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Each year, as wildfires threaten and destroy communities in Canada’s north, the country’s capacity to fight them returns to the forefront of public attention. This year, that attention has intensified. Smoke has spread across Eastern Canada and into the United States, temporarily driving air quality to the worst levels in the world. The issue is no longer just environmental or public health-related — it has taken on geopolitical weight, with U.S. President Donald Trump threatening tariffs against Canada as a result of the emergency.

Notwithstanding the fact that intensifying fires in Canada (and, indeed, the United States) are closely linked to human-caused climate change — which the United States is the world’s largest contributor to — and that no realistic human effort can fully eliminate or even guarantee containment of fires in Canada’s vast boreal forest as it becomes drier, it is still a fact that Canada would benefit from investing in more wildfire fighting capacity than it has. And the position the U.S. has taken adds a motivation to ensuring that investment is highly visible.

Water bombers are among the most visible — and, while not a panacea, among the most useful — tools available, putting them high up on the list of ways Canada could choose to address this mix of challenges. They are not a panacea. Canada needs more of them. And it would benefit from having them sooner rather than later. Though it’s fair to question who should acquire them.

Wildfire response is primarily a provincial responsibility. But that distinction matters less in practice than it does on paper.

The federal government already plays a meaningful role. It is responsible for firefighting in national parks and uses that equipment and those personnel to support provincial efforts when possible. The Canadian Armed Forces are also routinely deployed to assist provinces during major fire seasons and provinces have consistently welcomed federal support even when it steps outside these technical boundaries — such as with the establishment of a Federal reserve firefighting fleet of 10 aircraft that are available through the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre.

More importantly, Ottawa has something the provinces do not: the ability to move quickly, at scale, and with national coordination. If Canada is serious about expanding its water bomber fleet in the near- or mid-term, the federal government will have to be involved.

Accepting this as sufficient justification to at least explore the possibility of the federal government acting to increase the Canadian water bomber fleet, the question becomes: Where could these water bombers come from?

The first, obvious, answer is that Canada buys water bombers from a company that makes water bombers. But there are, effectively, only four multi-engine aircraft being produced globally for this purpose and none are available in meaningful numbers on short timelines.

The first is Russia’s Beriev Be-200, which is a large amphibious aircraft marketed capable of firefighting among a number of other purposes. However, with only 20 delivered since it first flew in 1998, and none since 2023, it is unlikely it could be delivered in significant numbers to Canada any time soon. Geopolitical factors — which is to say, Russia’s on-going murderous occupation of parts of Ukraine and attempted brutal invasion of the rest of that nation, and the resultant sanctions from civilized countries, including Canada, the world over — also make it an unappealing choice.

A second that may be in-delivery is the new Chinese AVIC AG600. A prototype of this aircraft first flew in 2017 with deliveries expected in 2022, however that was later pushed back to 2025, and it is unclear if it met that target. It would also face similar, if less acute, geopolitical barriers to an aircraft from Russia.

An option without that geopolitical baggage is the Frégate-F100, being developed by Hynaero in France. But it’s early in development by an unproven company that, even if things go well, is only promising delivery by 2032. It would be longer before Canada could acquire any, and longer still before being available in significant numbers. Canada can not wait.

That leaves the most obvious candidate: Canada’s own CL-215/415 lineage — the “Super Scooper” family — now being revived as the DHC-515. Though its production timeline is also less than ideal.

Production of the aircraft, called the DHC-515 in its latest iteration, only resumed in 2022. Initial deliveries are not expected until 2028, with at least the first 20 aircraft already allocated to European customers. Canadian provincial orders exist — including from Alberta, Manitoba, and Ontario — but none are expected before 2030 and additional orders placed today would not enter service until 2032 or later.

It’s also not clear that this timeline is easily changed. Expanding the existing production line is likely to create disruptions that slow deliveries in the immediate future. Establishing a second production line would likely take years — the current line itself is taking roughly six years from initial work to first delivery — so that doesn’t provide an obvious path to getting aircraft sooner and would only make sense if sustained demand exceeded the projected full-rate output of roughly 12 aircraft per year which is probably sufficient, as it could replace the entire Canadian-based Super Scooper fleet in less than 5 years. It’s probably telling that the manufacturer, De Havilland Canada, has not publicly promoted either of these ideas.

These are, with a few even more problematic caveats, the only options for purpose-built water bombers anywhere in the world. The conclusion all this leads to is that while Canada would benefit from ordering more of them, and there’s little reason to order anything other than the domestically built DHC-515, none of these options are likely to meaningfully expand Canada’s water bomber capacity this decade.

And current pressures suggest this is not a decade Canada can afford to wait out.

If purpose-built aircraft cannot arrive in time, the only viable alternative is conversion.

A wide range of aircraft can be adapted for firefighting, but not all are equally useful in the Canadian context. Because of its expansive geography, the size of its wildfires, and the time constraints, Canada is looking for a multi-engine aircraft with proven conversion pathways and sufficient availability on the secondary market.

One aircraft that fits this description is the Candian built Dash-8. With over 1200 of this aircraft built between 1983 and 2022 it’s a popular regional airliner with at least a dozen examples of water bomber conversions. Because of its long history, and the fact that it’s a favourite of smaller airlines that often face financial difficulties that lead to selling off aircraft, it’s easy to acquire, maintain, and to find operators for. In its modified form, the Dash-8 can carry as much as 10,000 litres of fire retardant or water.

The Boeing 737 is another strong candidate. As the most prolific airliner ever built, it is widely available and well supported. At least five have already been converted into water bombers by the Canadian company Coulson using their proprietary Retardant Aerial Delivery System (RADS-XXL), and a number more are on order. After conversion, these 737s can drop up to 15,000 litres of fire retardant or water.

Both are viable. Neither is the most interesting option.

Canada already owns and operates a fleet of C-130 Hercules aircraft. Until recently, that fleet included 29 aircraft, split between 17 modern C-130J variants and 12 older C-130H models now being pushed toward retirement.

A recent assessment by research consultant Steffan Watkins, using publicly available information, suggests only four of the older C-130Hs can be confirmed to have flown since early June 2026, with several appearing idle for months at their depot in Abbotsford. However, all but one have flown within the past year and — critically — all appear to remain in Government of Canada possession.

The status of the C-130Hs is important because the RADS-XXL installation requires significant modification to an airframe. After modification, the most bulky component — the water tank and attachments — are designed to be taken on and off the aircraft. However significant piping, hydraulic systems, and a pair of belly doors must be permanently installed. This means that while a modified C-130 can be used for other functions, such as in a transport role, its capacity is likely diminished and there will be concern about damaging its firefighting systems when used at its limits.

For that reason, the RCAF is unlikely to accept these modifications on its active C-130J fleet. But the retiring C-130Hs present a different opportunity.

Some are at the end of their service life. Others are not — and would likely be sold to commercial operators, where one probable outcome is their eventual conversion into water bombers for contract work.

Letting them be sold to companies likely to convert them to water bombers is a low friction way to get more water bombers in the world, but it doesn’t guarantee their availability in Canada during our wildfire season as demand for water bomber services exists around the globe.

Canada could instead retain these aircraft and convert them domestically. The question then becomes how it would operate them.

Conceivably the RCAF could continue to maintain and fly them. This would have the added benefit of giving them a contingency “surge” air transport capacity as well. However, that would present personnel challenges for an already stretched organization, and it’s unlikely to have RCAF support as they’ve already decided to part with these aircraft. It may, therefore, be better to allow a federal civilian agency to operate them, or else to sell or lease them to provinces. The government could even choose to lease them to private firms. It may seem counter-intuitive to lease them to the same corporations we would otherwise sell them to, however, by keeping ownership it’s possible to ensure through lease terms that they prioritize Canadian service when needed.

Coulson has demonstrated the ability to convert at least three aircraft per year using the RADS-XXL system. Even accounting for existing commitments, that implies a pathway to expanding Canada’s firefighting capacity within a few years — much sooner than purpose-built aircraft could arrive — and one that could likely be scaled up more easily than aircraft production.

A second system that could be used to make use of the latent firefighting capability in Canada’s C-130 fleet is the US made Modular Airborne FireFighting System (MAFFS). This system is smaller than the RADS-XXL in capacity, at 11,000 litres, and drops water or fire retardant more slowly, but has the benefit of requiring no modification to the aircraft, and can be loaded and unloaded onto any C-130 when needed.

This opens the possibility of using the RCAF’s C-130Js and not just the C-130Hs, as aircraft that use MAFFSs can quickly go back into use for other roles without any impact on their ability to perform those other roles. The flexibility inherent in this approach also increases the systems’ availability. Aircraft are sometimes unavailable for maintenance, if a system requires an aircraft to be converted, that specific airframe being under maintenance means the firefighting system aboard is also unavailable. A completely modular system like MAFFS can always be put into use, as long as any C-130 is available to carry it.

The biggest obstacle to this idea is that Canada’s C-130J fleet was sized for a defined set of missions. Firefighting was not one of them. Every aircraft being used as a water bomber means one less aircraft available for transport, logistics, search and rescue, and other operations they were acquired for. That has a negative impact on Canadian security.

The government could, of course, choose not to assign C-130Js to operate as water bombers except when availability allows. However, it will be very politically difficult for the government to tell Canadians who are impacted by wildfires that its fleet of C-130Js isn’t helping them because it’s too busy with more important taskings.

If Canada has MAFFSs for RCAF aircraft, Canadians will expect to see those aircraft being used to fight fires. And with the Canadian wildfire season lasting over half a year, that’s a significant drain on the RCAF’s transport resources.

There are ways to offset this. Additional C-130Js could be procured — the aircraft remains in production. But that just shifts the limitation from the number of airframes to the number of personnel available to maintain and operate them. The RCAF is already stretched, managing multiple procurement programs while attempting to rebuild operational capacity. Expanding the fleet without expanding the force solves little, and expanding the force will take years — it’s not the near-term solution Canada needs.

Balancing this is difficult, and presumably one of the reasons why the RCAF has never been given this capability. However, it’s undeniable after the last week that wildfires aren’t just an environmental challenge for Canada, they’re also a national security threat. And with the CAF’s purpose being to protect Canada against threats to its security, it probably can’t expect to play no role.

A more workable approach may combine these options.

Retiring C-130Hs could be equipped with MAFFSs and operated outside the RCAF — by a federal civilian agency or through structured leasing arrangements — preserving capacity without imposing full operational burden on the military.

At the same time, the RCAF’s C-130Js could provide surge capacity. When the civilian-operated C-130Hs are unavailable due to maintenance, crew limits, or operational demand, the MAFFSs could be transferred to available RCAF C-130J.

This would still create training and operational requirements for the RCAF. But it would be a smaller, more flexible burden — and one that could be deprioritized when needed with a much lower political risk.

Canada’s problem is not a lack of options. It is that every option comes with obstacles that cannot be wished away.

Purpose-built aircraft exist, but not on timelines that meet the current need. Converted aircraft can be fielded quickly, but require trade-offs in flexibility, ownership, and operational control. Military platforms can fill gaps, but only by displacing other missions.

The temptation is to wait for a clean solution: more DHC-515s, expanded production, a larger dedicated fleet. That solution is coming. It is also years away.

Wildfires are not waiting.

U.S. impatience, however unreasonable, is not waiting.

Canada does not need a perfect answer. It needs capacity — now — both for its utility and visibility. That requires a willingness to accept the imperfect solutions. The longer those trade-offs are deferred, the more they will be made under pressure, in worse conditions, and at higher cost.

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When NATO leaders gather in Ankara this week, most international attention will focus on two issues. The first is managing the collective — and increasingly complex — relationship between NATO’s European members and the United States. The second is sustaining support for Ukraine as it continues its war against Russia. Together, these will consume the bulk of political and diplomatic bandwidth at the summit.

What attention remains will likely be directed toward a more technocratic, but no less consequential, task: mapping out how allies intend to meet last year’s commitment to raise defence spending to 5% of GDP by 2035.

But for those watching more closely, there is a secondary story worth tracking. Canada — the often-overlooked North American member of NATO — is arriving in Ankara with unusual momentum. A series of recent decisions and announcements suggest this summit could mark a turning point in how Canada is perceived within the alliance, and how it chooses to position itself in the decades ahead.

For years, the simplest measure of burden-sharing within NATO was the 2% of GDP defence spending benchmark. It was an imperfect metric, but a politically powerful one. As recently as last year’s summit, Canada arrived spending just 1.4% of GDP, even as a newly elected prime minister reiterated a fresh promise to reach 2%.

This year is different. Canada has now crossed that threshold.

Critics at home have been quick to qualify the achievement. Some point out that Canada only narrowly cleared the 2% mark, while others note that not all of the increase reflects new spending — most notably the $1.38 billion reallocation of the Canadian Coast Guard into the Department of National Defence.

Those critiques are not without merit. But they are also largely domestic in their relevance. Internationally, what stands out is the scale of the increase. A $19.5 billion rise in defence spending in a single year. By that measure, Canada ranks among the top contributors to spending growth within the alliance — outpacing countries like the United Kingdom, France, and even the United States in year-over-year increases.

To put that into perspective, when Finland joined NATO in 2023, considerable attention was paid to the capabilities it brought with it. Canada’s single-year increase in defence spending is, in purely financial terms, equivalent to adding roughly one-and-a-half Finlands to the alliance.

That comparison is imperfect — Finland contributes far more than just its budget — but it underscores the scale of Canada’s recent shift. Combined with an interim target of 4% by 2030, on the way to 5% by 2035, Canada now enters the summit in a stronger position than many of its peers.

Prime Minister Carney is also expected to arrive in Ankara on the heels of a major procurement announcement. The selection of a design for the Canadian Patrol Submarine Project.

While some NATO allies may be disappointed if Canada opts for a South Korean design — as current speculation suggests — the broader significance of the decision will not be lost. A commitment to acquire twelve submarines represents a generational investment in naval capability.

Indeed, if delivered as planned, a fleet of twelve modern submarines could position Canada as one of NATO’s most capable operators of undersea warfare assets — arguably second only to the United States in terms of attack submarine capacity. That ranking may evolve as other allies invest in their own fleets, but the point remains. In an alliance increasingly focused on deterrence, maritime security, and contested access, this investment will give Canada leverage.

Beyond procurement, Canada is also attempting to shape the financial architecture of NATO’s rearmament.

In April, it was announced that Canada would host a new Defence, Security and Resilience Bank (DSRB) — a multinational financing mechanism aimed at accelerating defence industrial investment. If successfully launched, the initiative could give Canada outsized influence in one of NATO’s most pressing challenges — translating political commitments into industrial output.

Since the announcement, negotiations with partner nations have continued behind closed doors. If those discussions have progressed sufficiently, Ankara would provide an ideal opportunity to formally launch the bank.

Canada’s recent agreement to participate in the European Union’s Security Action for Europe (SAFE) defence financing and procurement program further reinforces this shift toward industrial integration.

As the first non-European country to join the initiative, Canada has positioned itself as a bridge between North American and European defence markets. The practical implications of that decision may begin to materialize in Ankara, where announcements tied to SAFE-enabled procurement deals are likely.

One particularly notable area to watch is airborne early warning and control. NATO is widely expected to move toward adopting Saab’s GlobalEye platform as a successor to its aging AWACS fleet. The aircraft is Swedish-designed, but built on a Canadian-made airframe — and Canada has already selected it for its own use.

While details remain under negotiation, there is growing speculation that Canada could play a broader role in production, extending beyond domestic procurement to support future allied orders. If realized, that would represent a tangible example of Canada embedding itself within NATO’s evolving industrial base.

Another potential announcement — though less certain — is the outcome of Canada’s long-running fighter review.

Reports in June suggested that a decision on whether to supplement or partially replace Canada’s F-35 acquisition with Saab Gripen fighters is effectively complete, with timing the only remaining question. If accurate, the NATO summit would provide a high-profile venue for the announcement.

Finally, there is the question of the Arctic — an area where Canadian policy has historically diverged from NATO’s institutional approach.

Canada has long been cautious about embedding Arctic security within NATO frameworks, in part because most NATO members don’t recognize the full extent of Canada’s maritime claims in the Arctic.

But that position has shown signs of softening in recent months since NATO allies deployed assets to Greenland in response to renewed U.S. rhetoric about acquiring the island. In the aftermath, Canadian officials have been more open to discussions about a greater NATO role in the region.

If that shift is real, Ankara could serve as a venue for early signals — if not formal agreements, then at least frameworks for future cooperation. Even modest movement on this file would represent a notable evolution in Canada’s approach.

Taken together, from a Canadian perspective, this summit still has the potential to be consequential. Whether it makes headlines outside — or even inside — Canada, the country is positioned to accomplish a fair amount this week. The summit’s centre of gravity lies elsewhere — in Washington, in Kyiv, and in the broader question of NATO’s future cohesion. Even so, Ankara may offer a useful indication of how Canada’s role within the alliance is beginning to evolve.

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The plan for the Snowbirds is that they will not tour for several seasons after 2026, before returning at some point in the early 2030s flying newly acquired CT-157 Siskin II turboprop aircraft. The Siskin II is already being acquired as part of Canada’s Future Aircrew Training Program, filling a similar niche to the one the Tutors were originally acquired to fill, and the intention appears to be to add aircraft onto the existing 19-plane order to meet this additional requirement. One interesting piece of phrasing from the press release states that this “will ultimately rebuild to the team’s distinctive nine-plane formation.” The word “ultimately” suggests that the team may initially include fewer than nine aircraft when it returns.

The choice to suspend Snowbirds’ performances until a new aircraft is available is one that I agree with, and have previously argued for. There have been safety issues with their ejection system that, reportedly, have not been addressed, and which contributed to the death of a non-pilot team member in 2020. The RCAF is also going through its largest recapitalization effort in decades, and experienced personnel are both in short supply and required to make those projects successful. The Snowbirds require disproportionately experienced personnel to operate and, as they fly an aircraft that’s now unique within the RCAF, those personnel lose proficiency that’s valuable in other units while assigned to the team. It simply doesn’t make sense to prioritize the team’s performances over more directly combat-relevant needs under those circumstances.

