The Big Reveal

 On Friday June 28 the Minister of National Defence announced Canada's largest shipbuilding project since World War II. Irving Shipbuilding Inc will build fifteen destroyers for the Royal Canadian Navy over a 25 year construction period, employing 10,000 people. The actual ships will be built at Halifax Shipyard, but components will be sourced from across the country and abroad.

The current estimate of $40 billion will of course balloon with inflation and all the other factors that effect the cost of shipbuilding. There is little doubt however that the economic boom that has been underway in Halifax for the past few years will only continue or even grow. (There have been and will be more government announcements about needed infrastructure expansion.)

When the government announced the new National Shipbuilding Strategy in 2010 it really meant a ground up reconstruction of the country's nearly defunct shipbuilding industry. The idea was to build a "sustainable, long-term shipbuilding plan" as opposed to the previous boom and bust cycle. [After the current RCN frigates were built in 1990s, there was so little other work for the Saint John shipyard that it was closed.] 

Halifax Shipyard was essentially demolished and rebuilt from scratch.

 As the new plan evolved Halifax Shipyard became the location for construction of "surface combatants" and Seaspan Shipyard in British Columbia the centre for "non-combatants". Both facilties had to be rebuilt and re-equipped to eventually build sophisticated naval vessels and so were contracted to build a variety of other government ships. Construction of these ships has provided valuable opportunities for worker training and the development of design, supply chain, and operational management skills.

Seaspan was contracted to build research ships before embarking on the two RCN fleet replenishment ships. Those two ships, termed Joint Support Ships (JSS) are currently under construction, with delivery over the next few years.

Halifax Shipyard has built a series of Arctic Offshore Patrol Vessels for the RCN. The fifth of these was launched late last year and is fitting out now. The sixth ship is under construction. Two variants for the Canadian Coast Guard will follow. These two were added as a stop gap to ensure continuity and skill retention at the shipyard until the surface combatant project gets rolling.

At the announcement on Friday there was a ceremonial "test weld" conducted, but it will still be some time before actual construction starts. All the recent projects have included test work and mock-ups that have not formed part of the actual ships.

Destroyers

The big news on Friday was that the fifteen new ships will all be classed as destroyers. My recollection was that the program was initially conceived to replace the current RCN Halifax class frigates with twelve similar ships and to then build some upgrade / variants to become leaders or command ships.

HMCS Halifax as delivered.

The explanation for the change in nomenclature and size of ships, according to reliable sources, is that the nature of marine warfare has changed from anti-submarine to defence against aircraft. and that all the ships will need to be command and control platforms. This will necessitate a larger ship to carry the radars and long range weapons (and power generation for them) - and will need to be an estimated 8,000 tonnes displacement.

As large ships with greater capabilities they will be able to take on the screening duties for aircraft carriers and amphibious assault groups and the scouting once conducted by cruisers

 [The above is a very sketchy outline of a much more complex topic. More detail is beyond the scope of this blog. I can suggest a much more informed description here: https://rusi-ns.ca/types-of-rcn-combatant-warships/ ]

In any event the new destroyers will be called the River class, with the first three ships to be named Fraser, Saint-Laurent and Mackenzie. The current schedule has the Fraser launched in "the 2030s" and commissioned in 2035. The first batch of nine ships is to be completed in the 2040s and the rest in the 2050s. 

The names of the ships will be selected from previous ships of the RCN which were also named for rivers. Some of those will have served in World War II and others were built during the "cold war" era. For example there have been two HMCS Frasers in the RCN. The first HMCS Fraser H48 was a former British destroyer HMS Crescent built in 1932 and serving with the RCN from 1936 to 1940. It sank in collision in 1940 with the loss of 47 lives.

The second HMCS Fraser DDE 233, later DDH 233, was commissioned in 1957 and decommissioned in 1994.

The second HMCS Fraser paying off in Halifax.

Fraser (ii) was laid up in Bridgewater, NS from 1997 to 2009 when it was towed back to Halifax and eventaully to Port Maitland, Ontario where it was broken up in 2011. For more see July 2009 Shipfax.

Shipfax cannot over emphasize the importance of this announcement to the Halifax region including the port. It will also be the subject of many posts over the coming years.

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