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Originally Posted by P_Funk
Scandium put his finger on it. 
We, the Canauckians, don't need some world record running sub that can put deadly firepower outside the port of our worst enemy within a day. Actually right now the place we need seapower more than anywhere else, ironically, is within our own borders (sea borders  ). Our northern passage through our arctic waters is an important route that shipping can take and is also right now being violated constantly by many nationalities without our consent. See the recent report of an American Nuclear sub that stationed itself without any real purpose inside Canadian waters. How's that for a slap in the face? No I think my original idea of that one that the Germans have got is better for us given our realistic Naval and political needs. We need to guard our borders and if anything have a recognizable presense in our less than recognized" waters. There is a precedent in international law that says if a sea lane is used for a certain period of time by other nationalities and is not policed by the nation which claims right over said area it becomes international waters and the entitled nation loses all rights to it (including whatever might be sitting underneath the sea bed). So that's the biggest threat to Canada's sovereignty. Oh and our good buddies the USA are doing their best to try and rob us of our entitled borders, once again. It's not 1812 but it still bugs the hell out of me. 
I'll take a modern U-boat anyday. maybe we should call the first one the HMCS Kretschmer.:rotfl:
PS> Oh and its nice to seea thread where I can pull my weight as a Canuck. Arguing about the US can be rather tiresome. |
Yep, exactly. We don't have the population or the desire to build and man a massive navy, we're not into nukes, and our modern history has been pretty peaceful (not quite Switzerland peaceful but peaceful none the less); also treaties and our major role in NATO and NORAD means we're not likely to be invaded anytime soon. BUT we still need to effectively patrol our massive coastlines, and corresonding territorial waters and only a few recent examples from history are enough to demonstrate we haven't been doing that.
P_Funk mentioned one especially relevant example with regard to the Northern Passage, and then there's the foreign overfishing - within our own territorial waters and in violation of our sovereignty - that helped destroy the Atlantic fishing industry even after we put a moratorium on domestic fishing.
Therefore I think what we most need, as far as seapower goes, are more small coastal PT boats (we have only a total of 12 altogether) along with another few frigates and destroyers. As far as subs go, an expanded fleet of diesal subs to keep tabs on things invisibly from below would be a boon too (right now we have only 4 problem riddled Victoria Class SSK subs).
The nice thing about smaller vessels is that you can blanket more coastline without requiring a big increase in budget or man power.
But for us nuke subs aren't the way to go. Too wasteful of resources that can be better allocated to our other naval needs.
[Edit] Also its worth mentioning that, aside from protecting the sovereignty of our coastal waters, the biggest threat we face (and the same in the US) is from Jihadists coming ashore by way of a small trawler and carrying a dirty bomb or other nasty chemical or bio weapon and a long range top of the line nuke sub won't do any good to protect against it, nor would a carrier group in the middle of the Altantic for that matter.