While I may agree with the decision to suspend Snowbirds performances until the Tutor can be replaced, I do not agree with the decision to replace it with the Siskin II — a turboprop plane — rather than a jet. The rest of this piece is going to be much more subjective and, frankly, personal than anything I’ve written here before. If that’s not why you read my work, that’s completely fair — expect more concrete analysis in the future. But the arguments for having the Snowbirds at all are also subjective and, in many cases, personal. Even seemingly rational arguments in support of them — like the claim that they improve RCAF recruitment — are only tenuously supported. I can’t find any record showing that someone has actually studied that question. In the end, Canada has the Snowbirds because Canadians like the Snowbirds. So discussing this topic in terms of why I, as a Canadian, like them doesn’t seem inappropriate.

Explaining why I like them requires me to start with baseball cards:

When I was around seven, I started collecting baseball cards. I knew very little about them, but my older brother collected baseball cards, and I didn’t want to be left out. One day, while picking out some of my cards to put into sleeves my parents had bought me, my brother saw a card of George Bell and told me I should sleeve it because it was worth protecting. I took his advice, not knowing why. That George Bell card happened to be part of a theme design that I only had a few of. The next time I came across a card with that design, I went to my brother and asked him if it was worth protecting too. He told me no, that it wasn’t the design that made it special, it was the player. I remember understanding this, but as I went through the rest of my cards, I still singled out cards with that specific design to go and ask him if they were valuable too. Having one special card with a feature I could identify made them all special to me.

In the years that followed, I learned a lot more about baseball and baseball cards. I now know, in my head, that my brother was wrong. My George Bell card wasn’t anything special, not in terms of value or interest to anyone else, and neither were any of the others with that design. But even though I haven’t looked at my cards in at least a decade, I know that the binder I keep them in has that George Bell card first, followed by every other card in that theme design, and that I couldn’t tell you what the next — presumably most financially valuable — card is. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. That’s the power of formative experiences; they can make things valuable to you in a way that doesn’t have to make sense in any objective way.

By the time I was seven, I’d also been to many airshows… sorta kinda. We couldn’t usually afford tickets, even though my dad — who’d been a private pilot before I was born — loved planes. So my family would pack a picnic lunch and go somewhere nearby where we could see the planes at least some of the time. My formative experience with airshows — the thing I remember doing year after year — was taking the ferry out to the Toronto Islands every Labour Day weekend, setting up on Hanlan’s Point Beach, and watching planes across the water at the CNE.

I always enjoyed seeing the planes from that beach, but the view of many of the performances left a lot to be desired. The CNE was centre stage, and performances that could be kept close-in were. Our view wasn’t blocked, but most acts were far away, relatively quiet, and clearly weren’t intended for us, so I spent at least as much time playing in the water and building sandcastles as I did watching them. The exception was the multi-jet teams — the Blue Angels, the Thunderbirds — I’d always watch those. And when I got bored with the beach and wanted to go home, my dad would remind me that the Snowbirds always performed last, and that the Snowbirds were always worth staying for. He was always right.

What was different about the multi-jet teams is that they couldn’t do their entire act close to centre stage. They had to spread out. That, along with the noise they made, meant that I felt like their performances were just as accessible to me as they were to anyone else. With nine aircraft that needed time to circle in from all angles, the Snowbirds’ show was more inclusive in this way than any other. By contrast, high-performance turboprop shows — even team performances — always stayed close to centre stage and felt like they were a private show for someone else. The multi-jet shows, and especially the Snowbirds, were something special.

Just as I went on to gain knowledge of baseball cards, I’ve gone on to gain experience at airshows. I’ve had the opportunity I didn’t have as a kid, sitting where the show is meant to be watched from. And I know, in my head, that all else being equal it’s objectively better when an entire performance can happen right in front of the intended audience. But my formative experiences still make the wide, sweeping shows that circle far away from the audience — the ones jets perform because they have to — the ones I get excited about. I always try to catch a glimpse of the aircraft wheeling off away from centre stage, waiting for their cue to return, because I know they’re passing above a kid like I used to be… and many others. I feel like I’m sharing the experience of a public show that’s accessible and inclusive, rather than a private one that excludes others.

The same brother who told me that my George Bell card was worth protecting went on to become a pastor. Once, when he was talking to another pastor in my family — I come from a family of pastors and pilots, sue me — I remember him justifying renovations to his church by saying that “architecture defines practice,” and that the his church’s building didn’t symbolize the values of the congregation, and needed to if the church was to thrive.

There’s a piece of wisdom in that idea that applies more broadly.

The Snowbirds are indisputably a symbol of Canada. And as Canada is a democratic society that values the principles of inclusiveness and accessibility. It matters that our symbols reflect that. If they don’t, why have them as symbols? Having the Snowbirds fly the Tutor, by nature of its flying characteristics, forced their performances to be inclusive and accessible — they could be enjoyed whether you paid for a ticket to the show or not. In switching to the Siskin II, I think that could be lost. I think that will be lost.

The issue isn’t that the Siskin II can’t perform the wide, sweeping show the Snowbirds fly today. In terms of performance, it’s nearly a match for the Tutor in most key metrics. The issue is that it doesn’t have to perform that type of show, and some fool with the best of intentions will decide that since it can perform a tighter, more centre-stage-focused show, it should. The architecture of the team (the aircraft) will define its practices (the show) and something will be lost without anyone knowing why. The show will become, in a sense, privatized — for paying customers only — which isn’t what a publicly funded national symbol should be.

Perhaps that’s too pompous a rationale. But the fact remains that I get excited to see the Snowbirds flying the Tutor, and I don’t — and don’t think I ever will — feel the same way about a turboprop. How I’ve arrived at that feeling is clearly personal. Most Canadians haven’t watched airshows from outside the fence or across the water. But even if my reasons for the feeling are uncommon or even unique, the sense of excitement I get from watching the Snowbirds is common. Whatever personal experience has led people to it, though it differs from mine, the feeling is the same. And I don’t think most of those Canadians will feel the same about a turboprop.

Of course, the argument that the Snowbirds should get a jet is irrelevant if there isn’t a viable option. The Siskin II was selected because Canada will already be flying it as a trainer, solving many of the problems tied to the Tutor as a single-purpose platform. It wouldn’t make sense to acquire a new jet solely for the Snowbirds, or to push a jet that’s otherwise going out of service into use by the team. Whatever fighter Canada ultimately fields will be far too expensive to justify in this role, and deliveries to combat squadrons must come first.

Fortunately, there’s another option. Since 2021, Canada has been looking to acquire a new jet through the Future Fighter Lead-in Training program. As the name suggests, these aircraft will be used to train new fighter pilots. There are logistical challenges in using them for the Snowbirds — fewer pilots and technicians would have experience with them by default — but it would still be an improvement over the Tutor as a completely unique flying platform. And while we don’t yet know what aircraft will be selected through this program, it will be a jet trainer that is suitable for aerobatic display. I’ve seen it suggested that the likely timeline for delivery through this project is around 2035, but if selection can be expedited, it’s possible that Snowbirds aircraft could be delivered first — keeping their return on an early-2030s timeline.

If Canada is going to pause the Snowbirds, it should use that time to get this right. Not just to replace an aging airframe, but to think seriously about what the team is supposed to be. The easy answer is that they are a recruitment tool or a public relations asset. The deeper answer is that they are something closer to a shared cultural experience — one that, at its best, doesn’t just belong to those who attend airshows, but to every Canadian who can look up. If that’s the case, then the aircraft matters — not because of raw performance, but because of what it encourages the team to do, and who it allows the show to reach.

There’s still time to choose an aircraft that preserves that spirit. A jet trainer acquired through the Future Fighter Lead-in Training program wouldn’t be the simplest or cheapest option, but it would be the right one. It would keep the Snowbirds fast, loud, and necessarily expansive — the kind of show that spills beyond the fence line and across the water. The kind of show that a kid on a beach, or a rooftop, or a backyard can feel just as much a part of as anyone else. If the Snowbirds are going to disappear for years — and they should — they ought to come back as something worth waiting for. Not just to those who already love aircraft, but to the ones who don’t yet know that they will.

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This is my third piece in a week, which is a blistering pace for me. I’m doing this intentionally to test whether a faster pace of writing is something that’s sustainable for me. One thing that makes it sustainable is having a larger audience, so your likes and shares really do make a difference in what you’re likely to see from me in the future.

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The Permanent Joint Board on Defense has been regularly meeting since 1940. It’s a less formal meeting between senior working-level civilian and military officials, as well as invited advisors, which can discuss any topic related to the defence of either country that either party may wish to raise — giving it a wide brief. In practical terms, it’s been used “to exchange views of a politically sensitive nature” and “its key role is to help the two nations to develop common understanding and workable approaches to continental defence challenges as well as global security threats with a North American nexus”, in recent years. At least, that’s how a report by the Centre for Defence and Security Studies, University of Manitoba described the findings of a 2020 meeting that discussed the past, present, and future of the Board on its 80th anniversary.

According to Wikipedia, the board meets semi-annually (twice per year), however the source for that appears to be a backgrounder released by the government in 2001. In more recent times, it’s met once per year, including in June 2019, June 2021 (with 2020 skipped, perhaps due to COVID or because that year’s 80th anniversary discussion was deemed sufficient), October 2022, October 2023, and November 2024. Each of these meetings was numbered, meaning that list is complete during those years.

However, while it’s relatively easy to find press releases or other information related to all of these meetings, there are no indications that the Board has met since Donald Trump returned to office in 2025. It’s not impossible that a change in policy — perhaps tied to Trump’s return — has led to a decision to no longer publicize anything about these meetings. But the 2019 meeting, held during Trump’s first term, was documented, which would make that a new approach. The more likely explanation is that the meeting expected in 2025 simply didn’t occur — implying there may have been a de facto “pause” even before today’s announcement.

What’s striking is that Colby’s justification rests on the claim that “Canada has failed to make credible progress on its defense commitments,” alongside the assertion that “a strong Canada that prioritizes hard power over rhetoric benefits us all.” Taken at face value, pausing the Permanent Joint Board on Defense is a counter-intuitive response, given that balancing each country’s contributions to mutual defence is one of the Board’s most consistent and well-established functions.

A more plausible explanation is that this fits a familiar pattern in how Donald Trump, and now his Administration, apply pressure: identify a grievance without offering a clear solution, generate headlines, and wait for the other party to act pre-emptively in an attempt to defuse the conflict. The outcome is that Trump gets something he wants, or at least that the other party thinks he wants, without giving up anything. The follow-through is that the US then completely ignores the offered appeasement, continues its criticism, sometimes getting additional concessions, and then eventually enters into negotiations with the other side in an already weakened position.

Canada saw this dynamic at the start of Trump’s second term, when tariff threats were tied to concerns about border security. Never mind that only 1.3% of illegal immigrant interceptions and 0.2% of fentanyl seizures — the claimed irritants — were occurring at the Canadian border, Canada still moved quickly to increase border security spending and capabilities. Those efforts received no acknowledgement from the incoming Administration. The criticism continued without any acknowledgement of the investment, eventually shifting toward more politically potent — if equally unfounded — claims about trade practices.

In many ways, Canada is already caught in this cycle when it comes to defence. In the first year of Trump’s second term, Canada increased defence spending by over 40% year-over-year. It has committed to increasing spending to 2.5 times the 2024 level within a decade, on top of a 40% increase over the previous decade. The four largest defence projects in Canadian history — a new fighter fleet, a more capable class of warship, NORAD modernization, and a significantly expanded submarine capability — are not only proceeding simultaneously, but are now moving at a pace few other nations’ defence establishments could match, even accounting for past delays. Alongside these are numerous “smaller” (though still substantial) efforts: rifles, air defence, HIMARS, helicopters, corvettes, replenishment ships, AEW&C, aerial refuelling, cyber capabilities, and drones of all kinds, just to scratch the surface. Canada is even developing a Reserve force expansion that could potentially quadruple total CAF manpower.

And the US Administration’s response to this is… zero acknowledgement. Just the exact the critique we would expect, and in fact received, before any of these projects or programs — with the “pause” of a long-standing Board to emphasize the point. But, what point?

No one could credibly claim Canada’s significant increases in defence investment are happening flawlessly — particularly if one’s interest is in how they serve America, rather than Canadian, priorities. Some level and amount of criticism is fair and reasonable. But if America wants to influence Canada’s decisions within those investments, acknowledging that those investments are happening is a pre-requisite. And history shows that the Permanent Joint Board on Defense has been an effective venue for exactly that kind of engagement.

If the US Administration has a specific aim from this action, it’s just as likely to be related to the upcoming CUSMA trade discussions as about defence. More likely, though, the goal is simply to induce unilateral concessions from Canada, without much regard for their substance. Whatever Canada offers in response, it can be confident of one thing: it will not reduce future demands, and once given, it will not be available in subsequent negotiations. The U.S. may escalate if Canada does nothing — but it may do so regardless.

In the end, this decision will likely be a relatively minor element of the broader strain Donald Trump has introduced into Canada–U.S. relations. The Permanent Joint Board on Defense matters, but as a senior advisory body, its absence will not produce immediate negative consequences at the operational level and, notwithstanding damaged relationships, can easily be restarted. If the objective is to extract one-sided concessions, this is, by comparison to other available tools, almost a restrained approach.

From the Canadian government’s perspective, there is even a limited silver lining. For as long as the pause lasts, it provides political cover for defence decisions that might otherwise draw U.S. criticism. It’s easy to imagine Prime Minister Carney responding to such objections with a deadpan: “Canada’s government will always prioritize the defence of Canada. We recognize the United States has concerns, and that we share an interest in the defence of North America. But as they made the unilateral decision to step away from the Permanent Joint Board on Defense — the forum where we addressed these issues for over 85 years — it is more difficult to incorporate their views.” It would play well domestically. It also has the virtue, and curse, of being true.

Because ultimately, that is the risk of the approach America is taking to its relationship with Canada. If every concession is met with silence, and every effort is treated as insufficient, then there’s no incentive to cooperate except when it benefits Canada without anything in return. The Permanent Joint Board on Defense was built upon the same assumption all of Canada and America’s cooperation is built upon — that both countries benefit from sustained, good-faith engagement. Pausing it doesn’t just test that assumption — it undermines it.

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However, ever since former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that Canada planned to pursue a fleet of up to 12 submarines in July of 2024, Canada’s submarine procurement is one project that’s actually moved extremely quickly. Requirements were set, industry feedback sought, and the downselection to two potential builders happened in just over a year. By March of 2026, both builders had submitted detailed bids, and Canada is now potentially just weeks away from making its final selection.

Of course, selecting a submarine quickly isn’t the same as getting a submarine quickly. The earliest Canada will receive newly built submarines is 2032. However, in a procurement system that has, in recent years, averaged over 15 years for routine procurements — and much longer for projects of this size — just eight years from announcement to initial delivery is an impressive outlier.

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The two submarines contending for this contract are the KSS-III-class, built by Hanwha Ocean and already in service with the South Korean Navy, and the Type 212CD-class, being built by TKMS for Germany and Norway. The Government of Canada has stated that, notwithstanding the differences in their capabilities, sizes, and systems, both designs meet the Royal Canadian Navy’s needs, and the final decision will be based on other criteria within the competing bids. One thing that both designs have in common is that they’re diesel-electric submarines with an integrated air independent propulsion system — not nuclear powered.

Nuclear-powered submarines have a reputation for being the most advanced, most capable, submarines in the world. This reputation isn’t entirely unearned; they have real advantages over diesel-electric submarines that are significant for Canada. This raises the question: why isn’t the Government of Canada or the CAF at least considering nuclear-powered submarines for the Royal Canadian Navy?

Generally speaking, nuclear submarines’ advantages are that they have enormous range without the need to refuel, can operate at higher speeds than conventional submarines and won’t reduce their total range when they do, and that they can stay submerged for months without needing to exchange air with the surface. Discussions of submarines for Canada often center around the Arctic, and all three of these advantages of nuclear submarines are relevant to maintaining a persistent presence there.

First, it is very difficult to operate diesel-electric submarines in the North because they need to exchange air with the surface to run their diesel generators that recharge their batteries. This is usually, and most safely, done with a snorkel, but sea ice makes this a liability as snorkels cannot penetrate solid ice sheets and can be damaged in areas with loose ice chunks.

Canada’s Arctic also has no facilities capable of supporting submarines, and building such facilities has proven to be an immense challenge. Without support facilities in the North, the distances Canadian submarines need to transit, independent from support, to and from the Arctic can actually be greater than the distance to friendly ports in Asia or Europe — even if they never leave Canadian waters. This makes long range a requirement. While that range is not impossible for diesel-electric submarines, it remains an advantage for nuclear propulsion. Nuclear submarines’ higher speeds are also beneficial because it can increase patrol efficiency. More speed means less time transiting to a patrol area and more time on station, potentially allowing fewer nuclear submarines to provide equivalent coverage within the Arctic.

The advantages of nuclear submarines are not limited to the Arctic, however. One of the main capabilities submarines offer is the ability to threaten another nation’s sea lines of communication — the routes used by its trade and naval vessels. If Canada needed to threaten another nation’s sea lines — unless that country was its historic ally, the United States — geography dictates that it would be doing so a long way from Canadian shores. Significant range is therefore a requirement for Canada to have this capability, and speed also benefits this capability because it makes that threat more immediate. Nuclear submarines are better suited to this task than non-nuclear submarines. A similar logic applies to using submarines to threaten targets on land.

These advantages have historically been well understood within the Royal Canadian Navy and the Government of Canada. The current procurement project is only the third time Canada has sought to acquire new submarines since the first nuclear submarine sailed in 1954. Even though other options were executed in the end, it’s notable that in both of the previous submarine procurement projects, the intention was, at least for a time, to acquire nuclear submarines.

In the 1950s, the Royal Canadian Navy selected the US Navy’s nuclear-powered Skipjack-class before the government overruled that plan and selected the UK’s non-nuclear Oberon-class in 1960 instead. In the 1980s, the Government of Brian Mulroney announced that it would replace the Oberon-class with nuclear-powered submarines in its 1987 Defence White Paper, before reversing that decision in 1989 and eventually acquiring the currently serving Victoria-class. Despite the end result, in both cases, the advantages of nuclear submarines featured prominently in discussion and debate.

