Canada continues to invest in its submarine capability, to offset increasing underwater threats in its areas of responsibility and interest and to build more operational output, as it transitions from its current boats to a planned new fleet under the Canadian Patrol Submarine Project.
Possession of such covert stealth, when combined with an already highly-capable platform, can deliver disproportionate effect across the spectrum of military operations. This combination thus has significant politico-strategic effect, too. In whatever part of the world the possessor of the submarine may have strategic interest, others will know that the possessor has the capability to deliver strategic influence at sea and from the sea – and doing so unseen, too.
The ongoing Russo-Ukraine conflict and the wider insecurity it is generating across the Euro-Atlantic theatre underlines the impact a submarine can bring in terms of shaping events. Russian Kilo class diesel-electric submarines (SSKs) have been used to launch Kalibr conventional land-attack submarine-launched cruise missiles (SLCMs) from the Black Sea against targets ashore in Ukraine, in an overt display of the covert capability a submarine offers. However, the impact of submarine activity in the current Euro-Atlantic security crisis is perhaps more clearly reflected in unseen activities underway in the Eastern Mediterranean and North Atlantic.
In the Eastern Mediterranean, NATO naval forces protecting Alliance interests in the region, including the Black Sea, have been closely monitoring – and deterring – the activities of Russian submarines trying to interfere with the operations of those NATO naval forces. In September 2022, Naval News reported the possible deployment of Russian nuclear-powered submarines (SSNs) to the Eastern Mediterranean, noting that the region may form an outer ring of defence for Russia for its Black Sea operations, with Russian naval forces deployed to the Eastern Mediterranean being part of Russia’s deterrent strategy against NATO efforts to exert influence in the Ukraine conflict.
In the North Atlantic, Russian Kalibr-capable SSNs present a 360° challenge for NATO navies by seeking to roam from their Barents Sea bastions out into the Norwegian Sea and wider North Atlantic to project influence – including deterrent effect – against NATO countries through the implicit threat generated by the capability to strike targets at sea and ashore across northern Europe with their SLCMs. In turn, NATO submarines are pushing northeast through the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) and Bear Island Gaps in order to pin Russian submarines back in their bastions and keep their SLCMs out of range of key European targets.
So – and never mind the continuing covert intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) activity a submarine delivers – these examples demonstrate that the role of submarines is alive and well in modern military operations, underlining the need for submarine-operating navies to maintain and renew their submarine capabilities. This is illustrated in the NATO context, for example, by the fact that of the 14 NATO submarine operators, 12 are somewhere along the procurement path towards renewing that capability with brand new boats. One such navy in the process of renewal is the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN).
Canadian transition
The RCN’s submarine fleet – in the form of its four in-service Victoria class SSKs, HMCS Victoria, HMCS Windsor, HMCS Corner Brook, and HMCS Chicoutimi – generates regular presence in the Euro-Atlantic theatre, in support of both NATO and national requirements, including under the Operation ‘Reassurance’ tasking, representing Canada’s national contribution to NATO’s collective assurance, deterrence, and defence measures in the Euro-Atlantic.
For the RCN, its requirement to operate its SSKs across this vast oceanic range goes hand-in-hand with a requirement to operate the boats across a broad range of tasks, for example from conducting maritime surveillance in the Arctic, to countering maritime smuggling in the North Pacific, to contributing to NATO anti-submarine warfare (ASW) activities and wider deterrence posture in the Euro-Atlantic.
Given this range of task requirements across such a considerable geographic space, and with security risks in each area increasing, on paper, the RCN requires a fairly substantial submarine force in numbers and capability terms. However, both maintaining and expanding a four-boat flotilla is an expensive business in financial terms. Canada is addressing the question of how to expand but afford its submarine force for the future, to meet the demand to provide enhanced presence across its area of operations to project national influence and deter threats to national interests in a planned programme to renew its submarine capability – the Canadian Patrol Submarine Project (CPSP).
CPSP was established in 2021 to inform the decision-making process regarding timely replacement of the in-service Victoria class submarine flotilla in order to avoid any gap in capability. On 10 July 2024, Canada’s Department for National Defense (DND) formally launched the CPSP procurement process, with a statement announcing Canada’s plan to buy up to 12 new SSKs.Highlighting the role of a submarine capability in addressing the ‘three ocean challenge’ Canada faces, the DND said “Canada is the country with the largest coastline in the world,” adding “An underwater surveillance capability is crucial to our security and sovereignty.”
Outlining the specific geostrategic issues Canada faces that underscore the requirement for a submarine capability, the DND said that climate change will make the Arctic more accessible, meaning both that commercial shipping volume moving between Europe and Asia via the Arctic may increase, but also that other actors who have growing capacity to pursue growing ambitions in the region may see more opportunity to do so.
