As yesterday was Canada Day, it’s perhaps opportune to recount the challenge of my recent trip to Ottawa. I spoke at a symposium on 21 June at Carleton University, organized by the Atlantic Council of the United States, and funded by a grant from the policy directorate at the Department of National Defence, on relating American, Australian, and British experiences with defense reform to present Canadian needs. I must admit that my proposal on staffing alternatives for the Joint Support Ship (JSS) and Multi-Role Tanker-Transport (MRTT) programs was not uniformly well-received. I will reserve some disagreement, but pitching the idea to a roomful of (mostly) Canadian scholars and policymakers reminded me of the importance of national context in generalizing patterns in public administration. Things are different all over, and we’ll still look for lessons to learn.
And as yesterday was Canada Day, I’ll claim that I’ve let enough time pass that I can return to sometimes uncomfortable topics up North. Having gotten flamed regarding the JSS and MRTT, I’ll try submarines. Rather earlier last month, Michael Byers and Stewart Webb of the Rideau Institute and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives published their joint paper That Sinking Feeling: Canada’s Submarine Program Springs a Leak. David Pugliese covered it twice in his column Defence Watch in the Ottawa Citizen: the paper is scathing in its assessment of the Royal Canadian Navy’s submarine program. That said, I am not enamored of this study for several reasons. The Rideau Institute’s separate and breathless assertion in a recent blog posting that (Retired General Walter) “Natynczyk Appointment May Signal Militarization of Canada’s Space Program” does little for its credibility, but I’ll stick to the substantive. Most saliently, and having returned from a symposium on just this topic in Ottawa, I found it odd that the authors did not compare Canada’s situation to Australia’s. For a brief but quite compelling, comparative view, one might read R. Keith Plowman’s comments to David and Defence Watch in “Canadian and Australian Navies Compared – Why Does Canada Lag So Far Behind?” For my part, I’ll now focus on the two countries’ submarine programs to illustrate Canada’s conundrum with respect to undersea warfare.
After the end of the Cold War, both Canada and Australia found themselves wanting to replace their Oberon-class submarines, which had been built in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s. Fully thirteen had been built for the Royal Navy, six had been built for the Royal Australian Navy, and five would serve with the Royal Canadian Navy (Maritime Command, whatever). It’s a minor point to be made that two of the Canadian Oberons were also initially commissioned into British service; overall, these boats were solid citizens for the Commonwealth.
For replacing its Oberons, the Royal Navy had just taken four new submarines—the Upholder class—but in 1994 Her Majesty’s Government declared these surplus to requirements, as Britain planned to focus on nuclear-powered submarines. So, the four Upholders were purchased by Canada and eventually (more on that below) placed into service as the Victoria class: HM Canadian Ships Victoria (ex-Unseen), Windsor (ex-Unicorn), Corner Brook (ex-Ursula), and Chicoutimi (ex-Upholder herself).
The Australian government took another route, holding an international competition for a wholly new submarine design, as it thought that no existing diesel boat had the range required for trans-Pacific missions. Kockums AB was chosen to provide its plans (again, more below) to the new Swedish Västergötland-class, and to assist with the construction of six enlarged versions as the Collins class: HM Australian Ships Collins, Farncomb, Waller, Dechaineux, Sheean, and Rankin. Three of the smaller Västergötlands still serve in the Royal Swedish Navy, and two by the Republic of Singapore Navy. The Swedes have since moved onto the Götland-class, another impressive boat, but one decidedly built for the Baltic.
Between the Australian and Canadian programs, though, there was one huge difference ex ante. The Canadian submarines were bought at a low price, and the Australian boats not. While all four Canadian Victorias cost C $750 million second-hand in the late 1990s, the six Australian Collinses had cost just over A $5 billion through 2006. That has muted criticism of the Canadian program, even if the Victorias have only recently been showing signs of service. And as one recent article in the Adelaide Advertiser noted, after that unpleasant experience down under, the Australian government has been grappling with the question of the cost of the eventual replacements.
I could spend a great deal of time converting currencies, adjusting for inflation in each country, and tallying the monies spent to put the Canadian boats back into service after years of pierside neglect. I could recount the troubled history of both programs, with the questionable service records of both classes. I could discuss the rather warm relationship that the RAN has had with the USN and the RN (see Charles Strathdee & Usman Ansari, “Aussie and UK Frigates (and Possibly even Submarines?),” Warships: International Fleet Review, 6 March 2013). I could recount the rather acrimonious relationship between Canada and Britain over the former Upholders. I could describe the intellectual property management problems in the Collins program in a whole article. Instead, and for now, I’d rather ask a bigger question:
Why submarines?