Nuclear submarines’ advantages of speed and range still exist today, and Canadians in and out of Government service show awareness of them. While public discourse on military subjects in Canada is often limited, interest in nuclear submarines spiked after the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia announced the AUKUS pact in 2021. This agreement aimed to transfer several American nuclear submarines to Australia in the near term, and should eventually result in Australia building its own nuclear submarines domestically. Many Canadians wondered why Canada couldn’t be included in this agreement. There has also been a small, but loud, segment of public and academic Canadian defence communities who persist in advocating nuclear submarines based on these advantages and professionals within the RCN and government hear those arguments. Nonetheless, there have been no public indications that nuclear submarines were seriously considered by the RCN or the Government in this procurement.

Cost is undoubtedly a factor in this decision, but it is not a sufficient explanation on its own. Australia’s planned acquisitions under AUKUS gives us a good cost benchmark for Canada. That project is expected to cost up to $368 billion over the first 30 years — an average of $12 billion annually. This is an enormous sum, which would consume nearly half of the defence budgets Canadians are used to. However, Prime Minister Carney recently committed to increasing Canada’s defence spending to 3.5% of GDP by 2035. Based on current GDP figures, that represents $52.5b of additional annual defence spending over 2024 levels. While there will be competing priorities, a $12 billion annual program is not inconceivable in that context, if it addresses a core need.

Rather than cost, Canada’s continued official disinterest in nuclear-powered submarines appears rooted in something Canadian defence discourse isn’t used to: decision makers’ deeper understanding of strategic and industrial considerations today than in past procurement cycles.

Canada’s nuclear submarine ambitions in the 1980s were based on an understanding of the advantages of nuclear submarines, but a misunderstanding of strategic priorities. The immediate catalyst that led to the decision to procure nuclear submarines was when an American Coast Guard icebreaker, the USCGC Polar Sea, sailed through the Northwest Passage without Canadian permission. The United States claimed the Passage as an international strait, giving it a right to transit. In response to public concern, the Mulroney Government quickly made it clear that Canada viewed the waters of its Arctic Archipelago as internal waters — meaning permission was always needed for passage.

This created a quandary for Canada, which didn’t have the ability to monitor violations of — much less enforce — these claims. Persistently monitoring the entire Canadian Arctic with ships, satellites, planes, or ground stations was impractical for technical reasons, and other countries would always know when these assets were absent. Submarines would have been an appealing solution as they could monitor ships without being detected themselves, forcing those ships to always act as if they may be surveilled even if the actual coverage was intermittent.

Since it would have been extremely difficult to operate diesel-electric submarines of the time in the Arctic — and after getting some outrageously optimistic estimates on the cost of the program, and likely interest of allies in assisting Canada — the government committed itself to acquiring nuclear submarines for this purpose in 1987.

The strategic miscalculation in all of this was one of priorities. In any conflict with a major naval power, the first priority for Canada’s submarine force is unlikely to be the Arctic. The protection of shipping in the Gulf of St Lawrence, the Strait of Juan de Fuca near Vancouver, and the seas around Saint John, Halifax and Prince Rupert — near all of Canada’s largest ports — would almost certainly be a much higher priority.

This prioritization reflects a fundamental concept in military strategy referred to as a “center of gravity” — which is the “hub of all power and movement, on which everything depends” according to famed strategist Carl von Clausewitz, and the “point against which all [of a belligerent’s] energies should be directed” in order to gain advantage and win in any conflict.

None of Canada’s centers of gravity — none of its most vital capital, industrial, resource, population, strategic, or trade centers — are in the Arctic. That is not to say that the Arctic does not have value in several of these areas, but the Arctic is not a hub that Canada relies on for its prosperity, ability to project military power overseas, or existence as a nation.

Canada’s major ports, on the other hand, are its centers of gravity — at least when it comes to conducting war on or across the ocean. Canada depends on the sea lines of communication that must start at its ports. Because these sea lines pass through very few chokepoints — and none that are likely to be unfriendly — except at entry points to the Indian Ocean, threatening Canada’s use of them can most efficiently be done close to these ports. Hunting vessels, even civilian vessels, on the open ocean is resource intensive. So, Canada should expect them to be a high priority target for its adversaries.

History reinforces this. During the Second World War, German U-boats operated near all of Canada’s major East Coast ports, as well as in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and even into the St. Lawrence River. A future adversary would likely seek to do the same with modern submarines on both coasts. It’s a threat Canadian military plans should take seriously.

Taking the threat of enemy submarines in these areas seriously means prioritizing platforms which can deal with those threats most effectively. The best counter to a submarine is another submarine and, despite the advantages of nuclear submarines in other areas, diesel-electric submarines have the advantage here. That advantage comes down to noise profiles. Nuclear-powered submarines are always generating noise because they can’t shut down their reactors — they’re always quiet, but never silent. Diesel-electric submarines, by contrast, can operate on batteries in near silence, giving them an advantage. While this advantage is lost when they must periodically use diesel generators to recharge, this is less of a liability near home, where they can return to port or arrange support from other assets during this time of vulnerability.

Without another solution to the Arctic monitoring issue, perhaps it could be argued that a nuclear submarine that was less capable in providing security near Canadian ports, but could be used in the Arctic — as opposed to a diesel-electric submarine that was the best submarine for maintaining security near ports, with very little Arctic utility — would be a reasonable trade-off. But the Arctic issue was primarily one that should have been addressed through diplomatic means, as evidenced by the fact that it eventually was. In 1988 the United States and Canada agreed that American ships would not transit through the Northwest Passage without Canadian permission, even as the United States would not recognize Canada’s claim that it was internal waters. With few other countries having the means or interest to sail through the area — the USSR, being the main contender, actually sided with Canada’s claims — this effectively settled the matter and allowed Canada to abandon its nuclear submarine plans the following year.

Today, with receding ice sheets and more industrialization around the world, more countries may have both the means and interest in using the Northwest Passage for passage. However, Canada has made real progress in having its claims recognized internationally, while new technologies provide options other than nuclear submarines for monitoring the area. Cheaper satellites, and modern over-the-horizon radars are two such technologies. A third is the air independent propulsion (AIP) systems found on many modern diesel-electric submarines — including the two Canada is considering.

AIP systems began being used on naval submarines in the 1990s, not long after the Victoria-class was completed without them. They come in a number of varieties, but their commonality is that they give diesel-electric submarines the ability to generate electricity for extended periods of time without relying on their diesel generators and without exchanging air at the surface — sometimes extending the time a diesel-electric submarine can remain fully submerged from a few days to several weeks.

This largely addresses the main barrier to diesel-electric submarines operating in the Arctic; the need to frequently snorkel. With the ability to remain submerged for weeks, they can confidently enter ice-covered areas and return to ice-free ones when required. The technology does not quite make them the equal of nuclear submarines in every respect — their sustained speed while using AIP is limited, for example. However since noise considerations force even nuclear submarines to primarily operate at low speeds, with the option to sprint at higher ones in emergency, and diesel-electric submarines with AIP can mimic this behaviour by idling to charge their batteries and sprint by drawing them down, this is less of a tactical difference than it may appear.

AIP systems do have the disadvantage that they can’t be regenerated at sea. A ship with 21 days of AIP when it leaves port only has those 21 days to use on that deployment. Once that time is used up, they’ll need to rely on more frequent charging cycles until they return to port. However, even at the reduced speeds AIP is limited to, 21 days is enough for a submarine to patrol from the most southerly winter extent of the Arctic ice sheet to the most northern point of Canadian territory and back. This will rarely, if ever, be done since the ability of nuclear submarines to harm Canada from these locations is limited, and nothing else is likely to be present. But just having the option accomplishes many of Canada’s goals, as other nations need to guard against the possibility.

More commonly, when deployed to the Arctic, Canadian AIP submarines will be used along the shipping channels that open in the Arctic during the winter, monitoring traffic and, in conflict, hunting belligerent submarines that are actually a threat to that shipping. Their under-ice capability will mostly be used to transit from one area of open water to another or deprive nuclear submarines of the safety they might otherwise find under ice near these shipping channels. These are the highest priority activities in the Arctic.

Submarines with these systems are also capable of other roles. The presence of diesel-electric U-boats on Canada’s East coast during the Second World War shows that threatening shipping on the far side of oceans has long been within diesel-electric submarines’ capabilities. AIP systems just make them more survivable when far from home. Diesel-electric submarines may not be able to independently threaten shipping as persistently as nuclear submarines, but that can be addressed by accessing nearby friendly ports, and Canada is unlikely to be intercepting shipping except in support of allies. Similar logic applies to the option to attack high-value land targets with submarines.

We shouldn’t lose sight, however, that operating in the Arctic, disrupting shipping, or attacking land targets are all secondary considerations for Canada’s submarine fleet. The ability AIP systems give diesel-electric submarines to go for weeks without recharging after leaving port amplifies their advantage over nuclear submarines when operating near Canadian ports — their most important mission. Combined, the increased advantage of diesel-electric submarines with AIP systems over nuclear submarines in Canada’s most critical area of need, and their ability to perform a wide range of secondary tasks, eliminates most of the strategic arguments that could be made for Canada to acquire nuclear submarines in the present-day.

The nail in the coffin today for a Canadian acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines, however, remains what it was in the 1980s: Canada has no option that will allow it to acquire them. Not on the necessary timelines.

Among Canada’s three allies who operated nuclear submarines in the 1980s, the UK and France were, at best, luke-warm to the idea of Canada acquiring them, while the United States was outright hostile.

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America’s hostility had three basic causes. First, it was clear that Canada’s desire for nuclear powered submarines was in response to US actions — treating the US as a potentially hostile nation — and it’s natural that they wouldn’t want to provide their own foil. The US also believed that Arctic waters held modest strategic importance, and worried that Canadian investment in nuclear submarines would impact the force that it could afford to sustain in the more strategically important European theatre. Finally, while the Northwest Passage was not of huge strategic importance as an international strait at the time, other international straits held and hold enormous strategic importance, and the precedent of one international strait becoming internal waters could open the door to the owners of other straits being similarly reclassified.

The UK and France’s lukewarm attitude was a result both of their disbelief that Canada would follow through, and of the concerns of the United States. The UK, in particular, operated its nuclear submarine program in close cooperation with the United States and couldn’t export its submarines or expertise without American approval.

America’s disapproval was less of a binding constraint — but still a factor for consideration — for France. However, their submarines of the time were significantly inferior in capability and not truly suitable to Arctic operations in any case.

This lack of an enthusiastic partner posed a major challenge to Canadian ambitions. Nuclear submarine technology has only truly been developed independently once — by the United States. All other operators were assisted in their acquisition either through espionage (USSR), open cooperation (UK and China), secret cooperation (France), or a lease arrangement (India). It is an extremely difficult technology to develop.

Despite this, for a time, Canada did consider developing its own nuclear submarine. One novel proposal was for a submarine that operated off of batteries, like a conventional submarine, but had a low-power Slowpoke-2 nuclear reactor onboard to recharge those batteries during periods of low activity without surfacing. It wouldn’t be able to operate continuously at full power like other nuclear submarines, but it also wouldn’t need to surface to charge its batteries like a conventional submarine. This may have been the kernel of a good idea — it’s very similar in concept to how modern air independent propulsion systems work — and can be lauded for realistically acknowledging some of Canada’s technical limitations, but it still wasn’t very realistic.

Canada not only had no experience building nuclear submarines, it had no experience building any sort of submarine; not since it had assembled a few for the UK during World War One. Modern submarines rely on a number of highly specialized systems — such as acoustic sensors and noise suppressions systems — that are immense engineering challenges which Canada would need to overcome on its own. Even with a less ambitious reactor concept, it could take decades and multiple iterations before a submarine that satisfied Canadian needs could be built domestically. As a point of comparison, France commissioned their first nuclear submarine in 1971. But their designs were consistently viewed as being behind their contemporaries until their fourth blank-sheet design — the Suffren-class — entered service in 2020. That 50-year timespan is a realistic expectation for a newcomer to develop competitive nuclear submarines.

In the end, this would always have made it impossible for Canada to acquire nuclear submarines in the 1980s. No other operator of nuclear submarines wanted to, and was capable, of giving Canada the assistance required. And developing the capability independently over decades did not meet Canada’s needs. Similar dynamics apply to Canada’s position with its allies today, with time pressure being created by the fact that Canada needs a replacement in service by the time the Victoria-class will be retired in 2035, and no one with both the willingness and capability to help.

Initially, this might seem too dismissive of recent developments. After all, the UK and United States are both working with Australia to meet its nuclear ambitions through AUKUS — with the first submarines expected to be in service in the early 2030s. Canada is a similar sized nation to Australia, with similar (or even closer) relationships with the UK and United States. This could suggest that Canada might pursue a similar arrangement and timeline. However, this concept falls apart on closer examination.

The logic behind AUKUS is built on Australia’s location. It is not just an agreement for the United States and UK to sell nuclear submarines to Australia in the near term, and help Australia build its own nuclear submarines in the long-term. It also includes the right to base their own nuclear submarines in Australia — with Australia bearing the cost.

Australia is much closer to where the United States and UK want to deploy their submarines in the Indo-Pacific than their own shores are. Basing their submarines in Australia reduces transit time, allowing their submarines to sustain similar “on-station” time even if they are operating fewer of them. Both the United States and UK have severe limits on their capacity to build nuclear submarines, arguably not even having sufficient capacity for their own needs. It’s only through the fact that this basing agreement reduces the number of submarines they need to operate that any of their submarines are freed up for sale to Australia.

Canada does not have this leverage. The naval bases in Canada that could host US submarines are within a few hundred kilometres of the US bases those submarines are already homeported at. The UK could also use those US bases if it needed an increased presence close to Canada for any reason. Nothing Canada can do reduces the number of submarines the United States or UK require.

Australia is also expected to contribute significantly to the design process of a new AUKUS-class of submarine, which will be the UK’s next nuclear submarine and will serve as the design that’s eventually built in Australia. Australia can contribute to this because it gained significant experience building, and later upgrading, its current class of submarines — the Collins-class — in the 1990s and early 2000s. The Collins-class incorporated some truly world-beating innovations, and sustained a capable submarine industry. Canada, as an operator of submarines that were originally designed and built in the UK, can’t provide a similar contribution.

It’s also a fact that the reasons Canada couldn’t rely on the US or UK to develop a nuclear submarine capability in the 1980s haven’t disappeared. At best, America still views the acquisition of nuclear submarines by Canada as a project that will drain resources from areas they’d prefer us to invest in. At worst, they still view it as a hostile action targeted directly at their interests. The UK is too integrated in the US program to support Canada independently.

Finally, even if the UK and US were convinced to help Canada acquire nuclear submarines, the timing is impossible. AUKUS was created in 2021. Even if Canada could proceed on the same timeline, starting now would likely push receipt of the first submarine past the 2035 deadline. And proceeding on the same timeline is treating America and the UK’s capacity to assist other countries as if it’s infinite. In reality, a similar timeline could only be achieved if AUKUS was abandoned and Canada effectively took Australia’s place in a similar agreement. Otherwise, American and UK capacity to assist Canada won’t exist until after much of what AUKUS promises has been delivered — well into the 2040s. And that’s just too long for Canada to wait.

That leaves France as a potential partner. However, while France’s nuclear submarines are no longer significantly handicapped compared to those of the United States or United Kingdom, their ability to help Canada meet its timelines is no stronger.

France’s capacity for building nuclear submarines domestically is limited and appears entirely utilized for their own purposes well past 2035. If Canada were to pay for it, new capacity could plausibly be built. But that’s a decade-long project itself, and with the typical construction time of a nuclear submarine in France of over 9 years, that also pushes the first delivery well into the 2040s.

One might consider the possibility of France helping Canada build nuclear submarines at home. However, that has even longer timelines. Brazil is currently pursuing the domestic construction of a nuclear submarine with France’s assistance. That submarine was ordered in 2008, and is currently expected to launch in 2037 — a 29 year delivery timeline. Far too long for Canada to consider that route for its next generation of submarines.

In the end, Canada’s decision not to pursue nuclear submarines is not the result of a single constraint, but the convergence of several. Canada’s highest priority missions for submarines, the raison d’etre of its fleet, are best served by diesel-electric submarines with integrated air independent propulsions systems — exactly what it is pursuing. The technologies that once made nuclear propulsion uniquely suited to Arctic operations are no longer the only way to operate in that environment. And while nuclear submarines still offer advantages in range, speed, and endurance, those advantages are most relevant when operating independently far from home, while Canada is only likely to act in those places with allies. Set against this is the reality that there is no viable path to acquiring nuclear submarines on the timelines Canada requires, whether through allies or domestic development.

This leaves Canada with a clear choice. Rather than pursuing the most capable submarine in abstract terms, Canada is pursuing the most appropriate one for its real world purposes — aligned with its geography, its alliances, and its strategic priorities. Nuclear submarines remain powerful and, in some respects, unmatched tools. But they are tools designed for a different set of problems than the ones Canada faces. The absence of a nuclear option in Canada’s current procurement is not an oversight. It is the result of a clear-eyed assessment of what Canada needs its submarine force to do, and what it can realistically deliver.

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These contracts are long overdue. The war in Ukraine has demonstrated, decisively, that artillery remains central to modern warfare—and that large-scale combat can consume ammunition at staggering rates.

At the outset of the war, Canada’s artillery production capacity was modest. Efforts in 2022 and 2023 increased output somewhat, but key limitations remained: facilities were not configured to produce some of the most in-demand shells and charges, existing facilities had inherent expansion limits, and many critical components weren’t made in Canada at all but were imported from the United States. Wednesday’s announcement takes meaningful steps toward addressing all three of these limitations.

Not everyone is happy with this investment however. Former Conservative Party of Canada Leader, and CAF veteran, Erin O’Toole was among the quickest and highest profile critics, saying, “First test of the new Defence Industrial Strategy gets a failing grade. This is not a sovereign solution at all.”

