Canada’s new frigates are being designed with ballistic missile defence in mind, even though successive federal governments have avoided taking part in the U.S. program.
When they slip into the water some time in the mid-to-late 2020s, the new warships probably won’t have the direct capability to shoot down incoming intercontinental rockets.
But the decisions made in their design allow them to be converted to that role, should the federal government ever change course.
The warships are based upon the British Type 26 layout and are about to hit the drawing board. Their radar has been chosen and selected missile launchers have been configured to make them easy and cost-effective to upgrade.
Vice-Admiral Art McDonald said the Lockheed Martin-built AN/SPY-7 radar system to be installed on the new frigates is cutting-edge. It’s also being used on land now by the U.S. and Japan for detecting ballistic missiles.
“It’s a great piece and that is what we were looking for in terms of specification,” McDonald told CBC News in a year-end interview.
An artist’s rendering of the British Type 26 frigate. (BAE Systems Inc./Lockheed Martin Canada)
Selecting the radar system for the new frigates was seen as one of the more important decisions facing naval planners because it has to stay operational and relevant for decades to come — even as new military threats and technologies emerge.
McDonald said positive feedback from elsewhere in the defence industry convinced federal officials that they had made the right choice.
“Even from those that weren’t producing an advanced kind of radar, they said this is the capability you need,” he said.
The whole concept of ballistic missile defence (BMD) remains a politically touchy topic.
BMD — “Star Wars” to its critics — lies at the centre of a policy debate the Liberal government has tried to avoid at all costs. In 2017, Canada chose not to join the BMD program. That reluctance to embrace BMD dates back to the political bruising Paul Martin’s Liberal government suffered in 2004-05, when the administration of then-U.S. president George W. Bush leaned heavily on Ottawa to join the program.
In the years since, both the House of Commons and Senate defence committees have recommended the federal government relent and sign on to BMD — mostly because of the emerging missile threat posed by rogue nations such as North Korea.
Liberals reluctant to talk BMD
The question of whether to join BMD is expected to form part of the deliberations surrounding the renewal of NORAD — an undertaking the Liberal government has acknowledged but not costed out as part of its 2017 defence policy.
Missile defence continues to be a highly fraught concept within the federal government. Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan made a point of downplaying a CBC News story last summer that revealed how the Canadian and U.S. militaries had laid down markers for what the new NORAD could look like, pending sign-off by both Washington and Ottawa.
Asked about Sajjan’s response, a former senior official in the minister’s office said it raised the spectre of “Star Wars” — not a topic the Liberal government was anxious to discuss ahead of last fall’s election.
The current government may not want to talk about it, but the Canadian navy and other NATO countries are grappling with the technology.
Practice makes perfect
Last spring, a Canadian patrol frigate, operating with 12 other alliance warships, tracked and shot down a supersonic target meant to simulate a ballistic missile. A French frigate also scored a separate hit.
For the last two years, NATO warships have practiced linking up electronically in defensive exercises to shoot down both mock ballistic and cruise missiles. A Canadian frigate in the 2017 iteration of the exercise destroyed a simulated cruise missile.
HMCS St. John’s conducts a replenishment at sea during NATO operation Formidable Shield on May 4, 2019. (Pte. Sarina McNeill/Department of National Defence)
At the recent Halifax Security Forum, there was a lot of talk about the proliferation of missile technology. One defence expert told the forum Canadian military planners have been paying attention to the issue for a long time.
The frigate design is an important example.
“I think what they’ve tried to do is keep the door open by some of the decisions they’ve made, recognizing that missile proliferation is a significant concern,” said Dave Perry, of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. “They haven’t shut the door on doing that and I think that is smart.”
Opponents of BMD, meanwhile, have long argued the fixation by the U.S. and NATO on ballistic missile defence is fuelling instability and giving Russia and China reasons to cooperate in air and missile defence.
Speaking before a Commons committee in 2017, Peggy Mason, president of the foreign and defence policy think-tank Rideau Institute, said the United States’s adversaries have concluded that building more offensive systems is cheaper than investing in defensive ones.
“The American BMD system also acts as a catalyst to nuclear weapons modernization, as Russia and China seek not only increased numbers of nuclear weapons but also increased manoeuvrability,” said Mason, Canada’s ambassador for disarmament from 1989 to 1994, testifying on Sept. 14, 2017.
She also warned that “there would be significant financial costs to Canadian participation” in the U.S. BMD program “given American demands” — even prior to Donald Trump’s presidency — “that allies pay their ‘fair share’ of the collective defence burden.”
HALIFAX – An energy firm based in Ireland says it is planning to produce aviation fuel using about 700,000 tonnes of wood biomass annually.
Simply Blue Group announced today that construction would begin in 2026 with the bio fuel project expected to be operating by 2029 in Goldboro, N.S., about 165 kilometres northeast of Halifax.
The company says it has secured about 305 hectares of land for development, including 108 hectares previously owned by Pieridae — which had planned to build an LNG plant at the site — and 198 hectares owned by the Municipality of the District of Guysborough.
Based in Cork, Ireland, the company says its aviation fuel performs like conventional jet fuel but reduces greenhouse gases by “approximately 90 per cent.”
Simply Blue says that every year the project will source about 700,000 tonnes of biomass from Wagner Forest NS Ltd. to produce 150,000 tonnes of the fuel.
Tory Rushton, the province’s natural resources minister, issued a statement saying the plant could represent a new market for the province’s forestry sector.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
FREDERICTON – New Brunswick RCMP are disputing claims that the recent shooting death of an Indigenous man in mental distress happened during a police wellness check.
Assistant commissioner DeAnna Hill, commander of the New Brunswick RCMP, says that information is inaccurate.
On Monday, the RCMP said two officers responded to a report of an armed man in mental distress at a home in the Elsipogtog First Nation, where one Mountie shot the man after the other failed to subdue him with a stun gun.
Erin Nauss, director of the Serious Incident Response Team, says she understands the initial interaction on Sunday was not what the RCMP would call a wellness check, but she says the police oversight agency will conduct an investigation to “determine all of the facts.”
Meanwhile, a statement from an Indigenous group that works with the RCMP said they weren’t told about the deadly incident until it was too late, and the group described the Mounties’ initial role at the scene as a wellness check.
As well, New Brunswick Liberal Leader Susan Holt has described what happened as a wellness check gone wrong.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
HALIFAX – RCMP are expected to provide an update today on their investigation into the suspicious disappearance of a 55-year-old Nova Scotia woman.
Esther Jones was reported missing on Labour Day, and the RCMP’s major crime unit is now involved in the case.
According to police, Jones was last seen on Aug. 31 in Kingston, N.S., and family members reported her missing Sept. 2.
Two days later, officers found Jones’s vehicle, a silver 2009 Volkswagen Passat, abandoned in nearby Greenwood, N.S.
Jones is described as five-feet-four with a slim build, and she has brown, greying, shoulder-length hair and hazel eyes.
She may have been wearing a black T-shirt with ties on the shoulders, a black and floral below-the-knee skirt, and sunglasses with mirrored lenses when she was last seen.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
