Canada’s pollies are incapable of defending Arctic sovereignty. The new heavy icebreaker won’t see its keel laid until the mid 2020s. The AOPS are armed with a single 25 mm gun. Under-ice capable submarines, the best solution for for enforcing Arctic sovereignty, have been ruled unnecessary by junior. Probably doesn’t matter from a resources POV. Any major development project would never get approved by the idiots in Ottawa.
John, I agree that under-ice capable submarines are the only real way to patrol the arctic year round. And I am not that upset about the AOPS only having a pop-gun. I was at first, but there are only so many dollars for the Navy to spend, and I think they wanted more for the CSC, so less for the AOPS.
The threats to the arctic are:
1) ASW - but the USN is doing our job for us there with their SSNs - and likely they don't want us snooping there anyway. And I don't know how practicable it would be to equip the AOPS with towed array sonar and operate it in the ice. I am probably wrong, but ASW in ice covered waters really needs another submarine, I don't see a ship doing an effective job there.
2) ASuW - but what serious naval ship can travel that ice even in the summer? And if anyone wanted to invade Canada via the arctic, I think they would find 900 km of bog in the summer - with no roads - and would never be able to get close to land in the winter due to the ice. It would be like Napoleon invading Russia all over again. Supply lines stretched for a thousand miles and lots of starving troops.
3) AAW - probably the only real threat that the AOPS should have been equipped to handle. That probably would have just changed them to being targets, from being ignored, in a real conflict. And air threats are probably best handled by a fast jet - I mean Mach 2+ capable (here's hoping we get some of them some day, but highly unlikely while I still live).
The AOPS only real job is to sail around and wave the Canadian flag during the cruise ship season, saying "this is our territory", and for that, the single pop-gun should due. Perhaps a slightly bigger one would make it look less naked though.
Getting back to the submarines. Canada really needs 10 to 15 SSNs for arctic patrol, if we want a credible deterrence and be able to tell the Americans "We got it now, thanks for the help in the past". But our population is too ignorant to understand the difference between nuclear powered and nuclear armed. So the best we could ever achieve is an AIP sub. I don't think the technology is quite there yet for that. Maybe at 7000 to 9000 t displacement there would be enough capacity to store enough LOX for the range needed to get under the ice safely, but not sure. Certainly not anything that is "advanced design" right now. If we were smart, I think that is where we should be doing some research.
Cheers