Mr. O’Toole’s criticism is rooted in the fact that the announcements provides $355.7 million to construct a facility to produce nitrocellulose, which is a material used to make the case of propellant charges combustible, to General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems - Canada (GD OTS-C) — a Canadian subsidiary of US-headquartered company.

This raises a fundamental question: if the goal is to build a stronger Canadian defence industry, what counts as Canadian?

There is a strong case that GD OTS-C is a very Canadian company. It has operated in Canada since 1989, operating facilities and providing capabilities that in some cases date back to the Second World War. It is headquartered in Quebec and is one of just five firms in Canada’s Munitions Supply Program—designed explicitly to “secure a national capability for the supply of critical ammunition.” Treating it as a domestic supplier is not a new precedent.

This case is made stronger when considering some products that Canadians think of as their own. Most would consider the Canadian Army’s main infantry fighting vehicle, the LAV 6, to be Canadian. The same is true for the CL-600 business jet, the iconic CL-215 waterbomber, and the CT-114 Tutor that the RCAF’s Snowbirds have used to represent Canada for decades. Yet all were developed by Canadian subsidiaries of American companies—indeed, in these cases, the subsidiaries that originally made them or make them today are owned by the same parent company that owns GD OTS-C. Ultimate ownership alone has not historically disqualified something from being considered “Canadian.”

This is not to dismiss Mr. O’Toole’s argument. All else equal, preferring Canadian-owned firms for contracts intended to strengthen domestic industry is entirely reasonable. Drawing a bright line around ownership is a principled position. But it may not be a practical one.

GD OTS-C is not simply “one of” the companies supplying components for Canadian production of artillery ammunition. For most of the work it does, it’s the only domestic producer. Other manufacturers could learn what they already know, but projects requiring them to do so would take longer and cost more.

If a project that GD OTS-C can complete in two years for $300m will take four years and cost $500m with another company, some might argue that it’s worthwhile to use a Canadian-owned company. But what if the timeline is ten years, and the cost is $2b? At some point, the principle breaks down.

This is especially true when it is just a principle. Even if another company builds and operates a nitrocellulose facility, GD OTS-C is still the only company contributing other components to the capability being built — artillery shells and charges. Under current arrangements, the nitrocellulose is going to them for assembly. Zero potential vulnerabilities are removed, and zero sovereignty is gained, by having that one facility operated by someone else.

This isn’t a unique scenario. Of the five companies within Canada’s Munition Supply Program, only two are ultimately Canadian owned. They all do work, and have experience, that’s unique within Canada. That reality is representative of the entire Canadian defence industrial base. Rejecting companies from projects based on their Canadian-ness will come with significant costs.

And ownership is only one dimension of “Canadian-ness.”

Take Magellan Aerospace, one of the two Canadian-owned firms in the Munitions Supply Program. It is headquartered in Mississauga and majority-owned by a Canadian billionaire. Yet its most recent financial statements show that it has a larger share of its long-lived assets — its means of production, like, land, plants, and equipment — in both the United States and Europe than in Canada. Canada is ranked third.

So which is more “Canadian”: a domestically owned firm with a globally distributed industrial base, or a foreign-owned subsidiary whose assets and production are overwhelmingly in Canada?

The question becomes even sharper in practice. If Magellan were to fulfill a Canadian contract using U.S.-based production — something the exports section of their statements indicates they do — while GD OTS-C delivered entirely from Canadian facilities, what should matter more? Ownership? Or where the work gets done?

The point is not to argue against firms like Magellan, which are vital contributors to Canada’s defence industry. It’s to illustrate that firms are rarely Canadian in every sense, that many competing factors are at play, and taking an absolute stance on just one factor won’t lead to the best outcomes.

The Government of Canada has, for now, chosen a broad interpretation of what qualifies as “Canadian.” Eligibility requirements for the Canadian Defence Industry Resilience Program can be found here. There’s a legitimate debate to be had around whether they set the requirements in the best place.

But there’s a real danger, if we’re not considering these issues deeply and with some level of practicality, that we’ll insist on definitions of Canadian-ness so narrow that it makes effort to expand the industrial base unworkable. There are very few defence firms operating in Canada at the scale required to take on major defence projects that are “Canadian” in every conceivable sense.

What Canada needs is a mature discourse around defence which helps decision makers to navigate these issues. One that understands the trade offs, and can give them direction on whether it’s more important to have ownership be Canadian, or for the means of production to be within Canada. And what kind of premium in time and money is reasonable to use more Canadian suppliers.

Canada does have the power to make choices in how it grows its defence industrial base. But it does not have the luxury of pursuing purity. Because Canada can have a defence industry that is purely Canadian—or one that actually works. It should be careful not to choose the wrong one.

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The company says the Canadian military could use its deepwater port at Milne Inlet, near the northern end of Baffin Island.

At a moment when Ottawa is trying to expand military infrastructure in the Arctic — with more than $30 billion in northern defence and dual-use projects announced just last week — the proposal sounds like an easy win. The port already exists. It sits in a region where Canada has spent two decades trying to establish a naval refuelling facility.

And yet when Defence Minister David McGuinty was asked about the idea, the government’s response was described as “non-committal.”

That hesitation has puzzled some observers.

But in reality, Ottawa has several very good reasons not to rush into this.

The first reason is simple: there actually isn’t an offer to be accepted.

Tom Paddon, the company’s non-executive chair, has merely indicated that Baffinland would be “open to a conversation” about a lease or pay-for-use arrangement that would allow the military to use the port. The company expects to rely on the site less in the coming years as it develops a new port on the southern side of Baffin Island, and is apparently looking for another revenue stream.

Governments are rarely going to be more than “non-committal” toward a vague concept with no details attached. Doing so helps manage public expectations if nothing ultimately materializes — and protects the government’s negotiating position if discussions do move forward.

There is also the reality that major projects in the North require buy-in from Inuit communities, which are often cautious about new developments. This caution is not arbitrary. Canada has a long history of northern projects that damaged fragile ecosystems Inuit communities rely on, while failing to deliver the economic benefits that had been promised. Even if military use of Milne Inlet ultimately proves benign, assuming that from the outset — and publicly committing to the idea before consultations take place — could poison the goodwill any project would require to move forward.

The government’s experience trying to establish another naval facility nearby also helps explain its caution.

Milne Inlet lies roughly 150 kilometres from Nanisivik, a former mine site selected by Stephen Harper’s government in 2007 to fulfill an election promise to establish a deepwater port to refuel and resupply Royal Canadian Navy ships operating in the Arctic.

The argument behind Nanisivik was that existing mining infrastructure would make it quick and inexpensive to establish a naval refuelling facility. The site was originally expected to be operational by 2012.

Instead, the project has been plagued by delays.

A full two decades later, Nanisivik has yet to refuel a single ship. Planned construction is reportedly complete, but the jetty — the only piece of infrastructure remaining from the old mine — has deteriorated during the years of delay to the point that it is no longer fit for purpose. The government is now assessing whether it is worthwhile, or even possible, to repair or replace it. At present, there is no projected date for the facility to become operational.

In some respects, Milne Inlet appears to offer a way out of the Nanisivik quagmire.

Two of the major challenges at Nanisivik stemmed from the age and condition of the infrastructure. The Nanisivik mine had opened in the 1970s and closed in 2002, leaving facilities that were already decades old and had sat abandoned for years before the government attempted to repurpose them.

Milne Inlet, by contrast, opened in 2015 and remains in active use. This makes it newer and, in theory, would allow for a direct transition without the complications that come with reviving long-abandoned infrastructure.

However, the government would also have to consider the political implications of abandoning Nanisivik in favour of Milne Inlet.

There is little practical sense in maintaining both facilities. But walking away from a twenty-year project would inevitably carry political costs — both among communities that expected economic benefits from Nanisivik and among a broader electorate that might see the decision as an admission of failure. Managing that transition would require careful planning.

The lessons of Nanisivik also make officials wary of rushing into another seemingly simple solution.

Nanisivik was, after all, mining infrastructure in the Arctic that was supposed to be quickly and cheaply converted into a naval facility. Milne Inlet is now being pitched in much the same way. Even if some of Nanisivik’s problems don’t apply here, anyone involved in that earlier project is likely to be extremely reluctant to support a similar concept. At minimum, they will insist on a far more rigorous due-diligence process before committing to anything — something that was lacking during Nanisivik’s early stages.

Indeed, one of Nanisivik’s earliest setbacks emerged because of a lack of due diligence. When Nanisivik was originally selected, the presence of a nearby airstrip was touted as a major advantage. Only later did the government discover that the Government of Nunavut was already planning to close it — a detail missed during the rushed initial assessment.

In that context, one small detail in the Globe article is particularly interesting. It notes that the mine complex served by Milne Inlet includes a 6,500-metre gravel runway. What the article does not mention is that this runway is located roughly 100 kilometres from the port itself. In other words, the runway advertised as serving the port doesn’t actually serve it. History, it seems, has a habit of rhyming.

Finally, there is a more fundamental problem: Milne Inlet is not actually in the right place for the Royal Canadian Navy’s needs. To be fair, neither is Nanisivik. That misalignment is one reason the project has struggled to attract sustained political attention and resources.

The location problem dates back to the origins of the project. The commitment to build an Arctic naval facility was made in tandem with a promise to construct ice-capable patrol ships for the Navy — the vessels that eventually became the Harry DeWolf-class. The purpose of the facility was to support the ships. However, Nanisivik was selected before the design of those ships was finalized.

In the process of designing the ship, it was decided that they should have enough fuel to sail from St. John’s, Newfoundland, to Prince Rupoert, British Columbia — Canada’s two most northern ice-free ports — without refuelling and so had an immense 12,000km range. With range like that, Nanisivik offers only marginal advantages over existing options in Iqaluit or Nuuk.

What the Navy actually needs is a refuelling location significantly farther west — somewhere like Grays Bay, which is where the Government confirmed it plans to build a new port last week. Milne Inlet, by contrast, sits slightly farther east than Nanisivik, and deep inside a long inlet. From an operational perspective, it’s less useful than Nanisivik’s already imperfect location.

None of this means Milne Inlet cannot — or should not — play some role in Canada’s Arctic posture.

If Baffinland continues maintaining the infrastructure and the government simply pays for occasional access or pre-positions supplies there, the arrangement could turn out to be relatively low-risk. Especially until Grays Bay opens. If managed well, the opportunity for Ottawa to step away from Nanisivik with a ready-made option giving similar capability might be welcome.

But none of that gives the government a strong reason to rush. In the Arctic, the projects that look easiest on paper are often the ones that deserve the longest second look.

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Author’s note: This piece is an updated version of the previously published “After Constellation: Why the U.S. Navy Needs a Little Maple in Its DNA”. It was written at the request of The Canadian Maritime Security Network for inclusion in their iDEAS Series, but also because the selection of the NSC and announcement of the Defiant-class Battleship for the USN deprecated the original piece extremely quickly, even as the arguments still held value. I hope you won’t mind seeing a similar piece published here again but, in case you do, I’ve included a poll at the bottom where you are welcome to express your outrage. - Hawk

The announcement in late 2025 that the US Navy’s Constellation-class frigate (Constellation-class) program would be cancelled, rather than rescued, was initially met with a mix of déjà vu, relief, and frustration. Déjà vu, because once again a supposedly affordable, risk-reduced shipbuilding program had spiralled into delays and cost overruns. Relief, because the fate of the Littoral Combat Ship, which continued to consume American treasure and time long after it was recognized as a failure, was avoided. Frustration, because the United States Navy has not commissioned a new, unambiguously successful, class of surface combatant since the first Arleigh Burke-class destroyer (Burke-class) entered service in 1991.

Even in the cancellation announcement, the Navy made clear that an alternative design was wanted quickly, and that it would not wait for a “blank-sheet” design to be developed. Less than a month later, a ship in service with the US Coast Guard, the National Security Cutter (NSC), was selected as the base design for a new class of frigate – one that will be significantly smaller and less capable than Constellation-class had been envisioned to be. Despite those limitations, it is not surprising that the NSC was chosen.

The United States’ recent history of surface-combatant design is not an enviable one. Multiple projects have been launched only to be abandoned during the design process, including at least two cruiser concepts. If the Defiant-class “battleship” program proceeds as recently described, they may soon be joined by DDG(X) which, until late 2025, was intended to replace the Burke-class.

In fact, so far this century the US Navy has only had three new surface combatants actually touch water. One is the Zumwalt-class destroyer, which displaces roughly twice as much as Constellation-class was planned to. The other two are the Freedom- and Independence-class Littoral Combat Ships, each less than half Constellation-class’s displacement. With size serving as an imperfect but useful proxy for capability, and all three classes having suffered from major structural, engineering, or mission-system issues which led to early retirements or abbreviated production runs, none of these offer a compelling alternative to Constellation-class.

Of course, they could not have done so. Constellation-class was conceived specifically to address the failures of recent US Navy shipbuilding programs. This means there’s no US Navy ship design which could be used as a substitute for the Constellation-class, leaving only the NSC and foreign options. But the experience with the Constellation-class itself discourages most foreign options.

As developed, the Constellation-class was intended to be a full-spectrum surface combatant, capable of contributing meaningfully across the Navy’s mission set. Where the full capacity of a Burke-class was unnecessary, Constellation-class ships were meant to be a less resource-intensive option that could operate independently, freeing Burke-class ships for more demanding tasks. When independent operations were not required, Constellation-class ships could augment task groups built around Burke-class ships and other high-end assets. It was, in effect, a “mini-Burke.”

From the outset, the plan was to adapt an in-service parent design to meet the US Navy’s needs. In 2020, the French-Italian FREMM design was selected based on its maturity and broadly aligned capabilities. It was initially expected that only 15-percent of the design would need to be altered, which promised reduced risk, cost, and development time.

Reality proved otherwise. By the time the program was cancelled, only 15-percent of the original FREMM design remained unaltered - a reversal of the original ratio. As redesign cascaded, costs rose and schedules slipped, ultimately leaving the program at least three years behind schedule.

There’s a popular narrative that Constellation-class’s massive redesign was created by choice. A self-inflicted wound by meddlesome (read: stupid) admirals endlessly tinkering with a perfectly good foreign design. While this caricature contains a kernel of truth (some project requirements were changed later than best practice would suggest) it ignores the fact that rational, and sometimes unavoidable, constraints are part of large-scale redesign and poor outcomes do not require institutional or individual caprice. Ultimately, this narrative is misleading more than helpful as it reduces complex industrial and engineering problems to a morality play.

In hindsight, the notion that only 15-percent of the FREMM design would need modification should have been treated as an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence. A 15-percent redesign was an extremely optimistic floor for even the bare minimum level of modification the design required to be built efficiently by the American industrial base. By the time combat systems were modified, even to the extent needed to use US weapon stockpiles, the 15-percent claim was extremely unlikely. Planned modifications always went deeper than this.

Redesigns have a way of cascading, with each forcing another. Once a project crosses a certain threshold of modification, the final scope of redesign cannot be known in advance. It can only be discovered – often painfully – in execution. It should have been realized that the Constellation-class project was above that threshold from the start, but the project was never given the resources, infrastructure, or time necessary to manage that scope of work. That is why the project struggled and was, ultimately, cancelled.

Given this experience, it is unsurprising that the US Navy was reluctant to pursue another design from overseas. While the correct lesson of Constellation-class is not “do not choose foreign designs,” but rather “do not underestimate redesign – especially when time is scarce”, any option from overseas – whether Spain’s F-100 design, Japan’s Mogami-class, or South Korea’s Daegu or Chungnam-classes – would require significant time for redesign. After decades of failed programs, time is one resource the US Navy does not have.

Yet, just north of the border, outside the traditional American field of view, there is a ship that doesn’t require redesign – either to begin construction in American shipyards, or to be compatible with US Navy systems – that comes remarkably close to delivering what the US Navy wanted from the Constellation-class. Canada’s long-delayed but now accelerating surface-combatant replacement effort has reached full-rate production on the River-class destroyer (River-class).

The River-class is a derivative of the Royal Navy’s Type 26 frigate, which was originally conceived as an anti-submarine-warfare-first, general combatant, to complement the Type 45 air-defence destroyer. Canada, however, used the design’s generous growth margins to pursue a more ambitious goal: to create a surface combatant with credible capabilities across the full spectrum of naval warfare.

The result reads like an aspirational statement for the Constellation-class program. The River-class is an approximately 8,000-ton warship capable of over 28 knots, with advanced anti-submarine, anti-surface, and anti-air capabilities, including ballistic-missile defence and true area air defence. Comparable in displacement to early-flight Burke-class ships, it trades some missile magazine depth for strengths in areas where the Burke-class is weaker, while requiring a significantly smaller crew – a non-trivial advantage for a navy struggling to man and sustain a growing fleet.

Its combined diesel-electric and gas propulsion system also generates substantially more electrical power than the Burke-class can sustain, while being more fuel-efficient. Together with the smaller crew, this will translate into appreciably lower operating costs over the ship’s lifetime.

The River-class’s advantages over the NSC as a Constellation-class replacement are substantial. That said, there are reasons the US Navy might prefer the NSC.

From the beginning of what became the Constellation-class program, there was debate over whether the best complement to the Burke-class was the full combat spectrum approach the Constellation-class eventually followed (sometimes called the “mini-Burke-class” concept) or if a much smaller and even lower cost option was best, even if it could only assume a much more limited subset of the Burke-class’s missions.

History gives some insight into this conflict. In the late 1980s, a period many today would identify as a time that the navy got its fleet mix “right,” the US Navy was building three surface combatants simultaneously: First was the 9,800-ton Ticonderoga-class cruiser (Ticonderoga-class), the fleet’s premier air-defence ship and a capable task-force flagship. Second was the 8,000-ton early-flight Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, a full-spectrum combatant with less capacity and cost than Ticonderoga, usable independently to free Ticonderoga-class ships for more demanding missions or in task groups alongside them. (This should sound familiar). Third was the 4,600-ton Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate (Perry-class), a far smaller and cheaper ship with limited air-defence capability, optimised for specialized missions, like anti-submarine warfare, or for cases where capability beyond basic self-defence was unnecessary.