For Australia, I find this obvious. For a summary, I recommend Ross Babbage’s article in The Diplomat. Brendan Nicholson also has a (gated) article in The Australian whose title is as blunt as any Australian: “Subs need to be out there doing the damage”. For as one Canadian scholar I know recently put it, the Canadians and Australians are very similar in many ways, but the latter “swim in shark-infested waters”. One doesn’t buy submarines because he’s concerned about possible trouble from Indonesian jihadists. One buys submarines because he’s concerned about the Chinese Navy and further extensions of Beijing’s insane territorial claims. Any submarines one buys might have other uses in periods of relative peace, but half a billion dollars is a lot to spend for a periscope collecting intelligence. No, one buys submarines to sink ships.
But Byers and Webb discount the possibility of any war in the Pacific with the glib assertion that ‘the Chinese are buying our uranium, so they must be our friends’. That was enough to give me a headache, for in another month, I expect that some Chinese “scholar” will claim that it was Zheng He who originally settled New South Wales and British Columbia. As noted above, I will second their criticism of the DND’s insistence that Canadian submarines are particularly useful for clandestine surveillance of narcotics smugglers or training the RCN’s frigate force in antisubmarine warfare. I can think of much cheaper alternatives for both tasks: I know, for example, of an American company with a tiny German-built submarine that would be happy to train anyone in North America. So again, those missions are at best ancillary, only to be undertaken when one is building submarines for another, more essential purpose.
Even admitting to a long-term Chinese threat, one could still ask why Canada should buy submarines at all, if the Dominion can just “freeload off the Americans and the Brits, as we’ve done for decades”? I heard two university professors from Ontario share that joke the other week. While I can assure all that these two gentlemen weren’t actually espousing that option, I’ll answer the question anyway:
Because the Americans won’t build diesel-powered submarines, even if they need them.
As I recently heard James Fergusson of the University of Manitoba write about the Royal Canadian Navy, I will now write about the US Navy: some things get built to image, not to real needs. To turn a phrase from an old US Army recruiting message, I call this the Be All You Want To Be approach to force structure. If, as pundits allege, the RCN wants submarines because real navies have submarines, it’s all the more so that the USN wants nuclear submarines because only ‘frigate navies’ have diesel submarines. But there are at least three good reasons to buy conventionally-powered submarines over nuclear-powered ones, or at least as a supplement to them:
- In many scenarios, diesel boats can be more cost-effective than nuclear ones. Each reactor plant can cost about half a billion alone, and that’s roughly the cost of an inexpensive diesel boat these days So for strength in numbers, something else than an all-nuclear fleet is required.
- The latest boats with air-independent propulsion are said to be more quiet than even an American or British nuclear boat operating at low speeds on natural convection, with its otherwise noise-emitting reactor pumps secured. German and Swedish submarines on exercises have an unsettling habit of snapping, undetected, periscope pictures of American carriers. That says a lot about their combat capability.
- The loss of a diesel submarine (and yes, ships will be lost in combat) does not immediately create a nuclear incident. Really, it still amazes me that almost no one asks this question. If one can fault the Japanese for building nuclear power plants on fault lines, next to tsunami-prone coastlines, one can fairly fault any navy for putting nuclear power plants in something that’s designed to get shot at. So, there may be reconnaissance and coastal attack missions that are more wisely conducted with conventionally-powered submarines, just to avoid the aftermath of an unfortunate reactor breach and sinking in coastal waters.
And lastly, if the RCN is to have submarines in the long run, then I propose that most if not all of them ought to be based at CFB Esquimalt, where Victoria and Corner Brook are based today, and where submarines generally would be more valuable. Really, plenty of European allies have and will continue to have submarines, and it’s not as though the Russian submarine fleet gets underway all that often. The Northern Fleet’s occasionally lurking about the East Coast is mostly to annoy Washington. Again, folks, it’s the Chinese Navy that’s the real concern.
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Regarding the correction above—my thanks go to M. Halblaub for pointing out my error. See the comments attached to this entry.
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