CANADIAN DEFENCE MATTERS: A FEW THOUGHTS ON THE RIVER CLASS DESTROYERS

On June 28^th of this year it was announced that construction had officially begun on Canada’s fleet of Canadian Surface Combatants.

Given that the design and design team contract was originally awarded in February of 2019, the announcement focused largely on federal government messaging about the naming of the class, in the future the CSC will be known as the River-class.

While the Miriam-Webster dictionary defines a destroyer as “a small fast warship used especially to support larger vessels and usually armed with guns, depth charges, torpedoes, and often guided missiles” the Canadian government, in their press release, have defined destroyers as “a powerful and multi-functional ship, that is a fast, maneuverable, anti-aircraft and anti-submarine long-endurance warship, which can escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy, or carrier battle group and defend them against a wide range of general threats.”

This is a definition which more accurately describes the 8,800 ton displacement, missile armed ship previously know as the Canadian Surface Combatant.

As the Royal Canadian Navy’s next generation combat ship the CSC, or River class destroyers, will replace both the Iroquois class destroyers and the Halifax-class frigates.

While the Iroquois class ships have long been retired, the Halifax class ships, the first of which was launched in 1988, are still in service. HMCS Ottawa, the most recently built unit of the 12 ship class, was launched in May of 1996. In the year 2050, the currently projected in service date for the last of the River class destroyers, she will be 54 years old.

When in service there were 4 Iroquois class destroyers, with a displacement of 5,100 long tons each, along with the currently serving 12 Halifax class frigates which displace 4,690 long tons each. The total tonnage of all 16 vessels being replace is 76,680 long tons.

Compare this to the River class destroyers which, at a displacement of over 8,000 long tons each, come to a total of 121,200 long tons for the fifteen ships currently envisioned.

As a note of interest, the 14 original River class destroyers of WW II fame displaced approximately 1,340 long tons each for a total of 18,760 long tons.

The graphic provided with the announcement indicates that the government in continuing with the choice of the Leonardo 127mm gun rather then the BAE MK 45 as used by our allies. Explanations of this choice have been less then coherent.

It has been noted that there appears to have been a reduction in weapons on the CSC. Originally the RCN appeared to suggest that there would be 32 Missile Vertical Launch Systems on each combatant. Now, that has been reduced to 24. No explanation was provided.

With only 24 VLS systems the River Class will be seriously under-armed by modern AAW destroyer standards, and will likely be one of the expensive in terms of missile cells/launchers by platform cost and size.

One of the reasons for the loss of VLS tubes is explained by fact sheet published with the June 28 announcement showing the Rolling Airframe Missile replacing the previously selected CAMM Sea Ceptor for the close in defence role.

While it is true that there was an overlap between the capabilities of the CAMM and the RIM-162 ESSM Sea Sparrow air defence missiles that are to be carried in some of the VLS launchers, with the loss of CAMM it means that more of the relatively few VLS tubes may have to be devoted to the Sea Sparrow missiles leaving fewer tubes available for other weapons.

Aft of the RAM launcher are two Leonardo Lionfish 30/X 30mm stabilized rapid-fire guns. While having some point defence capabilities it is assumed that the choice of these weapons was also driven by the emerging threats of attack drones, both airborne and naval.

What is not clear is why it was decided that these weapons were so superior to the BAE Mark 38 25 mm machine gun system currently used on the Canadian Navy's Harry DeWolf-class offshore patrol vessels that the advantages outweighed the costs of introducing a new and untried weapons system with all its entailed logistic, training and operational costs.

Of course all of this is speculation. As unlikely as it seems, nobody, including the Navy and the Government, really know exactly what their new warship will look like or how it will be equipped.

It has been reported that government officials acknowledged they don’t have a final cost for the project. It is an indictment of the entire procurement process that is producing these ships that even though ship design started in February 2019 and the preliminary design review was completed in December 2022 they also still don’t have a final design.