This three-tier structure served the US Navy well through the 1990s and into the 2010s. Since then, the Perry-class has left service, replaced inadequately by the smaller, less capable, and deservedly maligned LCSs – which have now also ended their production runs. Meanwhile, most of the Ticonderogas have been retired, with the few remaining expected to leave service by 2029. Only the Burke-class remains in production. Superficially, this suggests gaps at both the high and low ends of the fleet. But the Burke-class itself has changed dramatically. In its Flight III configuration, it now displaces roughly as much as the Ticonderoga-class and has assumed its role as the US Navy’s premier air-defence platform.

This implies room for two designs “below” the Burke-class in capability. One to replace the Perry-class as a smaller, specialised combatant, and one to fill the niche the early Burkes once occupied, as a less resource-intensive complement to the premier air-defence ship. The NSC is a plausible starting point for the former; the River-class makes sense for the latter.

Needing both, and needing ships quickly, it might seem intuitive to prioritise the smaller, less capable, combatant as the lower risk program. All else being equal, those should be easier to build. However, the specific practical issues of these two designs invert this logic. The challenge with the NSC returns, again, to redesign. The NSC in service with the US Coast Guard is not a frigate. At the very least, it needs better sensors and more significant armament to fill the role even of a specialized combatant. This upgrade poses a significant challenge. Even though the NSC was originally marketed as being “designed for, not with” additional weapons and sensors, and there are even concept designs of it with more significant armament, in practice these claims and designs are based on very rudimentary examinations of the available growth margins in the ship’s buoyancy, power, and physical dimensions. They do not indicate that the detailed engineering work needed to discover and solve the issues inherent in redesign has happened. In the case of the NSC, it’s not even clear that the original margins still exist.

The original NSC design was structurally under-engineered. Post-commissioning analysis of the first ships suggested an expected service life of just three years. Extensive reinforcement was required, consuming buoyancy margins that might otherwise have supported combat systems. Even if the margin technically still exists to add combat systems, those systems will increase its weight further, potentially driving a need for additional reinforcement and cascading into more redesign.

Electrical margins present another challenge. Modern combat systems impose demands far beyond what was envisioned when the NSC was designed nearly two decades ago. The NSC has capacity for more systems than the US Coast Guard installed, but perhaps not for all those the US Navy would wish. Installing more electrical capacity is a major undertaking.

Survivability standards pose a third challenge. The Navy can waive these requirements, as it did for the LCSs, but it is understandably reluctant to field ships that cannot absorb damage without becoming combat-ineffective. These challenges create the temptation for, and some of them may require, deeper redesign than the US Navy’s current timelines permit.

To credit the US Navy, it does not appear to assume the NSC redesign will be simple or quick. The apparent plan is to bolt on whatever systems can be added to the NSC with minimal modification and to begin building ships otherwise “as is” following the US Coast Guard design. More deeply modified, and capable, ships will only be built when redesign work is complete at an unknown point in the future. This plan may get hulls into the water quickly, but, the usefulness of these modified hulls, might be questionable.

In practice, this approach will initially deliver ships with capabilities similar to the in-service LCSs. Such NSC frigates may be sufficient to retire some additional LCSs, something the US Navy could welcome, but it is unlikely to meaningfully free up Burke-class ships from their present duties. The threat environment in most places where the Burke-class are used today is simply too significant for what LCSs or a similarly equipped NSCs can handle. As an example, only Burkes, not LCSs, played a role in the US response to the Red Sea Crisis of 2023-25 – precisely the sort of low-intensity littoral conflict LCSs were designed for – because the threat in that setting has evolved past their capabilities. More capable NSC variants are presumably possible, but their maximum potential capability is currently unknown, and they will only exist after a risk-prone redesign of uncertain duration.

Contrast this with the River-class in the mini-Burke role. Not only does it already have combat systems beyond what an NSC is likely to ever have, the systems that form its combat backbone are ones that are sourced from America. That includes an AEGIS combat system incorporating the US Navy’s Cooperative Engagement Capability, a Lockheed Martin AN/SPY-7(V)3 radar, and Raytheon’s AN/SLQ-32(V)6 electronic-warfare suite. No system changes are necessary.

This is not because the River-class avoided redesign entirely. Its Type 26 parent design includes none of the aforementioned systems. The difference is that the River-class has already passed through that redesign phase. It sits on the far side of the risks that doomed the Constellation-class and threaten to delay or skuttle the NSC and, indeed, any other options.

The River-class also benefits from its British heritage. The Royal Navy’s survivability standards, shaped by its Falkland War experience, are among the world’s most demanding. While metrics differ, the outcomes align closely with US Navy priorities: ships that remain afloat and fightable after damage, and crews that come home. This removes another source of redesign pressure which exists in the NSC program, and would exist for most other foreign designs.

The River-class does include some non-American subsystems, but these are either UK systems for which Canada has already resolved supply-chain issues to build using them within the deeply integrated North American industrial base, or, Canadian systems which, while they might be new to the US Navy, are products of the joint US/Canadian manufacturing base. This means the River-class does not rely on electronic widgets or raw materials which are not available to US manufacturers. This gives the River-class a fundamentally different risk profile from other non-American designs.

Ships are designed around the materials, components, and fabrication practices of the industrial ecosystem in which they are built. When a design is transferred to a different industrial ecosystem, some of those solutions cease to be available, forcing redesign.

In some cases, these changes are manageable. Substituting a slightly different steel plate thickness may require analysis but, assuming the thickness provides the needed strength and is within the ship’s buoyancy allowances, little else.

In other cases, the consequences cascade. A specialized component made from an unavailable alloy may present a tremendous challenge. Importing the component, or the raw materials to make it, might be an option if America is willing to accept the higher costs and supply chain risk. But it also might not be an option at all, if the country of origin doesn’t have the slack manufacturing capacity to meet the need, and no manufacturer in America has the experience needed working with the material to create a component to the necessary tolerances. This can force redesign, altering dimensions and interfering with adjacent systems, which in turn require redesign themselves. Many mechanisms can cause this and it is how the scope of redesign can grow unpredictably.

It runs counter to the ‘meddling (read: stupid) Admiral’ trope, which is blamed for the failure of the Constellation-class. But many of Constellation-class’s redesigns began this way, with additional tinkering only happening once some level of redesign was required. Any non-American design originating outside the US industrial base must successfully navigate this process before construction can begin in American yards. And that takes time.

Canada is the exception. It’s a somewhat shallow demonstration, but Canadians buy two-by-fours, not 50-by-100 millimetre lumber - even though Canada officially uses metric measurements. Why? Because doing otherwise would make it harder for Canada to trade goods to and from the United States.

This mundane example reflects a deeper reality: For all practical purposes, the Canadian and American industrial bases are one and the same. There are effectively no raw materials or industrial components available in Canada that are not also available in the United States, and vice versa. This means American industry can freely “copy Canadian homework” in ways that do not apply to designs from elsewhere because a design which can be built in Canada can skip the redesign phase when building in America too.

And that’s what the River-class represents. Like the Constellation-class, it derives from a foreign parent design. It required redesign. However, it’s already in full-rate production, a milestone the Constellation-class never reached, which means that the scope of the River-class’s required redesigns is known, and largely complete.

This does not quite mean the US Navy could adopt the design tomorrow and begin construction in Wisconsin the next day. Even transferring a proven design between American shipyards requires some engineering work. But that work is fundamentally different – faster, cheaper, and far less risky than redesigning the ship itself.

Some have proposed bypassing redesign altogether by waiving the requirement that US Navy ships be built domestically, allowing designs like the Mogami-class to be constructed overseas. Two issues exist with this: One is that this merely moves the problem. Unless the United States is prepared to rely on foreign shipyards for maintenance and modernization throughout a ship’s service life, the redesign work still has to be done in order to maintain the ships. Second, it only reduces the amount of redesign, it doesn’t eliminate it. Even just changing the voltage and shape of crew-accessible electrical outlets to work with US electronics is a redesign project that can cascade and grow in scope.

While all of this means that the River-class bypasses some of the issues the Constellation-class encountered, and other foreign designs would encounter as well, none of this should allow us to ignore the River-class’s weaknesses. Cost being the most obvious. Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Officer estimates the acquisition of 15 River-class ships at over C$80 billion: roughly C$4.6 billion per ship. Understanding this figure requires knowledge of its accounting assumptions, for example, it includes taxes paid back to the government – something government estimates frequently omit. However, adjusting for this, and converting to US dollars, still gives a cost estimate of over US$3 billion per ship.

Yet, looking a little deeper, there are costs built into that number which wouldn’t be reflected in a US program. Prior to the River-class, Canada hadn’t laid down a true warship in over 30 years. This lack of experience has direct impacts on cost that won’t be a factor in US shipyards, which have significant and much more recent experience. This gap in production also meant no Canadian yards could begin construction on the River-class before being largely rebuilt. Rebuilding yards is incredibly expensive and much of that cost, which also won’t be duplicated in the US, was built into the River-class project’s budget.

Accounting for all that, however, a River-class built in America would still likely have an acquisition cost similar to a Burke-class: around US$2.5 billion. That raises a legitimate question: why build a mini-Burke for the price of a real one?

Lifecycle cost is part of the answer. Fuel and crew dominate lifetime expenses. Acquisition cost is a relatively small fraction of the total. The River-class’s propulsion system is more efficient, and its crew of roughly 200 is far smaller than the Burke-class’s 300-350. Over decades, the savings from just those two factors will be significant.

But even that defence of the River-class’s price tag is shallow. To begin to explore it more fully, we need to acknowledge another one of the River-class’s perceived shortcomings: The fact that it has an underwhelming 24 VLS cells. This statistic is sometimes used in a misleading way when comparing to European designs. The River-class’s Mk 41 VLS cells can each carry one large missile or four small missiles but are frequently compared on a 1:1 basis with VLS systems that can only carry one small missile. Many ships also rely on their VLS cells to hold their point defence and anti-ship missiles, both of which the River-class has dedicated launchers for. However, compared to the Constellation-class’s planned 32 Mk 41 cells, with dedicated point-defence and anti-ship launchers, it is a reduction.

Yet the Constellation-class failed precisely because it tried to do too much within too tight tolerances without having the time, resources, or infrastructure to make it work. Expecting an alternative to achieve everything the Constellation-class sought isn’t realistic.

All the same, the Royal Canadian Navy has acknowledged this shortcoming in the River-class, and stated that it too would prefer more VLS cells on the platform. However, the time crunch created by the looming retirement of the Halifax-class, Canada’s only in-service and rapidly aging surface combatant, has convinced the Royal Canadian Navy to proceed with building its first River-class “as-is” and invest the time spent building them to do the design work properly for a “Flight II” version with more VLS cells.

With its own time-crunch, this is an approach that the US Navy could emulate. Begin construction now on an available design which meets most of the force’s perceived needs – much more so than the base NSC design – and use the cushion of time created by those ships to properly complete the redesign that’s required to create an ideal variant for the future.

There is ample room within the River-class to support that evolution. While it is too early to know for sure, Canada’s Flight II River-class will likely have between 30 and 36 Mk 41 VLS cells. This relatively modest increase over the 24 VLS cells in the base configuration isn’t an inherent limitation of the River-class’s design. The Royal Canadian Navy is extremely enamoured with the River-class’s “multi-mission bay”, which is a reconfigurable space directly forward of the helicopter hangar which can be used to increase the ship’s capacity for helicopters or unmanned aerial vehicles, deploy unmanned underwater vehicles or large boats, or carry cargo and support humanitarian and relief efforts, among other things. Keeping this space puts a limit on how many VLS cells can be added to the design.

There’s an argument that this is an excellent feature for the US Navy as well. Especially given the rapid changes in drone technology, and the impact they’re having on warfare, as well as the expectation that this ship will be used for taskings the Burke-class is overkill for, like humanitarian work. However, if VLS cells are the sole priority for the future, there are concept designs (based on the Type 26 parent design, not the River-class specifically) which suggest that replacing the multi-mission bay could allow for as many as 96 Mk 41 cells (matching the Burke-class), or even 128 cells if the main gun were sacrificed.

These upgunned versions of the River-class are concepts. But their existence shows that the Type 26 has the basic space, buoyancy, and power requirements for this to work. Realizing these concepts would require extensive detailed design work, exactly the type of work this piece cautions against relying on going smoothly in the near-term. It is also possible that engineering challenges would be discovered that make the practical limit for VLS cells somewhat lower than this theoretical maximum. But the fact that such growth is plausible underscores an important point.

The River-class isn’t limited to being a “mini-Burke”. The flight I design the Royal Canadian Navy is building can be built as-is by the US Navy in order to fill the “mini-Burke” role, saving money compared to operating the same number of Burke-class ships, but that’s not the limit of the design. It is really more accurate to think of the River-class as a Burke-class with different priorities, and with a modern systems architecture that leaves room for a broad range of configurations and whatever advancements the next 30 years of naval warfare bring.

This is important, because the Burke-class is at the absolute limit of what can be integrated into its 1980s architecture and it too needs replacement in the relatively near future. In mid-2025, the Burke-class’s replacement plan appeared to be to bring in the Constellation-class to take on some of the Burke-class’s lower-demand taskings, and to aggressively pursue a project for the DDG(X) destroyer, which could take on the “premier air-defence” taskings from the Flight III Burke-class in the future.

After the cancellation of Constellation-class, and the selection of the NSC, a significant gulf was left in the US Navy’s future fleet mix. The NSC is a 4,600-ton ship which, as a frigate, may grow to around 5,500 tons. The Constellation-class was going to be a 7,200-ton ship. The Burke-class is currently being built as a 9,800 ton-ship. The DDG(X) is set to be a 13,000-ton ship. Without Constellation-class, and with Burke-class nearing the end of its economically viable production life, the US Navy may soon be building an (at most) 5,500 ton frigate and a 13,000 ton destroyer. Nothing in between.

The DDG(X) program itself, as a blank-sheet design, comes with many risks. But, to complicate this situation further, the White House and US Navy recently announced a plan to build a 35,000 ton “battleship” known as the Defiant-class (Defiant). While Congress will have a say before this plan can go ahead, it is notable that the plans put forward for the Defiant quietly proposed cancelling the DDG(X).

To prevent an outcome where the US Navy is building just a 5,500 frigate and a 35,000 ton “battleship”, the stated intention behind the battleship plan is to keep building Burke-class ships into the indefinite future. But this is simply not feasible. There is a limit to what new systems can be patched onto old frameworks, and changes in industrial practices will continue to inflate the Burke-class’s production costs. Eventually the Navy will have no choice but to stop building the Burke-class and, without something else, will be left with an enormous unfilled gulf in its construction plans. The River-class can be that “something else”.

This returns this discussion to the topic of cost. The River-class is a more modern, more adaptable ship with room for future growth. It also has the latent capacity to become a direct successor to the Burke-class. As such, it should not be surprising that its cost is similar to the Burke-class. That is simply the price of a survivable, full-spectrum surface combatant in an era of drones, hypersonic weapons, and dense sensor networks. These high capital costs should not be viewed as an impediment to pursuing such ships, where there is a need, especially for the United States whose President has recently foreshadowed up to a 50% increase in US Military spending, most of which will, initially, be available for capital projects.

That is not to denigrate smaller specialized combatants with even lower costs, like what the NSC may become after it has been redesigned. Those ships are useful. But they require full-spectrum combatants to complement them, while a fleet of just the most premium combatants is difficult to build at scale.

More to the point, all the shipbuilding plans the US Navy has for the future have significant risk. Whether discussing the risk inherent in the NSC’s redesign, or the possibility that the “threat floor” will become higher than its “capability ceiling”; the likelihood of the Burke-class’s age creating an industrial cost spiral, or the chance of new threats appearing that its systems can’t be adapted to counter; or enormous capability gulfs being left in the US Navy’s force structure by decisions and developments in the DDG(X) or Defiant programs – the River-class provides an alternative which derisks all of those programs.

The case for the River-class is not that it is perfect, cheap, or tailor-made for the US Navy. It is that it can be built now, meeting urgent fleet needs, while preserving the option to pursue greater ambition later. It offers the US Navy a way to satisfy many priorities in one low-risk project instead of having to pursue multiple high-risk no-fail projects at once. This case for the River-class is an appealing and unique proposition. And it is enough to ask whether the best future for the US Navy is one where a River runs through it.

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However, those who rushed to laud, or criticize, his prepared remarks may have missed a significant but subtler moment which followed. During a question-and-answer discussion immediately after the speech, with Financial Times commentator Gideon Rachman, Carney responded to a pointed question about the future of NATO by saying:

“Clearly NATO is experiencing a test, right now, and the first response to that test has to be to respond in a way that ensures the security of the Arctic in a robust way for all possibilities. This is actually a point that we have been making in recent years. [...] In the immediate term, one of the imperatives is to reinforce things that Canada is doing [and] other NATO partners [are doing] in a comprehensive way that provides much greater security in the Arctic.”

That Carney should choose to answer a more generic question on the topic of security by discussing the Arctic would not be surprising. The Arctic has nearly become the sine qua non of Canadian defence considerations under his government, as seen in last year’s Defence Policy Update, unsubtly titled Our North, Strong and Free, which goes out of its way to make clear, before a reader can even reach page 1, that:

“The most urgent and important task we face is asserting Canada’s sovereignty in the Arctic and northern regions, where the changing physical and geopolitical landscapes have created new threats and vulnerabilities to Canada and Canadians.”

No, the emphasis on Arctic security is not a surprise. What is significant is that the Canadian Prime Minister - any Canadian Prime Minister - would frame Arctic Security as a NATO priority. He did not have to do that. It’s not clear that Rachman’s question was alluding exclusively to Greenland, but it was doing so in part. So Carney could easily have limited his commentary to Greenland. Instead, he chose to speak about a more expansive role for NATO which applies across the entire Arctic.

This is noteworthy because, as Dr. Elizabeth Buchanan - an academic with a focus on Polar Geopolitics & Strategic Studies - pointed out on X:

“Canada has always been the member state to block the idea of increased NATO footprint in the Arctic - despite calls from the 3 other member state Arctic rim (A5) nations (United States, Norway, Denmark) to move beyond High North framing and establish an Arctic strategy for the alliance.”

