our people to work on things we can do better.

[bootlegga]

According to the feds, we're looking at up to 12 new subs for the RCN, but if we go nuclear, it will shrink to maybe 4 boats, because nuke subs are far more expensive, both to buy and operate. And then we'd only have three options - US, UK or France. USN Virginia boats are almost $5 billion each, so that puts them well out of our price range, and the UK boats would need US to agree to a tech transfer, which they were very reluctant to do back in the 1980s.

OTOH, the South Koreans and Japanese are building great AIP subs that are affordable and very deadly, while the Germans and Swedes are also producing great subs that would fit with our needs.

On the shipbuilding front, we only do it in Canada is to buy votes, and what's worse, it's slowing down our ability to re-equip the RCN, because so few shipyards in Canada can build the larger ships the RCN and Coast Guard need.

New Zealand recently had a new AOR (supply ship) built in South Korea for less than half the cost of the Protecteur class ships being built in Vancouver, and in less time too. But as long as it gets votes, I doubt we'll ever see the end of pork barrel politics in Canada.

[DrCaleb]

I think the US will start softening on the tech aspect. The SMR we will be using for civilian power generation is basically the same thing as the reactor used in subs.

And we have enough trouble servicing our fleet now, having to refit container ships as refuellers. Nuclear solves that problem. Plus AUS and NZ are in on a tech sharing deal with the UK and US for nuke boats. Lets get on that train. Trudeau is also under pressure to spend.

South Korea, Italy and Sweden call all build ships better, faster and cheaper than Irving. Fuck those guys. Get the pros to build our stuff. It's the software that matters nowadays. Hardware is just lego now.