[CaptainCrunch]

When Canada purchased the British Upholders and renamed them the Victoria class, I was fairly excited. the Upholders were advanced diesel electric subs with a sensor equivalent to the LA class, advanced fire control and very good quieting. The British took their lessons in Nuclear sub design and applied it to a Diesel platform.

They were a generational leap up from the Oberon class subs.

But there were lots of failures in that purchase and it would be too simple to blame it on the British, we didn't do a proper inspection and handover and we placed inexperienced crews on board, and the Submarine service is considered to be the most dangerous military duty out there, so of course tragedy struck, and Canada has had a lot of trouble with refitting these subs and adding them to the fleet.

I'm a little bit surprised at this announcement to be very honest, but we'll jump to that later.

Someone asked why we need subs?

We are a nation surrounded by three massive coastlines and vast water boundries and due to budget we have a small Navy that can't cover those coasts effectively. Add to that that we have little in the way of Arctic combat capability.

Submarines do a few things extremely well, and relatively inexpensively

1) They are the ultimate sensor platform. they can literally hear whales humping in Hawaii in the right water conditions. Because of that they can cover vast coast lines with few assets, in other words they can be a cheaper alternative.

2) There is a fear factor with Submarines. Your average surface Naval commander will entirely change his tactics even if he hears rumours of a sub in his area of operation. The American's will often lie about the deployment of their Submarines to literally control Ocean grids.

3) A Nuclear Submarine is Arctic capable, a Diesel Electic is not as capable due to the snorkling requirements. Even an air independant sub cannot compete with a nuclear submarine. With 3 subs the Canadian Navy has an effective deterrant and spy capability across three coast lines.

4) If we add Nuclear Subs it will bring us more in line with NATO requirements. We really can't deploy our Victoria subs over seas, even if we wanted to.

But with every purchase there are problems

1) There is a vast difference between the Diesel Sub community and the Nuclear sub community. First and foremost, Nuclear subs are designed to be at sea forever. Average deployments are 90 days and more, you would literally have to look at every crew member in our navy, and change their training and recruiting habits.

2) All submariners have to know every inch of their sub, every system, and be able to perform duties in every space, thats how you earn your dolphin. If we went to a nuc navy, every member of the community would have to be retrained, that could literally take years
3) Resupply, replenishment and refitting is completely different every sub base would have to be refitted
4) There's obviously the question of how a nuc would fit into Canada's signature in the non proliferation treaty
5) Environmental groups would literally have a cow.

In terms of availability, there are really only two choices, the American's are looking at retiring members of the 688i fleet, however by the time that purchase happened the boats would be fairly old and require a refit.

The British are looking at the replacement of their Trafalger class boats with Astute class boats, but the same scenario applies.

I would make the assumption that we could get the boats for a song.

I don't know, thinking about and doing something with Military procurement are really two vastly seperate things.