Buchanan did not go on to explain why Canada has been obstructionist in this way. But the crux of it is not complicated.

Canada has long claimed that the waters within the bounds of its Arctic Archipelago - which include a mandatory stretch of the Northwest Passage - are “Canadian Internal Waters”. That is to say that Canada has full and absolute jurisdiction over those waters, just as it does over Hudson Bay or, for that matter, Lake Winnipeg. This gives Canada the right to allow, or disallow, the passage of any nation’s ships through those waters for any reason it chooses.

This territorial claim has long been controversial. Many countries - including close NATO allies - argue that the increasingly accessible Northwest Passage should be treated as an international strait. This would give ships from all nations the right to transit through the area at any time of their choosing, without significant regulatory control by Canada.

The reason for this disagreement has very little to do with the merits of Canada’s claims.

European countries see the Northwest Passage as an economically advantageous way to trade with the nations of East Asia and want to ensure the use of it.

The United States, perhaps the most vocal critic of Canada’s position, has historically been motivated less by the specifics of the Arctic than by precedent. Washington has been reluctant to endorse any claim that might encourage states adjacent to other, more strategically vital, waterways to exert greater control over them - despite the substantial differences between Canada’s case and those elsewhere.

Meanwhile Canada’s claims are based on historic use of the waters by Canada and its constituent people groups, the historical absence of routine use of the route by other nations, and and acute environmental concerns in a fragile region - all of which are rationales with standing in international law.

It should be noted that this disagreement has never led Canada to oppose other NATO members developing Arctic capabilities, nor has Canada shied away from extensive Arctic cooperation. What Ottawa has consistently resisted is the transfer of responsibility for Arctic security into formal NATO structures - such as a Standing NATO Maritime Group. Such arrangements would divert resources away from Canada’s sovereign Arctic capabilities, without any assurance that allies would be willing to employ a joint force to defend claims they themselves dispute but which Canada considers vital.

However, Prime Minister Carney’s comments at Davos suggest a potential thawing in this long-frozen position. And lest anyone assume his statement during an unscripted Q & A wasn’t an intentional policy change, the Prime Minister posted this to X on Thursday:

“Pleased with this progress to increase Arctic security through joint NATO action.

With our NATO allies, including the Nordic Baltic 8, Canada will fully participate in the defence of the region and further securing the alliance’s northern and western flanks.”

Why Carney has chosen to open the window to a larger NATO‑structured footprint in the Arctic is not entirely clear.

It’s possible that Trump’s attempts to seize Greenland have convinced the Prime Minister that similar efforts are likely to target the Canadian Arctic soon, and that the benefits of deeper NATO involvement outweigh the risk of weakening the perceived legitimacy of Canada’s claims.

Alternatively, Canada’s expanding Arctic capabilities - nine Arctic-capable icebreakers have been commissioned in Canada since 2018, and 26 more are in the pipeline - may have convinced Carney the country now has sufficient capacity to support a NATO presence while still maintaining distinct sovereign mechanisms to enforce its claims.

A third possibility is that, in the current geopolitical climate, the Prime Minister sees an opportunity to be more ambitious. Perhaps this is part of an attempt to finally nudge the United States and other NATO allies toward recognizing Canada’s legal position on its Arctic claims.

One of the driving concerns for President Trump and, by extension, the United States in its efforts to gain sovereignty over Greenland has been its apparent concern over Chinese and Russian influence and presence in the area. While the exact validity of Trump’s claim that “Right now, Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place” is dubious, and other motives are likely in play, concern over Russian and Chinese presence in the region seems genuine.

Here, the longstanding American position on the Northwest Passage begins to look awkward. If the passage is an international strait, then Russian and Chinese vessels—including warships—would enjoy an established legal right of transit through waters that are strategically adjacent to, and arguably analogous with, those off western Greenland.

This creates a rare moment in which a traditional US legal stance sits uneasily alongside the concerns which are driving its policy decisions. It may not take much of a push to prompt a reassessment - which could lead to formal recognition of Canada’s Arctic claims by the United States. A shift that would likely outlast the present US administration.

Ironically, the current US administration’s relative indifference to legal consistency - generally a cause for concern - may actually work in Canada’s favour. Where previous administrations insisted on maintaining scrupulously coherent positions across all international waterways, this one may care less about accusations of hypocrisy so long as it perceives a net strategic benefit. The ability, with a close ally like Canada, to keep Chinese and Russian ships out of the Northwest Passage when desired is a net strategic benefit.

Seen in this light, Canada’s newfound openness to a NATO footprint in the Arctic could be a pre‑emptive hedge ahead of such an effort to nudge the US in that direction. There’s inherent risk in drawing Trump’s attention to a potential Russian or Chinese threat but, as with Greenland, the best mitigation strategy is to be able to stand tall with allies.

Alternatively, this openness could be intended as a carrot offered to both the United States and Europe, signalling that Canada’s enthusiastic cooperation in a NATO‑based Arctic security framework is available in exchange for stronger guarantees of Canadian Arctic interests.

Whatever the precise motivation behind Carney’s remarks, they point to a quiet but meaningful shift in Canada’s Arctic posture. For decades, Ottawa has treated NATO involvement in the Arctic primarily as a latent threat to sovereignty rather than a potential instrument of it. To clumsily - but deliberately - re-re-use Havel’s allegory, Carney may have taken down the sign in the window that reinforced this orthodoxy, and discovered an open window of opportunity behind it.

First, we should be clear: this intervention is about oil. Unlike past US military actions against oil-rich states (e.g. Iraq), there is no pretense that the US does not intend to benefit directly from the Venezuelan oil industry.

This was made clear in December when Trump said Venezuela must “return to the United States of America all of the Oil [...] that they previously stole from us”.

And it was reinforced today when he said America would be “very strongly involved” in Venezuela’s oil industry.

Some argue oil is not America’s primary motivation here. But that distinction doesn’t really matter. Whether oil, drugs, or Maduro stealing one of Trump’s red ties was the catalyst, if the outcome is US seizure and control of Venezuelan oil, then this is about oil.

Of course, capturing Maduro does not itself give the US control over Venezuela’s oil infrastructure. That would require further action. But, Trump’s statement today that America is “going to run” Venezuela, at least in the near term, suggests that action is pending.

Why US control of Venezuelan oil matters to Canada is simple: Canada is currently America’s largest supplier of crude oil, exporting roughly 4 million barrels per day (bpd), worth about US$130 billion annually.

And Venezuelan oil is a direct substitute.

It is not always appreciated that oil refineries are built to process specific blends of crude with particular chemical properties. In general, they cannot easily switch from one source to another without being largely rebuilt.

Canada and Venezuela are an exception to this. Our crude oils are easily interchangeable.

That raises the possibility that a US-controlled Venezuelan oil industry, optimized for American benefit, could displace Canadian exports.

There are signs this is seen as a feature, not a bug, in US policy circles.

Today, Katie Miller (wife of Trump adviser Stephen Miller) shared a post on X that quoted someone saying “The US doesn’t need Canadian oil anymore” and added the comment “Free trade is over”.

This also aligns with Trump’s statements and actions.

Whatever goal he was trying to achieve with his tariffs of Canadian goods, Trump’s hand was obviously restrained by America’s dependence on Canadian oil. It’s entirely consistent that he would want to break that leverage.

This brings us to an important question: how easily could Canadian oil exports be replaced by US-directed Venezuelan production?

The answer depends on timelines - but it’s a major challenge for Canada.

The lowest hanging fruit for an America committed to this goal is the Canadian oil currently refined on America’s Gulf Coast. All the numbers in this piece are rough, but 450k bpd (11%) of the 4m bpd Canada exports to America eventually flows there.

Replacing this would be straightforward. Venezuela produces 900k bpd now, and there’s no logistical challenge to bringing it to the US Gulf, offloading it, and refining it in place of Canadian crude. Barring outside factors (e.g. an insurgency) this is probably cheaper too.

Using the balance of Venezuela’s oil production to offset Canadian imports is more complicated, but seems plausible.

Most Canadian crude is refined in the US Midwest. Current infrastructure moves petro products south from there - not crude oil north to it.

However, if existing pipelines cease carrying Canadian oil south to refineries on the Gulf Coast, the option exists to reverse them to carry Venezuelan oil north. Barging oil up the Mississippi is also an option.

These options take time and capital, the cost of which would need to be amortized into prices. That reduces, but probably doesn’t eliminate, the cost advantage Venezuelan oil enjoys. Meaning this could be an economically appealing option.

US oil companies may initially be Canada’s ally in resisting this. Stability of supply is critical, and potential Venezuelan political turmoil - or US policy reversals by future administrations - pose risks if they convert their infrastructure to rely on Venezuelan oil.

But if Trump can demonstrate stability in Venezuela’s oil sector, and if Democrats tacitly acquiesce, reducing reversal risk, those barriers fade.

Trump also has regulatory and political tools to force the issue.

Even without major infrastructure changes, US refiners have another option. The Gulf Coast has spare refining capacity for this type of crude. They could refine more there and less in the Midwest.

That would require moving refined products north into markets currently supplied by Midwestern refineries. It’s not trivial or easy to scale - but the infrastructure to do it can be built gradually and non-disruptively, exporting excess refined product in the meantime.

Maintaining market share under these conditions would put heavy downward pressure on Canadian crude prices. Canada would lose revenue both from lower volumes and lower margins.

Having more than 20% of Canadian oil exports threatened is a serious issue. But there are partial mitigations.

This outcome requires redirecting all Venezuelan oil to the US - leaves existing customers needing new suppliers.

These customers are not the reliable international partners Canada would prefer to sell its oil to - China is the largest - but neither is the US if they’re intentionally pursuing this policy. In that sense, it’s trading one unreliable partner for another.

Those countries have been receiving Venezuelan oil at a steep discount, thanks to US tariffs. They’d prefer a lower cost supplier.

Still, the fact that China buys a significant percentage of the crude Canada gets to tidewater today suggests they may have few other options.

The challenge, of course, is getting oil to tidewater.

Canada is less constrained in this regard than it once was. The Transmountain Pipeline expansion was recently completed (Thanks Trudeau!) and increased its capacity from 300k to 900k bpd.

Most of that capacity is already in use, which makes it part of the “status quo”. But it still provides a buffer and option that wouldn’t have been available a few years ago.

It’s also been reported that TMX can expand capacity to 1.25m bpd within the 5 years. Let’s do that.

Canada also has unused crude-by-rail capacity. Rail is more expensive and less safe than pipelines, but shipments peaked above 320k bpd in 2019. Recently they’ve been under 100k bpd. That’s 200k bpd of transport capacity that we can use.

These are stopgaps. To seriously address the scale of this challenge, Canada needs at least another 500k bpd of pipeline capacity to tidewater within five years.

The construction is feasible. The planning, permitting, and consensus-building are harder.

All of this would - imperfectly and at significant cost - mitigate the risk of US-directed Venezuelan oil displacing Canadian exports at existing production levels.

However, that’s not the full extent of the risks facing Canadian exports.

While today Venezuela exports less than a million bpd of crude oil, it retains the largest proven oil reserves anywhere, and its peak exports were over 3m bpd.

That is a volume of oil Canada could not find alternate export routes for in under a decade.

However, US ability to restore Venezuelan oil industry those levels is also constrained, and likely a decade-plus project itself.

The reason is that Venezuelan oil production isn’t shut down, it’s atrophies, and that’s hard to reverse.

The reason for the diminution of Venezuelan oil production is linked to a 70% drop in the global price of oil that happened in the middle of the 2010s. While Venezuela was a true petro-state, with no major secondary industry to buffer its revenues during the downturn.

Without money, maintenance was deferred or done to a low standard. Infrastructure failed. Output fell. Revenue fell further. The cycle repeated.

The Venezuelan government reportedly used coercion to get more, and cheaper, output. But the issue was the machines, not the people. And machines are notoriously non-responsive to coercion.

Meanwhile, the engineering and technical talent that had been built up over decades and sustained the industry decided they’d rather work somewhere else and went to countries where working conditions were better and their skills were valued. Many came to Canada.

Eventually, Venezuela stabilized production at a level it could maintain without the lost engineering and technical talent, by using its creative motivational methods. But vast amounts of unused oil infrastructure was left to rot. It can’t be turned back on, only rebuilt.

The best people to do that are the engineers who previously fled the country. Some may be willing to return, particularly if doing so is seen as helping their nation. But these are smart, educated people, who won’t be fooled if their work is designed to only benefit the US.

They’re also unlikely to return in sufficient numbers unless the coercive systems that drove them out end.

Yet those systems are central to sustaining even today’s production levels. Reforming them has consequences.

The entire industry is likely in a “J curve” scenario. Where it can’t easily produce more using the systems it has, but changing those systems will actually reduce output before they can climb to greater heights on the other side of the curve.

Whether the US wants, or can afford, to support Venezuela through that transition is unclear. Its competence to do so is also an open question. The “J-curve” concept was first developed in the context of work America had to do in Iraq, showing success is not guaranteed.

For Canada, that means large-scale Venezuelan expansion is likely slow and visible. It’s something to watch for and decrease vulnerability to. But it’s not yet a crisis requiring immediate action.

By contrast, the redirection of existing Venezuelan production to displace Canadian oil in the US market could happen quickly.

Canada would be wise to start responding as if it’s going to happen now - before it’s trying to find solutions while impacted by the consequences.

Thank you for reading this piece! I’m genuinely grateful that you took the time.

I write long pieces about things I find interesting. However, work like this takes time and energy, and are easier to justify if they reach a large audience. If you found value in this, please take the time to like, share, and comment. You can even subscribe, for free or as a paying supporter!

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Thanks!

Canada’s renewed focus on Arctic security has led to lots of comparisons with Russia’s Arctic posture - usually to Canada’s disadvantage.

But these comparisons tend to ignore some key realities. I want to break some of that down.

Canada and Russia have fundamentally different relationships with the Arctic.

That’s because of three primary factors:

• Physical geography

• Proximity to economic centres

• Strategic alternatives

First, the Arctic’s physical geography.

North of Canada’s main landmass is a dense archipelago - nearly 100 large islands (and thousands of small ones) with narrow channels in between.

Russia’s Arctic is mostly a single, contiguous, coastline with a few scattered islands.

In warm waters, barrier islands are a benefit - creating sheltered routes for ships.

In the Arctic? They trap ice.

Sea ice around Canada piles into massive ridges in winter - impassable to even the heaviest icebreakers - and lingers longer into summer.

You can see that effect in this satellite image from April 2024. Notice the dark red, indicating thick ice, blocking access into the Northwest Passage from the Arctic Ocean, and much thinner ice throughout the Russian Arctic.

The result is that Russia has a longer natural Arctic shipping season into, out of, and through its Arctic regions than Canada does. And it’s easier for them to extend this season through the use of icebreakers, making some routes viable year-round.

This difference in shipping seasons matters.

Sea shipping is by far the lowest cost way to move goods. It’s hard to be economically competitive without it.

So easier Arctic shipping means more trade, and more trade drives development.

The second key difference is how accessible the Arctic is from each country’s economic centre.

Russia’s main economic centres - Moscow and St. Petersburg, with a combined population of ~18 million - are both under 1,300km from Arctic-facing ports like Severodvinsk.

Canada by contrast has one “Arctic” port: Churchill.

But its closest major city, also ~1300km away, is Winnipeg (Pop. ~800k), and, despite being called an Arctic port, Churchill is still 1,000km from the Arctic Circle.

To get a truly Arctic Canadian port, you’re looking at Tuktoyaktuk, where the largest city within ~1,300km is White Horse - with a population of 30k.

What this means is that Russia can move goods from its economic heartland into the Arctic more easily and more cheaply.

And thanks to better shipping conditions, those goods can actually go somewhere - whether to other parts of Russia’s Arctic or to be traded with other nations.

The third difference can be easy to overlook, but is at least as important as the first two:

Strategic alternatives.

Canada has other options. Russia does not.

Canada is blessed with some of the best natural, ice-free, harbours in the world on both its East and West coasts. Vancouver, Halifax, Prince Rupert and Saint John are all contenders to be among the 10 best natural harbours anywhere - all opening directly into the High Seas.

Canada also has the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence Seaway: not ice-free, but it is the farthest inland navigable waterway on Earth, and cuts through Canada’s industrial heartland on its way to vast interior resources.

Bottom line: Canada doesn’t need to ship through the Arctic because Canada has other options.

Russia’s situation is very different.

Russia’s best Western ports - St. Petersburg and Novorossiysk - are stuck in inland seas (the Baltic and Black seas, respectively), bottlenecked by potentially unfriendly powers.

Meanwhile, Russia’s Eastern ports are thousands of kilometers from where most Russian industry is and, even then, connect to the Sea of Japan - the exits from which are controlled by another potentially unfriendly power.

That leaves only the Arctic as an unthreatened route.

What this difference in other strategic options means is that the two countries don’t need access to the Arctic in the same ways.

For Canada, Arctic access is valuable.

For Russia, Arctic access is existential.

This leads to differences in how the two countries invest in the Arctic.

For example: Canada is often criticized for not “keeping up” with Russia’s icebreaker fleet. This is true, to some extent, Canada’s icebreaker fleet is much smaller than Russia’s.

But the incentives justifying Russia’s fleet - both economic and strategic - simply don’t exist for Canada.

Similarly, Canada is sometimes criticized for not investing in nuclear powered icebreakers as Russia does.

However, Russia’s geography requires its icebreakers to remain in the Arctic year-round, where keeping them fueled is logistically difficult and expensive.

Canada, meanwhile, mostly needs icebreakers in the Arctic when they can plausibly facilitate shipping - when other ships are able to operate there. This means Canada’s icebreakers travel back and forth between the Arctic and ice-free ports and tend to winter farther South. While refueling does happen in the Arctic, it’s much less of a burden to do that during a few months of the year as opposed to throughout the entire year.

Similar logic applies to Russia’s greater investment in Arctic military facilities, and industry.