In a more current military context, the statement underlined the growing threat to critical undersea infrastructure (CUI), against which a submarine capability plays a key ‘deter and defend’ role. It also pointed specifically to Russian and Chinese growth in submarine activity as a whole.
Reflecting the strategic requirement set out in Canada’s most recent defence strategy (‘Our North, Strong and Free’, published in May 2024) to explore options for renewing and expanding the submarine fleet to enable Canada to better detect and deter threats and to better control its maritime approaches, in light of both the emerging threats and the ageing nature of the Victoria class fleet, the DND statement confirmed Canada is taking the first steps in renewing this capability by formally engaging industry in this procurement process.
The need to provide effective operational capability in all three oceans was underlined clearly in the DND statement, in the context of both combining stealth, lethality, persistence, and deployability and so doing with sufficient capacity – up to 12 boats – in the force level. In sum, it said, “Canada’s new fleet will need to provide a unique combination of these requirements to ensure that Canada can detect, track, deter and, if necessary, defeat adversaries in all three of Canada’s oceans, while contributing meaningfully alongside allies and enabling [Canada] to deploy this fleet abroad in support of [its] partners and allies.”
Alongside operational output terms, working with allies and partners, industry, and other navies will sit centrally in the CPSP process in capability development terms. According to the DND statement, “This procurement will enable Canada to develop closer ties with its allies and partners and establish a strategic partnership that not only delivers the submarines themselves, but creates a durable relationship between Canada and its strategic partner(s) to support personnel training and the sharing of information.”
The DND statement was followed on 17 September 2024 by the formal announcement of a request for information (RFI) phase in the procurement process. The RFI headline was Canada’s need to gain from industry “Further information on the availability of submarines that are currently in service or in production, and the industry’s capability and capacity to build and deliver up to 12 submarines to Canada.”
The announcement also noted that Canada was engaging with officials from allied and partner countries, and companies and navies in Europe and Asia that currently have, or are in the process of, building submarines that could meet Canadian requirements. In capability terms, the RFI announcement underlined that the new boats must provide “superior underwater surveillance capability to maintain [Canada’s] security and sovereignty”.
The RFI also set out briefly the timeframe within which the CPSP needs to deliver a new submarine fleet in order to maintain overlap with the Victoria class SSKs and transition to the new fleet with no gaps in capability. With the Victoria boats due for decommissioning from the mid-2030s, the RFI stated that Canada was anticipating a contract award by 2028 to enable delivery of the first replacement boat no later than 2035. According to the details set out in the RFI documentation, initial submissions in response to the RFI were scheduled to be submitted in mid-November 2024.
Defence vision
Naturally, the requirements set out in the RFI reflected the vision for Canada’s defence requirements as set out in the 2024 government document ‘Our North, Strong and Free’. This noted that Canada would need greater presence, reach, responsiveness, and surveillance, including in the Arctic, and added that submarines – along with hypersonic and cruise missiles – would be crucial to protect Canada’s northern and Arctic regions against emerging and existing threats. It also noted the need for underwater surveillance capability in the north (as well as elsewhere).
Bridging the gap
Canada has committed to continue operating the Victoria class boats out to the mid- to late-2030s, and consequently to modernising them over this timeframe via the Victoria Class Modernisation (VCM) programme. With CPSP being a procurement priority for Canada too, the emphasis on both programmes is designed to ensure a continuous transition from the outgoing to the incoming capability and to build a bridge across any potential capability gap.
Vice Admiral Angus Topshee, the RCN’s Commander, has set out three clear priorities around which to develop the navy: people, platforms, and being ready to fight. This is reflected in the prioritisation being developed within the VCM programme. As regards ‘platforms’, with delivering extensive upgrades for ageing submarines often being a lengthy and complex process, the navy is prioritising items within the overall VCM capability uplift plan that potentially offer more immediate operational output return on the time and money investment delivered in the VCM programme. For example, work on the boats’ hullform and propulsion to improve acoustic quieting is set to get underway in the coming fiscal year (after 1 April 2025). The boats will also be fitted with optronics masts, replacing their optical periscopes. This workstrand was initiated with a request for proposals (RFP) released to industry, closing in April 2025. Optronics masts are designed to provide more rapid capture and assessment of the operational picture on the surface. The VCM programme is also upgrading living quarters, messes, and amenities to enhance habitability for submarine crews.
With only four boats in the current fleet, reducing the work time involved in the VCM upgrades will help optimise boat availability at a time when the capability is needed at sea, in order to meet the ‘ready to fight’ requirement. Moreover, having boats available for operations will also deliver on the ‘people’ part – keeping the underwater operations expertise current amongst the RCN’s submariners, again as part of the process of bridging across to the CPSP platforms.
Dr Lee Willett
