A Canadian shipyard has cut the first steel for a new class of missile-armed destroyer for the Royal Canadian Navy. The 15 planned River-class warships should massively boost the Canadian fleet’s surface firepower – although not very soon.
But the new destroyers won’t do anything to solve what is arguably the Canadian navy’s biggest problem – its almost complete lack of submarines.
The 500-foot Rivers, which are a variation on the Royal Navy’s now-building Type 26 frigates, are the first new Canadian surface combatants in nearly 30 years. They will replace a dozen existing Halifax-class frigates as well as four Iroquois-class destroyers the Canadians decommissioned years ago without replacement at the time.
The Canadian government is spending $44 billion to build and support the 15 destroyers.
The Canadian navy is divided into two regional fleets – one each for the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. The current frigates – seven of them – are concentrated in the Atlantic fleet. There’s no reason to believe Ottawa won’t divide its new destroyers in similar proportions, with most of them sailing from Atlantic ports.
In other words, the destroyers will mostly be oriented toward European threats – that is to say, Russia. They’re heavily armed for the mission, with 24 Mk 41 vertical cells for different long-range missiles, eight launchers for anti-ship missiles (the Kongsberg Naval Strike Missile) and self-defense weapons including guns and short-range air-defense missile launchers.
Notably, the Mark 41 missile cells are “strike length.” That is, they extend deep enough into the Rivers’ steel hulls to accommodate the biggest American-made missiles, including Tomahawk land-attack missiles that range as far as a thousand miles.
The Canadian navy doesn’t currently have Tomahawks, but aside from the $2-million-per-missile cost, it wouldn’t be hard for to acquire them. The Royal Navy plans to arm its eight Type 26s with Tomahawks.
The Rivers will still possess some long-range land-attack capability, however. Their eight Naval Strike Missiles can hit ships at sea and targets on shore out to a distance of 100 miles.
Still, the new destroyers will primarily be air-defense and anti-submarine platforms, firing SM-2 missiles to intercept enemy aircraft, drones and missiles from as far away as a hundred miles and launching torpedo-armed Cyclone helicopters to hunt enemy submarines.
If only they could come quicker. The government in Ottawa isn’t in any particular hurry to get the Rivers to the fleet, despite the advanced age of the Halifax frigates. The first new destroyer won’t be commissioned for another six years. The 15th and last will be commissioned some time in the 2040s.
But at least Canada’s leaders are displaying more urgency with their surface fleet than they are with their rusty undersea fleet. The Canadian navy operates four 230-foot diesel-electric submarines: one with the Atlantic fleet and three with the Pacific fleet.
The Victoria-class subs, which Canada acquired secondhand from the United Kingdom, are old and unreliable. They were originally built for the Royal Navy in the 1980s, but weren’t found to be worth having and Britain decommissioned them in the early 90s. They then rusted for a decade before Canada took them on in the 2000s. According to the Canadian National Post, the four subs spent a combined 214 days in the water in a recent four-year period. Worse, two of the vessels didn’t sail even a single day during those four years.
It’s good news for the Canadian navy that it’s (slowly) getting powerful new destroyers. It’s bad news that there isn’t also an urgent plan for powerful new submarines. While Ottawa has made some noise about joining the US-UK-Australian AUKUS nuclear submarine alliance, it hasn’t made any formal commitment.
A balanced fleet needs vessels on the water and below it. To achieve that balance in the coming decades, the Canadian fleet needs to acquire submarines alongside its destroyers. The issue is particularly urgent for Canada, as its northern coast is ice-bound and surface ships can traverse it only with difficulty and only for part of the year.
The only vessels which can operate with any freedom off Canada’s northern coast, and travel between eastern and western coasts without making the long trip to the Panama Canal, are those which can travel beneath the ice cap – that is, nuclear powered submarines.
In theory the Arctic Ocean is a Nato lake, with US, Danish, Icelandic and Canadian territory facing and outflanking that of Russia. Arctic nations Finland and Sweden are joining the alliance too. But Canada is a weak link.
There’s no nation that needs nuclear submarines more than Canada does. It should really think about getting some.
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