But, again, that reflects necessity - not, necessarily, advantage.

But necessity doesn’t cut just one way.

Despite not being nuclear, the future CCGS Imnaryuaq, a polar icebreaker currently under construction by Seaspan in Vancouver, will actually be more capable in most regards than Russia’s largest Project 22220 icebreakers, which are nuclear powered.

Why?

Because Canada faces thicker, harder ice, closer to home more often and has designed this icebreaker to operate in those conditions.

That’s Canada’s necessity.

The crux of this is that when we compare Canada to Russia in the Arctic - militarily, economically, logistically - we need to remember:

They’re not playing the same game.

And they don’t need the Arctic in the same way.

Canada’s Arctic policies shouldn’t copy Russia’s. They should reflect its own geography, economy, and strategic needs.

Different challenges. Different opportunities. Different countries.

Thanks for reading this thread!

You may find it familiar, or notice it’s in a different style from my previous pieces on Substack. That’s because this piece was originally written for, and shared, on Twitter several months ago.

I have a number of pieces that were originally written for Twitter, and I’d like your opinions on whether bringing those over to Substack (possibly with some updates and refinements) is welcome or annoying. If you could let me know your views in this poll (and also let me know if you’re a “new reader” who’s never seen this piece before, or if you "Read [it] before”), I’d appreciate it!

Author’s note: This piece was originally published prior to the selection of the National Security Cutter and announcement of the Defiant-class Battleship for the US Navy. This led to some sections being redundant, while the core arguments hold. For this reason, a new version titled “A River Runs Through It” has been published.

This piece has been left up for interest but, if you’re reading it for the first time, I’d encourage you to start with the updated version. -Hawk

The recent announcement that the US Navy’s Constellation-class frigate program would be cancelled, rather than rescued, has been met with a mix of déjà vu, relief, and frustration. Déjà vu, because once again a supposedly affordable, risk-reduced shipbuilding program spiralled into delays and cost overruns. Relief, because the fate of the Littoral Combat Ship, which continued to consume American treasure and time long after it was recognized as a failure, has been avoided. And frustration, because the United States still needs a capable surface combatant to fill the canyon between the “overkill for most missions” Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, and the “too little to be survivable” Littoral Combat Ships.

Almost immediately after the program’s cancellation, suggestions for what it should be replaced with started to circulate, led by the concepts Constellation had originally been selected over: A variant of Spain’s F-100, an upgunned version of one of the Littoral Combat Ship designs, or an adaptation of the US Coast Guard’s Legend-class cutter. New entrants to the conversation include Japan’s Mogami-class and South Korea’s Daegu or Chungnam classes.

Each of these options addresses some perceived short-coming of the Constellation-class program. However, none of them solve the core reason why the Constellation-class failed: Constellation sank under the weight of redesign.

As originally proposed, the Constellation-class was supposed to have 85 percent commonality with its FREMM-class parent design. By the time the project was cancelled, 85 percent of it had to be altered. The program simply didn’t have the resources, infrastructure, or time to manage that scope of work.

There’s a popular narrative that this spiral of redesign was created by choice. A self-inflicted wound by meddlesome (read: stupid) admirals who could not resist tinkering with a perfectly serviceable foreign design. While this caricature contains a kernel of truth, it is ultimately misleading. It reduces a complex industrial and engineering problem to a morality play and ignores the fact that large‑scale redesign is often driven by rational - and sometimes unavoidable - constraints rather than institutional or individual caprice.

Constellation required significant redesign from the outset. But redesign has a way of compounding. One change forces another, and another again, for reasons even the most disciplined program manager cannot fully control. Once a ship requires significant redesign, it is impossible to know the final scope of that work until it is well under way.

This is why, unless it is willing to significantly extend timelines and once again assume the risks that doomed the Constellation-class, it is vital that America selects a replacement with zero required redesign. Not merely because the US Navy cannot afford another highly visible failure, but because it cannot afford the time even a well‑executed redesign would require.

By that standard, the obvious alternatives begin to look flawed. Every ship proposed as a Constellation replacement would require substantial redesign to serve as a credible front‑line combatant for the US Navy - whether because it was never intended to be built by American industry, does not meet US survivability standards, or lacks an integrated, interoperable combat system aligned with US doctrine. All the obvious options require redesign.

Yet just outside the traditional American field of view, north of the border in Canada, there is an option that is very close to delivering what the US Navy wanted from the Constellation-class. Canada’s long‑delayed, but now accelerating, effort to replace its entire surface combatant fleet has reached full‑rate production on the River‑class destroyer. And, despite its own developmental scars, the River‑class would require no modification either to meet the US Navy’s needs or to begin construction in American shipyards.

The River-class is a variant of the Royal Navy’s Type 26 frigate, which was conceived as an anti-submarine-warfare-first, general combatant, complement to the Type 45 air-defence destroyer. Canada, however, used the design’s generous growth margins to pursue a more ambitious goal: to create a surface combatant with credible capabilities across the full spectrum of naval warfare.

What resulted reads like an aspirational statement for the Constellation-class. The River-class is an ~8,000-ton warship capable of 28-plus knots, with credible capabilities for anti-submarine, anti-surface, and anti-air warfare - including the ability to intercept ballistic targets and provide true area-air-defence. While similar to early flight Arleigh Burkes in size, it trades some of that design’s enormous missile magazine depth for enhanced capabilities in areas where the Burke-class is weak, while also requiring a smaller crew - a non-trivial advantage for a navy wanting to man and sustain a larger fleet.

It’s in this similarity to the Constellation’s vision that the River-class will gain some supporters and critics. At 2,300, 3,500, and 4,600 tons respectively, both of the two Littoral Combat Ship designs and the Legend-class cutter which are also in contention as replacements are much smaller than the Constellation’s planned 7300 tons. While the River-class is slightly bigger.

There’s a split opinion on whether the best complement to the Burke-class is a “mini-Burke”, which maintains most of the Burke’s capabilities, but is less resource intensive than the Burke thanks to smaller magazine depth and crew size. Or if a much smaller ship is the better complement, since it will be much cheaper to operate, even if it’s able to assume a much more limited set of the Burke’s missions.

History offers some guidance. In the late Cold War, the US Navy found it necessary to operate Ticonderoga‑class cruisers, early‑flight Arleigh Burke‑class destroyers, and Oliver Hazard Perry‑class frigates simultaneously.

Since that time, the Perry-class has left service, replaced only imperfectly by the smaller, less capable, and deservedly maligned Littoral Combat Ships. While the Ticonderoga’s inevitable march towards retirement, now almost complete, has forced the later flights of the Burke-class to bloat and take on the cruiser’s role. The result today is a capability gap between the Littoral Combat Ships and the Flight IIA‑and‑later Burkes - a gap that two distinct ship classes once filled because it includes two distinct niches.

This context suggests that the best answer isn’t either concept, but both. There’s room in the US Navy’s force structure for a mini-Burke and a smaller, specialized, combatant. If that’s the case, and if resources and urgency make it impossible to pursue both simultaneously, the real question becomes which one should come first.

The intuitive answer is that the smaller, less capable, combatant should be built first, because it can be built sooner and with less risk. However, practical issues invert this logic.

The challenge with Littoral Combat Ship and Legend‑class returns, again, to redesign. Neither platform, as designed, incorporates the combat systems required to meet the US Navy’s needs.

Capable combat systems are not bolt‑on accessories. They require deep integration with a ship’s structure, power generation, cooling, sensors, and survivability features. Retrofitting them onto a platform not designed for that purpose is neither quick nor low‑risk — particularly when the underlying hull has fundamental flaws.

If there ever was a fundamentally flawed platform in US Navy service, it is the two Littoral Combat Ship designs. While these ships were designed with some combat systems, and the US Navy is bravely trying to get some utility out of the existing hulls, their absence from the Red Sea during the recent missile exchanges with the Houthis confirm that these systems are insufficient for even low-intensity modern combat. Even if redesigned, their small size caps their upgraded combat potential, and the decade-long effort required to resolve the existing designs’ basic structural and engineering flaws after entering services suggests that process won’t be straightforward. The Littoral Combat Ships don’t just fail to be a “zero redesign option”, they’re a particularly risky one with low potential returns.

The Legend‑class offers a more promising, but still risky, alternative. Larger than either Littoral Combat Ship design, it was marketed as “designed for but not with” additional weapons and sensors, which sounds promising. In practice, this typically means that buoyancy and electrical margins were included to support future growth but the detailed engineering conducted after specific systems are chosen for integration has not been done. Whether those margins remain available is questionable for several reasons.

The original Legend‑class design was structurally under‑engineered. Post‑commissioning analysis of the first ships suggested an expected service life of just three years. Extensive reinforcement was required, consuming buoyancy margins that might otherwise have supported combat systems. Adding combat systems will increase weight further, which could require additional reinforcement, implying a deeper redesign might be necessary than would be on a platform without this issue. Moreover, the electrical demands of modern combat systems are far higher than those envisioned when the design was completed nearly two decades ago. Electrical margins sufficient then may not be sufficient now. Finally, the US Navy’s survivability standards are far more demanding than those of the Coast Guard. Waivers are possible - as happened with the Littoral Combat Ships - but it’s hard to blame the US Navy for wanting a ship that can protect its sailors and avoid becoming combat ineffective due to minor damage. There’s going to be a strong temptation, if any redesign is happening at all, to increase the scope of that work to make any US Navy variant more survivable.

None of this disqualifies the Legend‑class as a potential lower‑tier combatant. It may well be the best mid‑term option for that niche. But it is not a zero‑redesign solution, and the redesign risk is far greater than it initially appears. The only way it can be a near-term solution is if construction begins before the design work needed for combat system integration is complete. That means assuming that combat system integration will be smooth and not overly invasive, which would be an extremely risky assumption to make.

Contrast these challenges with the River-class in the “mini-Burke” role. Not only does it already have the combat systems needed for that role, the systems that form its combat backbone are ones that are sourced from America. That includes an AEGIS combat system incorporating the USN’s Cooperative Engagement Capability, a Lockheed Martin AN/SPY-7(V)3 as its radar system, and Raytheon’s AN/SLQ-32(V)6 electronic warfare suite.

This is not because the River‑class avoided redesign. The Type 26 parent design incorporates none of these systems. The difference is that the River‑class has already passed through that redesign phase. It sits on the far side of the risks that threaten to doom or delay the other options.

This UK lineage does provide another significant advantage, however. While many navies have far lower survivability requirements than the US Navy, with some requiring nothing more than commercial ships, the Royal Navy’s experience in the Falklands makes it the one navy that might actually have stricter requirements than the US Navy. This doesn’t mean that every specific metric the US Navy uses is satisfied by Royal Navy ships. The specific metrics differ, but the outcomes - ships that remain afloat and fightable after damage, and crews that return home to their families - align closely with US Navy priorities. The River‑class inherits these characteristics, eliminating another pressure that pushes for redesign.

Of course, the River-class does contain non-American sub-systems. But these are generally either UK systems where Canada has already resolved the supply chain issues, or Canadian systems which, while they might be new to the US Navy, are products of the joint US/Canadian manufacturing base, meaning they also don’t rely on electronic widgets or raw materials which aren’t available to to US manufacturers. American industry can copy Canadian homework in a way which doesn’t apply to designs from anywhere else.

This highlights what gives the River‑class a fundamentally different risk profile from other non-American designs under consideration. Some of those designs also integrate US combat systems, but the ships themselves were not designed for construction within the American industrial base. That mismatch introduces enormous redesign risk.

Ships are designed around the materials, components, and fabrication practices available in the industrial base where they will be built. When a design is transferred to a different industrial ecosystem, some of those solutions cease to be available, forcing redesign.

In some cases, these changes are manageable. Substituting a slightly different steel plate thickness may require analysis but, assuming the thickness provides the needed strength and is within the ship’s buoyancy allowances, little else.

In other cases, the consequences cascade. A specialized component made from an unavailable alloy may present a tremendous challenge. Importing the component, or the raw materials to make it, might be an option if America is willing to accept the higher costs and supply chain risk. But it also might not be an option at all, if the country of origin doesn’t have the slack manufacturing capacity to meet the need, and no manufacturer in America has the experience needed working with the material to create a component to the necessary tolerances. This can force redesign, altering dimensions and interfering with adjacent systems, which in turn require redesign themselves. Many mechanisms can cause this and it is how the scope of redesign can grow unpredictably.

It runs counter to the “meddling (read: stupid) Admiral” trope, which is blamed for the failure of the Constellation-class. But many of Constellation’s redesigns probably began this way - with additional tinkering only happening once some level of redesign was required. Any non‑American design originating outside the US industrial base must successfully navigate this process before construction can begin in American yards. And that takes time.

Canada is the exception. Canadians buy two‑by‑fours, not 50‑by‑100 millimetre lumber - even though Canada officially uses metric measurements. This mundane example reflects a deeper reality: For all practical purposes, the Canadian and American industrial bases are one and the same. There are effectively no raw materials or industrial components available in Canada that are not also available in the United States, and vice versa. This means that a design which can be built in Canada can skip the redesign phase when building in America too.

And that’s what the River-class represents. Like Constellation, it is derived from a foreign parent design. It required redesign. However, it’s already in full-rate production - a milestone the Constellation never reached - which means that the scope of the River-class’s required redesigns is known, and largely complete.

This does not quite mean the US Navy could purchase the design tomorrow and begin construction in Wisconsin the next day. Even transferring a proven design between American shipyards requires some engineering work. But that work is fundamentally different - faster, cheaper, and far less risky - than redesigning the ship itself.

Some have proposed bypassing redesign altogether by waiving the requirement that US Navy ships be built domestically, allowing designs like the Mogami‑class to be constructed overseas. Two issues with this: One is that this merely moves the problem. Unless the United States is prepared to rely on foreign shipyards for maintenance and modernization throughout a ship’s service life, the redesign work still has to be done in order to maintain the ships. Second, it only reduces the amount of redesign, it doesn’t eliminate it. Even just changing the voltage and shape of crew-accessible electrical outlets to work with US electronics is a redesign project that can cascade and grow in scope. Taking on any redesign is a task that’s begun without knowing its scope.

While all of this solves problems with other options, none of this should allow us to ignore the River‑class’s weaknesses. Cost is the most obvious.

According to Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Officer the acquisition of 15 River-class destroyers is estimated to cost over C$80 billion or C$4.6 billion per ship. This figure includes taxes, which are commonly left out of government estimates. Though, adjusting for this, and converting to US dollars, still gives a direct conversion cost estimate of over US$3 billion per ship. Yikes.

Looking a little deeper, the picture does get somewhat better. Prior to the River-class, Canada hadn’t laid down a true warship in over 30 years. This lack of experience has direct impacts on cost which won’t be a factor in US shipyards, which have significant and much more recent experience. This gap in production also meant no Canadian yards could begin construction on the River-class before being largely rebuilt and much of that cost, which won’t be duplicated in the US, is built into the project’s cost.

Even allowing for that, a River-class built in America would likely not cost much less than an Arleigh Burke - which is roughly US$2.5 billion. That raises a legitimate question: Why build a mini-Burke for the same cost as a real-Burke?

The simplest answer is lifecycle cost. Acquisition is only a fraction of a warship’s total expense. The cost of fuel dominates lifetime cost, followed closely by crew. The River‑class’s combined diesel‑electric and gas propulsion system is inherently more fuel‑efficient than the Burke’s older gas‑turbine arrangement, and its crew of roughly 200 is far smaller than the Burke’s 300–350. Over decades of service, the savings will be significant.

But even that defence of the River-class’ price tag is shallow. To begin to explore it more fully, we need to acknowledge one of the River-class’s other shortcomings: The fact that it has an underwhelming 24 VLS cells.

This statistic is sometimes used in a misleading way when comparing to European designs which may have more cells, but either don’t use quad-packable Mk 41 cells; or which rely on their VLS cells to hold their point defence and anti-ship missiles - both of which the River-class has dedicated launchers for. However, compared to the Constellation-class’s hoped for 32 Mk 41 cells, which were also going to be complemented by dedicated anti-ship and point defence launchers, it’s clearly a step down.

Yet Constellation-class isn’t getting built precisely because it tried to engineer too much capability within too tight tolerances without having the time, resources, or or infrastructure to make it work. Expecting an alternative to achieve everything the Constellation wanted to achieve but couldn’t is unrealistic.

The Royal Canadian Navy has acknowledged this shortcoming in the River-class, and stated that it too would prefer more VLS cells on the platform. However, the time crunch created by the looming retirement of the Halifax-class has convinced the Royal Canadian Navy to proceed with building its first River-class ships “as-is” and use the time that buys them to do the design work properly for a “Flight II” version with more VLS cells.

It seems glaringly obvious that this is an approach that the US Navy should at least consider emulating. Begin construction now on an available design which meets most of the force’s perceived needs, and use the cushion of time created by those ships to do the redesign work properly that’s required to create an ideal variant for the future.

There is ample room within the River‑class to support that evolution.

It’s too early to know for sure, but Canada’s future Flight II River-class will probably land between 30 and 36 Mk 41 VLS cells. This relatively modest increase over the 24 VLS cells in the base configuration isn’t an inherent limitation of the River-class’s design. The Royal Canadian Navy is extremely enamoured with the River-class’s “multi-mission bay”, which is a reconfigurable space directly forward of the helicopter hangar which can be used to increase the ship’s capacity for helicopters or unmanned aerial vehicles, deploy unmanned underwater vehicles or large boats, or carry cargo and support humanitarian and relief efforts, among other things. Keeping this space puts a limit on how many VLS cells the Royal Canadian Navy can add to the design.

There’s an argument that this is an excellent feature for the US Navy as well. Especially given the rapid changes in drone technology, and the impact they’re having on warfare, as well as the expectation that this ship will be used for taskings the Burke is overkill for - like humanitarian work. However, if VLS cells are the priority for the future, there are concept designs (based on the Type 26 parent design, not the River-class specifically) which suggest that replacing the multi-mission bay could allow for as many as 96 Mk 41 cells - or even 128 if the main gun were sacrificed.

