Royal Canadian Navy Discussions and updates
- Thread starter stephen weist
- Start date
CorvetteCrunch
Member
I don't take any kind of perceived future threat of Canada being cutoff from the Panama Canal outside of its damaging/blocking by a hostile foreign power in a war as especially likely or serious to consider. It would be such a substantial destruction of our relationship that I don't think it would be recoverable, as the precedent set is beyond awful. Hence my comments about it being "out of the scope of reality", aka I don't view it as worthwhile to discuss otherwise we're far down a far deeper rabbit hole where basically anything is on the table.
If the canal isn't an option, the traditional route of transiting around South America is back on the table. It drastically slows the timeline for resource transfer over but it isn't exactly an insurmountable task.
If we do not send AOPS and/or MCDV's to Africa, we are missing out on a number of different substantial benefits for the Navy. It is not within the mandate or jurisdiction of the Coast Guard to go operate on these sorts of missions far abroad, so we would not be participating at all without the Navy. Navy personnel requiring training, qualifications and sea time, deployments like PROJECTION to Africa allow us to get people within the force what they need alongside building working relations with regional/foreign nations and helping people in the process while we're there. We aren't always required to be in Europe or Asia, so it's worthwhile in my opinion to use our ships effectively abroad to the benefit of all. This theatre isn't vital so if something more important comes up at the time, canceling the deployment isn't the end of the world, but I also wouldn't write it off as a waste of time either.
John Fedup
The Bunker Group
Sea time around South America and perhaps Antarctica would be even more beneficial.
Underway
Active Member
I will also add that the Atlantic Coast connects to the St. Laurence Seaway which itself allows cities all the way up to Thunder Bay access to the ocean outside of winter. Ships with some minor icebreaking can make their way up to Montreal very late in the season and then drop their goods off on to trains.
Economically the East Coast (and St. Laurence connected cities) are a significant engine in Canada's trade economy, moreso than the Pacific Coast when taken in totality.
Not sure what you are asking here, but they are different because the geography and ally structure is different, as is the "threat". East coast is NATO, established alliances, well practiced and good relationships. The GIUK gap and Arctic approaches are on the east coast and though the Atlantic is much smaller than the pacific more ships are needed just to cover our Economic Zones.
Pacific we don't have the same sort of threat. Our EEZ is much smaller and the self defence portion of the RCN by the very distances involved mean that less ships are required for all the naval tasks.
The Pacific strategy from an alliance perspective is also very different. There are not standing forces or task groups to integrate into. We'll jump on them when they are available (VDQ joined the Prince of Whales TG for a few months for example) but its more about single ship and small group exercises, training and operations.
Underway
Active Member
With increased icebreaker presence from the PC2's and other ships, the seasons where non-ice resistant ships can operate in the arctic may open up, and we can do season passages through should we need to. It's a long way to go though. Panama is generally the best option to the West Coast, but if the problems are in the South East Pacific, going around Africa to allies like Singapore and Australia is probably the same distance as using the Panama Canal.
Unless something has recently changed, Panama has huge capacity restraints currently due to a lack of consistent rainfall. Basically they have very limited throughput through the locks or they risk running out of water in the lake that feeds them.
A few months ago they were charging an additional fee (in the millions) to skip the queue.
Edit: Apparently they are almost back up to the pre-drought number of transits per day.