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Ottawa proceeds with plan to build Arctic patrol ships

As long as the ships get built, within budget, delivered ontime and without a lot of faults then who cares where it is built?
 
Can West is speculating that the PM is going to announce the governments intention to go ahead with these ships on Monday at CFB Esquimalt.

http://www.canada.com/components/print.aspx?id=b42ab4fa-3905-43df-9b26-431c2a95ac10

Hope so.  But like In Hoc Signo I am getting impatient with announcements and no sign of any construction.  I still do not understand why it takes years and years and years just to get to the construction stage for any project.
 
http://www.rbcinvest.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/PEstory/LAC/20070913/SHIPS13/national/national/nationalTheNationHeadline/11/11/33/


New Arctic patrol ships not expected to have sonar  
 By MURRAY BREWSTER  Canadian PressThursday, September 13, 2007 – Page A5 OTTAWA
-- Canada's new Arctic patrol ships will likely lack sonar capability, forcing them to use other methods to detect submarine threats in northern waters, a project official said yesterday."They will not have the ability to detect submarines," Captain Ron Lloyd, a senior navy planner, said in an interview with The Canadian Press.Both the operation and even the installation of sonar equipment on the new warships may prove to be impractical, he said."You're talking about a ship that's going to run up onto ice and all of the noise that ice makes and still be able to detect submarines," said Capt. Lloyd, who is the former commander of the frigate HMCS Charlottetown."From our perspective we have not examined that as a potential [capability] for this platform."The warships, announced with fanfare this summer, are a pillar in Prime Minister Stephen Harper's plan to defend the Arctic against intruders and environmental damage.The navy is in the early stages of identifying the design and equipment for the ships, which are expected to cost $7.4-billion to build and maintain over their 25-year lifespan.The Defence Department hasn't settled on how many ships it will build, and the first one isn't expected to be delivered until 2013.Earlier this year a leaked draft copy of the Conservative defence strategy called for six ships, but the formal announcement in July said there could be as many as eight vessels that would also patrol the country's Atlantic and Pacific coastlines.Defence expert Dan Middlemiss said the purpose of the Arctic ships was to make sure "we know what's going on in our backyard."Leaving out sonar would be acceptable as long as "you've got something else that does that job for you," he said.In the last election, the Tories' defence platform promised a network of underwater listening posts in the Arctic. But the leaked defence strategy said only that the military would "investigate options" to develop such a system.American and Russian nuclear-powered submarines, the only type of boats capable of sustained operations under the ice, have been known to lurk in Canada's Arctic.The last incident occurred in 2005 when a U.S. submarine took a short cut to the North Pole, not notifying Ottawa until after the fact.Helicopters, which are slated to deploy with the new ships as needed, could also fulfill an anti-submarine role depending on the weather, said Prof. Middlemiss, who teaches at Dalhousie University's centre for foreign policy studies.Hunting nuclear-powered submarines is something that's usually best left to other submarines, navy experts say.Capt. Lloyd said the big advantage of the new patrol ships is that they will give the navy the ability to operate in all of the country's oceans, pending conditions, for the first time in many years.Since the Conservatives have put so much emphasis on defending the Arctic, Prof. Middlemiss said, Canadians will be expecting concrete surveillance measures."There are real military reasons for taking care of our own backyard a bit better and more convincingly than we've tried to do," he said in an interview from Halifax.In the past, Canada has experimented with underwater listening devices and even planned to buy $100-million worth of them in the late 1980s, but all of the proposals were dropped mostly because of the cost.The patrol ship program is a step down from the Conservative election promise to build three armed, heavy icebreaking ships.


 
A modified version of this might be an option for the AOPVs:

From the StrategyPage:
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htsurf/articles/20080208.aspx
German Peacekeeping Warship
February 8, 2008: After six years of planning and construction, the German Navy received the first of its 1,800 ton K130 ocean going corvettes. These will replace S143/148 class coastal patrol boats, which were designed for combat along the Baltic Coast. The K130s are designed for moving long distances to support peacekeeping missions, or any other type of mission NATO might have outside of Europe.
 
The K130 design is based on  design designated MEKO-A100 frigate. The K130s can remain at sea for seven days without replenishment,  and 21 days if they receive some resupply via helicopter. The K130s are still basically coast defense ships, but they are also built for long ocean voyages, and are able to proceed at 25-30 kilometers an hour in heavy seas. Top speed is 46 kilometers an hour.
 
The crew of 65 operates a highly automated ship. Actually, crew size can be as small as fifty. Armament consists of a 76mm gun, two 27mm autocannons, two 21 cell Rolling Airframe Missile systems (for missile defense) and four RBS-15 anti-ship missiles. There is a helicopter pad, but only for landing and refueling helicopters. The ships can carry a small helicopter, and eventually the navy would like to have a pair of UAVs in the future.  Four more K130s are being built, and the navy would like to have at least a dozen of them.
 
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