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Subject: The Cursed Canadian Boats
SYSOP    2/14/2014 5:36:44 AM
 
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keffler25       2/14/2014 10:01:26 AM
Sixteen years after purchasing four slightly-used British diesel-electric submarines Canada still has not gotten all of them in shape to go to war. Currently, only one of the four Victoria class subs can go to sea actually fire a torpedo. Within a year two more may be ready as well, or maybe not. What Canada has learned from all this is that submarines are expensive boats to build and maintain, even if they are secondhand.
 
What Canada has learned and what America could have told them from their own experience is that the British CANNOT build submarines worth a damn and that the British boats, the British unloaded on the Canadian suckers are engineering design disasters.
 
The problem is that the subs were bought without a thorough enough examination. It was later found that most major systems had problems and defects that had to be fixed (at considerable expense).
 
One of the other problems was the discovery that if you brought a British boat, it would of necessity need BRITISH weapons. A torpedo tube is not just a torpedo tube. That ejector designed to handle a British torpedo will NOT handle a French nor an American one. The fire control will be a tad different as well as the loading procedures and firing event chain. 
 
That is just the way the tech trees evolved and do evolve. Unless the Canadians understood that is the way things worked they should have asked for AMERICAN help (as they have done--hence the American torpedo tubes and fire control system.)
 
This of course would have been apparent to a six year old, but apparently the Canadians could not pass up a deal.
 
The British are slick used car salesmen.  
 
 
Well for a time there while Electric Boat shoved Virginias into the water it was also shoving Astutes out the Vickers shipbuilding assembly sheds. Most EMBARRASSING for Rule Britannia.
 
Next time, the Canadians will either roll their own or buy French. As it is, the Victorias after all the fixes second hand will cost what an improved Scorpene would have cost new.
 
The French do build GOOD subs.
 
Or the Canucks could have gone south of the border and bought Yankee boats.For the money they did spend ($2 billion and climbing), they would have four American built boats ready to go with technical commonality with their good allies to the south..
 
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One of these days, some smaller countries will get it through their heads, (Australia, Canada, even Britain, and India), 'We  all kind of need a good general purpose submarine. Lets share the research costs and the design burdens to produce a prototype together and then build the boats we all need.'
 
There are aircraft consortiums that have worked that way. Why not submarines? 
 
 
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dogberry       2/14/2014 2:29:32 PM
Keffler25 would there be a problem with buying German, Swedish, Japanese boats?
 
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Batou    No Lemon Law for Boats.   2/15/2014 1:49:41 AM
 
"The problem is that the subs were bought without a thorough enough examination. It was later found that most major systems had problems and defects that had to be fixed (at considerable expense)".
 
Sounds like the normal used-vehicle/lemon transaction.
 
Maybe these needed a Auto-club inspection prior to sale.
 
Must make used car salesman salivate to work for a Defense Dept selling used low klm lemons....
 
How many banana skins do you need to put in sub's gearbox to hide the whining noise...?
 
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bandit87       2/18/2014 10:31:01 AM
Purchasing the Upholders did not necessitate purchasing British weapons as well. The Oberon class submarines which Canada had previously were able to use (or at least be converted to use) American made NT37 and Mk48 torpedoes. Plus the Upholder class was designed to be able to use UGM-88 Sub-Harpoon anti-ship missiles, which are not of British design (this capability has been removed by the Canadian Navy, most likely because they don't have Sub-Harpoons). Plenty of other countries which operated Oberon class boats used torpedoes from France and Germany. Obviously some conversion had to be done (which took much longer than expected, most likely due to the way the whole submarine program has been funded), but it its not as impossible as you would make it seem. 
 
Also, no, Canada would not have been able to get conventional submarines from the USA due to the fact that the Americans haven't built one since the USS Blueback in 1959! Paying for the complete design and construction of a submarine in a foreign yard is not something that Canada would likely do just based on the cost alone.  
 
The future of submarines in the Canadian Navy is somewhat cloudy though, as the Victorias age, they will need replacements which most likely will come from Germany, France or possibly even Australia. As reluctant as Canada has been to have naval vessels built in other countries, the level of specialization needed for a submarine really makes this unavoidable. The only other possibility would be to buy used again but after the experience with the Victorias, that is not likely. 
 
I believe one of two things will happen. Either the Victorias will be gradually retired and the whole submarine arm of the navy disbanded, or in the next 10-15 years, Canada will purchase 2-3 subs from Germany or France of an existing design to minimize costs.
 
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HeavyD       8/29/2014 6:43:15 PM
4 diesel electric subs for Canada is essentially zero subs, right?  That's 2 per coast, and hardly enough capability to do diddly-squat under the polar ice cap, even if they bought AIP boats.
 
Why bother? 
 
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keffler25       8/30/2014 1:09:01 AM
The Japanese build theirs off AMERICAN designs and tech. So I think you would be sort of wrong. 
 
The Mark 37 is a subcaliber (19 inch) torpedo that could be fired from a British tube as a swim-out. That was one of the reasons it was built that way. (It was essentially designed originally as an air drop weapon, which also accounts for how small an ASW torpedo it is.) The Mark 48 will not work from an Upholder.  The torpedo tube interfaces are wrong. German and French torpedoes are METRIC by the way. As for the late British 21' torpedoes (Post 1980-and by the way the damn Tigerfish DON'T WORK, for they were withdrawn as complete failures in 2004 I believe.). There is a reason why foreign states buy (or copy as the Yu-6 in the case of China--> a cloned early Mark-48.) American or French when they buy torpedoes.
 
New British torpedo is Spearfish. AMERICAN designed. (Hamilton Sunstrand you know?) OOPS. 
 
 

 

Also, no, Canada would not have been able to get conventional submarines from the USA due to the fact that the Americans haven't built one since the USS Blueback in 1959! Paying for the complete design and construction of a submarine in a foreign yard is not something that Canada would likely do just based on the cost alone.  

 

The future of submarines in the Canadian Navy is somewhat cloudy though, as the Victorias age, they will need replacements which most likely will come from Germany, France or possibly even Australia. As reluctant as Canada has been to have naval vessels built in other countries, the level of specialization needed for a submarine really makes this unavoidable. The only other possibility would be to buy used again but after the experience with the Victorias, that is not likely. 

 

I believe one of two things will happen. Either the Victorias will be gradually retired and the whole submarine arm of the navy disbanded, or in the next 10-15 years, Canada will purchase 2-3 subs from Germany or France of an existing design to minimize costs.

 
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