Run silent, run deep.
In a matter of weeks the Royal Canadian Navy will have three
submarines ready to do just that.
The fourth will be in dry dock and not released until 2015.
These conventional diesel-electric boats were all purchased
second hand from Britain
in 1998 and transferred to the RCN at an initial cost of $750 million.
Years of controversy and refit followed before last year’s
historic visit by HMCS Victoria to the RIMPAC exercises off Hawaii.
That passage culminated in its firing an MK 48 heavyweight torpedo and sinking
the decommissioned transport USNS Concord.
News that HMCS Victoria is to be joined by its sisters is
welcome for the defence establishment. For critics — of which there are many —
it is just another chapter in a convoluted tale of mismatched procurement
meeting ill-defined strategic needs.
The Canadian taxpayer has been left to pick up the now
estimated $3 billion (and rising) tab prompting the question: does the RCN even
need to stay in the submarine business?
It’s in good company if it does.
Across the Pacific Rim, alone,
countries as far apart as South Korea
and Australia, Indonesia
and Japan, China,
Vietnam, Malaysia
and Singapore
operate conventional submarines.
Further afield Bangladesh
is acquiring its first submarines to boost its naval power in the Bay
of Bengal while India
operates 14 boats, including a nuclear-powered attack submarine leased from Russia.
All are used for sea-lane security in a variety of scenarios
including clandestine work delivering special forces operators in shallow
coastal waters.
Still, those tasks should be viewed through an entirely
different geo/strategic setting to that of Canada’s,
cautions Steven Staples, president of the Rideau Institute, a defence and
foreign policy think-tank in Ottawa.
He acknowledges the growing submarine capabilities in other
parts of the globe but maintains Canada
is historically not in the trade of long-range power projection.
“We live in a self-evidently different neighbourhood to Asia,”
Staples said, “and our submarines are more coastal. They were designed to sit
on the sea floor during the Cold War to watch and listen for Soviet fleet
activity.
“There is a strong argument against whether we need them at
all. The three Oberon class boats that preceded the current subs were mostly
used to provide opposition training for the U.S. Navy.
“We may well find the new boats doing that as well. That’s a
pretty expensive way to stay friends with an ally.”
Sitting, watching and listening. Three things non-nuclear
submarines excel at.
Surely with increased shipping activity in the Arctic thanks
to receding pack ice and more and bigger ships transiting the route for a
short-cut to Europe, doesn’t it make sense for Canada to have eyes and ears
monitoring a potentially ice free Northwest Passage?
“Well, it would help if they were ever fully operational,
put it that way” Staples said. “If they could dive without hitting the ocean
floor or even remember to close hatches before submerging.
“Look, I just don’t think this project has been worth the
money and the time spent to deliver a marginal capability. I wouldn’t call it a
textbook case of how Canada
should NOT go about procuring extremely complicated defence equipment because,
sadly, there are other contenders for that title.”
If Canada
eventually embraces the “use ‘em if you’ve got ‘em” doctrine, they might want
to look at what Australia
did with its six Oberon-class diesel-electric boats during the last decades of
the Cold War.
The Royal Australian Navy conducted perilous
intelligence-gathering operations off the coasts of Vietnam,
Indonesia, China
and India as
part of an American-led effort to check the Soviet Navy’s formidable fleet.
Between 1978 and 1992 Australian submarines would secretly
track Soviet ships as they transited the South China Sea.
There were 16 patrols in all.
In one case an Australian boat famously trailed a new Soviet
frigate all the way to the entrance of Vietnam’s
Cam Ranh Bay naval base and photographed its hull shape, propellers, weapons
systems and sonar. All undetected despite being just being 1.8-metres from the
frigate’s hull at one stage.
Difficult but not impossible to replicate in Arctic waters
if RCN submariners ever get the call to covertly see just who is using the
trans-polar shipping route. And why.
No comments:
Post a Comment