These are only concepts. Their existence shows that the Type 26 has the basic space, buoyancy, and power requirements for this to work - nothing else. Realizing these concepts would require extensive detailed design work - exactly the type of work this piece cautions against undertaking. It’s also possible that engineering challenges would be discovered that make the practical limit for VLS cells somewhat lower than this theoretical maximum. But the fact that such growth is plausible underscores an important point.

The River-class isn’t really a “mini-Burke”. As it’s been configured for the Royal Canadian Navy, it can fill that role and it will save money compared to operating the same number of Burkes. But it’s more accurate to think of the River-class as a Burke with different priorities, and with a modern systems architecture which leaves room for a broad range of configurations and whatever advancements the next 30 years of naval warfare bring.

This is important, because the Burke is at the absolute limit of what can be integrated into its 1980s architecture. It needs replacement to deal with what the future may bring. And while the Navy is pursuing the DDG(X) destroyer, which is meant to be that replacement, the same institutions responsible for Constellation, LCS, and Zumwalt will shape that effort. A River‑class in US service could provide a compelling fallback if DDG(X) slips or fails. Even if the DDG(X) is fully successful, it’s more of a replacement for the Ticonderoga-class Cruiser that later flights of the Arleigh Burke were bloated to fill in for, than it is a replacement for the niche the Arleigh Burke was truly meant to fill. At a monstrous 13,000 tons, the DDG(X) will leave a vast capability gap if the next largest combatant in American service is a 4,500-5,500 ton Legend-class.

An 8,000 ton River-class fits naturally into that space, however it’s configured.

This returns the discussion to cost. A ship with the potential to become a more modern, more adaptable successor to the Burke - with more room for future growth - should be expected to cost something similar to a Burke. That’s what Constellation was becoming and is simply the price of a survivable, full‑spectrum surface combatant in an era of drones, hypersonic weapons, and dense sensor networks.

In the end, the Constellation-class did not fail because the Navy asked for too much capability, nor because it chose a foreign parent design. It failed because the Navy tried to compress ambition, redesign, and urgency into a single program - and discovered, once again, that naval shipbuilding does not forgive that kind of optimism.

The case for the River‑class is not that it is perfect, cheap, or tailor‑made for the United States Navy. It is that it can be built now, meeting urgent fleet needs, while preserving the option to pursue greater ambition later. It offers the Navy a way to sequence its priorities rather than gamble on satisfying them all at once.

This appealing and unique proposition is enough to wonder whether the best future for the US Navy is one that has a little bit of maple in its DNA.

Thank you for reading this piece! I’m genuinely grateful that you took the time.

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If you follow anyone who discusses Canadian defence procurement - journalists, analysts, terminally-online aviation guys - you’ve probably read something related to the F-35 v. Gripen debate.

Hell, you’re probably exhausted by the F-35 v. Gripen debate.

I recently wrote a piece exploring why Canada may be more constrained than some Gripen fans would like in its ability to add Gripens to the F-35s we’ve already committed to. The core of the argument was that Canada has so few fighter pilots and technicians - and especially few of those experienced enough to form an initial cadre of trainers and leaders needed for a successful transition to a new type - that to remove two such groups out of existing CF-18 squadrons could easily cripple the CF-18s’ ability to operate effectively during the years before a new fleet takes over.

That same argument applies to Rafales, Eurofighters, Super Hornets, Strike Eagles, Fighting Falcons, and Boramaes - essentially, the entire list of Western fighters that could plausibly serve as front-line options for Canada.

That argument was, if not entirely novel, at least a rationale that hadn’t been the headline case in the three thousand articles on this topic published before it. And even then, when I released it over a week ago, it already felt like it barely snuck in under the exhaustion curve - a curve that has since been dragged even lower by another 3,000 articles.

That all begs the question, why am I writing about this topic again?

Because I think the reason people are exhausted isn’t the volume of commentary. It’s that both the Gripen and F-35 are problematic, so all the options kind of suck.

The F-35 is a prima donna of an aircraft - obscenely expensive to operate, hard to keep flying even when you’re willing to spend the money, and a platform that deepens Canada’s reliance on an increasingly unreliable United States. The concern with being reliant isn’t mythical “kill switches” so much as the risk that the flow of spare parts could be leveraged in trade disputes or interrupted during crises - when the U.S. instinctively hoards supply, forgetting that Canadian security is American security (as we saw with PPE early in COVID). Even compared with other U.S. aircraft, or aircraft with significant U.S. components (including Gripen), the F-35 has a particularly short sustainment horizon in the face of American malignance, or just inattention.

Those who’ve followed my work may assume I view the Gripen more favourably. After all, I wrote a piece in the spring arguing it could serve Canada’s sole fighter and even highlighted how it had some operational advantages despite its lower capability. However, that argument was framed against the unspoken threat of President Trump blocking an F-35 acquisition - something that hasn’t materialized.

The fact is, Gripen is a red headed stepchild of an aircraft, sold by a country which doesn’t control the entire ecosystem of equipment - engines, munitions, sensors - needed to make the aircraft truly independent. It also barely meets Canada’s minimum requirements to serve as our sole combat aircraft, while mixed-fleet options that pair it with the F-35 either (at best) save less money than one would hope considering the lower capability ceiling, and may end up being more expensive than just operating an equivalent number of F-35s.

Who wouldn’t become exhausted trying to balance options as terrible as those?

Fortunately, there may be another option that lets Canada conduct its most important air-combat missions without relying solely on the F-35, generates significant cost savings, and doesn’t add pressure to Canada’s limited pool of pilots and technicians.

How is this possible, when I already said that every Western front-line fighter would present similar issues for Canada as the Gripen?

For those who aren’t familiar with it, allow me to introduce you to the KAI Golden Eagle.

This is a 21st century, supersonic jet trainer developed for and by the Republic of Korea, which can also be equipped with modern combat systems.

The reason this aircraft provides a substantively different option from the Gripen is that, having retired the CT-155 Hawk in 2024, Canada is currently shopping for a new advanced trainer for its lead-in fighter program - and the Golden Eagle is on the shortlist.

This means acquiring it wouldn’t force the RCAF to operate yet another aircraft type. The Golden Eagle could serve both as a lead-in fighter trainer and as a combat-capable complement to a front-line fighter like the F-35. If it also replaced the Snowbirds’ venerable CT-114 Tutor - something it would be well-suited for - the RCAF would actually be operating fewer distinct aircraft types than it did in 2024.

In concept, other trainers could be used in a dual (or triple) role - manufacturers of every training aircraft ever designed have touted the potential for a light combat variant. However, the Golden Eagle is among the most successful in this regard in the modern era - having actually sold more combat-capable variants (the TA-50 or FA-50) than pure trainers.

Let’s be clear that the idea is not for the Golden Eagle to become Canada’s primary combat aircraft. If we had access to the full list of requirements used to compare Gripen and the F-35 in 2022, we’d almost certainly find tasks the Golden Eagle can’t perform—especially in overseas deployments. We need something more capable for our most technically demanding mission,s and since we’ve already paid for our first F-35s, it’s unlikely to be anything else.

But our most important fighter mission, the defence of Canada, isn’t our most technically demanding. In my earlier piece on Gripen’s capabilities, I noted that the defence of Canada is a mission even a 1982-vintage CF-18 (minus forty years of wear) could still handle adequately. This meant that whether the goal is to provide extra mass for Canadian security, free up F-35s for deployments abroad, or provide a backstop if U.S. actions ground the F-35 fleet - the Golden Eagle is very capable of contributing.

Start with range. Canada is big, and an aircraft needs to reach remote places to effectively defend it. Technical data on the Golden Eagle - especially the combat variants - can be sparse, but if you take the base model’s advertised range and fuel load, then factor in the additional fuel capacity provided by the combat variant’s conformal tanks, you get a range using internal fuel roughly on par with (or slightly better than) the CF-18’s. That would change with a heavy load, but, for the air-to-air loadouts used for domestic defence, that’s no issue. Both aircraft also support aerial refuelling and drop tanks. So, as a rule of thumb, an FA-50 can reach anywhere in Canada a CF-18 can - which makes it useful for many tasks.

When it comes to weapons, the Golden Eagle’s options are varied - if not always especially deep. It’s capable of deploying a number of American, European, and indigenous Korean manufactured weapons in both the air-to-air and ground-attack roles. The American weapons include items Canada has stockpiles of for use on the CF-18 and apparently intends to continue to use on the F-35, meaning no new stockpiles are required. Meanwhile, the variety of sources for weapons Golden Eagle can use provides resilience in options for supply. It’s true that integration of some European weapons we may want, like the Meteor, have been discussed but not completed. But they seem to be practical, and Canada could take the lead on those if we felt it was important.

Electronic systems are more mixed. The Golden Eagle carries a modern AESA radar with a contemporary interface - a great addition for the training role the aircraft will fill for pilots heading to the F-35 fleet - but with power output somewhere between the CF-18’s original radar and the early-2000s upgrade it uses today. This is an area where the Golden Eagle is a step down from today’s modernized CF-18s, but still above the “1982 CF-18” threshold that I’ve suggested is adequate for a secondary combat aircraft. The Golden Eagle also includes Link 16, NATO’s standard tactical data link, which again has training benefits as well as operational ones. NORAD has different data-sharing requirements from the more standardized ones that are used throughout NATO and would require U.S. approval for full integration. I’m curious if the US might be more open to integrating NORAD systems into the Golden Eagle than they are with the Gripen, since the Golden Eagle has the mixed-blessing of being partly a Lockheed Martin product. But this isn’t something we can determine from open source materials, so we have to accept that it’s possible that Canada would have to decide if Link 16 alone is “good enough” for a second-string combatant.

Lockheed Martin’s involvement in the Golden Eagle also opens up another consideration. While those whose main motivation for acquiring a second fighter is a separation from the US to the maximum degree possible will see this as a drawback, it’s possible that a choice by Canada to modestly reduce F-35 numbers in favour of Golden Eagles might not be viewed as an unfriendly act by Washington - especially if Lockheed signals tacit acceptance.

Engines are another case where the Golden Eagle keeps us somewhat dependent on the US, but not nearly as tightly as a fully F-35 fleet would, or even a mixed F-35/Gripen fleet might. All three of these aircraft use American engines, which have some component manufacturing or assembly happening outside the United States, but still all require some components only made in America. However, the amount of American input needed for the F-35’s PW F135 engine is more than is needed for the Gripen E’s GE F414 engine, which is more than the Golden Eagle’s GE F404 engine. Each represents a decreasing value on a scale of dependence on the US. The Golden Eagle’s F404 is actually the same engine the CF-18 uses, so the RCAF has significant experience and expertise maintaining it already, and Canada hosts a “Centre of Excellence” for the F404, with deep experience in overhaul and repair. This means that, short of the US using ITAR to block the initial sale - something unlikely with the Gripen, but even less likely with Golden Eagle - its leverage to make it difficult for Canada to continue to operate the Golden Eagle is limited.

One major unknown - an area of strength for the Gripen - is economic benefits in the form of industrial participation - including Canadian manufacture or assembly. Korea has a track record of generous technology transfer and local manufacturing, but these are negotiated case-by-case. There’s been virtually no public discussion of what Canada might receive, so this has to be an area where we can hope the Golden Eagle would perform well, but we can’t know specifics.

One possibility, if significant manufacturing or assembly of the airframe isn’t possible, is to pursue manufacturing of the GE F404 engine. Canada’s existing industrial base supporting it gives us a strong starting point to leverage into manufacture. And, despite its age, it’s an engine that’s still in demand and will be for a long time to come. This may produce just as many economic benefits as producing airframes without engines would, as modern fighters can be seen as half engine, half airframe, when it comes to manufacturing complexity and cost. Again, though, whether this is a possibility is impossible to assess.

The other economic consideration, cost, however, is clearer. Recent international Golden Eagle contracts land in the US$50–60 million per aircraft range with full combat packages. Flyaway costs are murky, but this compares favourably with Gripen, which claims a US$85–100 million flyaway and has full-package contracts exceeding US$200 million per aircraft. Those aren’t apples-to-apples, but the pattern is consistent: the Golden Eagle is significantly cheaper to acquire.

Operational costs are harder to pin down, but a smaller airframe with a single F404 will almost certainly cost less per hour than modern Gripens - often touted as the cheapest Western front-line fighter.

While we’re comparing: one criticism of Gripen is that by the time Canada buys it and reaches full operating capability, it may be relatively few years before it’s truly obsolete and can’t be used in some of the roles we view as mandatory. Meanwhile, the Golden Eagle sidesteps this. Since it’s not required to fulfill the most technically difficult missions, it may actually be longer before it needs to be replaced due to obsolescence. And if it does hit the end of its combat utility partway through its service life, the airframes can simply transition into the training fleet, remaining useful for decades - where the Gripens might have to be retired.

None of this is to suggest that the Golden Eagle is the perfect solution for Canada. Acquiring it would be, at its core, a compromise. However, it navigates around some potential deal-breakers that other options cannot, and it delivers capabilities that address many of the concerns driving Canada’s ongoing review of its F-35 purchase.

I hope, considering all of this, that the Golden Eagle can be an option that doesn’t suck so much it’s exhausting to talk about. But, at the very least, I think it’s worthy of discussion and should no longer be the silent third option.

Thank you for reading this piece! I’m genuinely grateful that you took the time.

The thoughts within this piece are largely built upon the arguments of Maple Chaos over on X, whose been pushing for the trainer/combatant possibility for a long time - even when I was convinced it couldn’t work.

If you’d like to support my work without the commitment of a paid subscription, you can send me a one-time tip via Stripe, and buy me a coffee (or a little bit more).

Leave a One Time Tip

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When Canada’s Minister of Defence, David McGuinty, sat before Parliament’s Standing Committee on Defence this past Thursday and said “we’re good” when it comes to spending two percent of Canada’s GDP on defence this year, the response was predictably skeptical.

It was the same skepticism that has followed Prime Minister Mark Carney since his June 9th announcement of a $9.2 billion increase in defence spending, along with his assertion that 2025 would be the first year Canada meets NATO’s two-percent target - something it has never achieved since the guideline was introduced.

One reason for that skepticism is a belief that Canada simply lacks the capacity to spend that much additional money, even when it is budgeted. Government processes must be followed before budgeted funding can actually be spent and, in recent years, billions in budgeted defence spending hasn’t been spent when programs couldn’t fulfill the necessary requirements. That is an important and complex topic in its own right, but not the focus here. Perhaps it’s a topic for another time.

A second skeptical point of view looks at the promised spending increases and assumes they’re a cynical exercise which might show increased spending on paper, but which won’t result in more steel or other elements which actually change Canada’s defence capabilities or capacity. They believe that a significant portion of the promised spending increase will come from “re-profiling” existing government spending as “defence-related”, or by adding a defence-related twist onto new projects which, at best, are tangentially related to our defence.

Uncomfortable as it may be, that skepticism isn’t entirely unearned.

Every year, NATO publishes a report on how much each member country spends on defence, using a common set of definitions. When the alliance formally adopted the two-percent-of-GDP guideline in 2015, that report took on new, domestic, political importance for members which put increased scrutiny on how the figures were calculated.

In 2017 and 2018, NATO members agreed to broaden certain definitions of what could be counted as defence spending. By and large, these changes were reasonable. If two countries’ intelligence services produce similarly valuable defence-related outputs, for example, there is a reasonable case that both should count as “defence spending,” even if one agency is military and the other civilian. That’s the type of change which was made.

Still, even when such changes make for more accurate comparisons between NATO members’ spending, they do resemble the kind of “shell game” skeptics claim Canada is engaged in today. No new capabilities emerged from the changed definitions - and yet, some countries (including Canada) suddenly found themselves closer to the two-percent threshold on paper.

While these changes had broad support within NATO, there were disagreements about exactly where the lines should be drawn. It’s been claimed that Canada, in particular, consistently pushed for the broadest and most inclusive definitions so its spending, on paper, would increase as much as possible. And, when Canada submitted its defence spending information for subsequent reports, some of the spending that Canada claimed as defence-related was deemed “ineligible” by NATO.

So, yes. Canada does have a history of participating in shell games so it can show higher defence spending without necessarily spending more money. That history may justify skepticism about current pledged increases. But if we want to be informed rather than merely cynical, we need to look at the current case on its own merits.

Let’s start with the $9.2 billion announced by Prime Minister Carney in June. Is there evidence that this money is not really going to defence priorities?

Bottom line up front: not really.

The announcement was accompanied by a government “Backgrounder” that categorized the $9.2 billion under seven descriptions:

1. $2.6 billion to empower the military to recruit and retain the personnel needed to carry out its mandate

2. $844 million to repair and sustain CAF capabilities and invest in revitalizing and optimizing key infrastructure

3. $560 million to strengthen DND and the CAF’s digital foundations

4. $1 billion to grow existing and introduce emerging military capabilities

5. $2.1 billion to strengthen the Government’s relationship with Canada’s defence industry

6. $2 billion to diversify Canada’s defence partnerships beyond the United States

7. $135 million for defence-related investments of other government departments and agencies

Just based on these descriptions, the first six categories clearly appear to be defence-related. Some are more straightforward than others - it’s easier to be confident that point 1, which is where the funds used to increase CAF salaries this year came from, is closely related to defence than point 6, which seems to include things like eliminating bottlenecks in munitions production - but none resemble generic economic development or tangential industrial policy like investment in mineral mining being rebranded for military purposes. Nor do they neatly fit into the mandates of other departments, making it unlikely they represent existing spending that’s being re-profiled as defence spending.

The only vaguely defined category is the final $135 million, allocated to “other government departments”. But there’s nothing suspicious about it being on this list. This figure also represents less than 1.5% of the total announcement. Nothing in the larger analysis hinges on how this specific amount is distributed so it’s not important enough to pursue fully.

What is important, however, is to make sure we’re looking at all the spending that’s supposed to get Canada to the 2 percent level in 2025. We can estimate how much that is by looking at NATO’s 2024 report on defence expenditures by its members. In this report, we can see that Canada was expected to spend $41 billion on defence, which was equivalent to 1.37% of our projected GDP, in 2024.

A simple back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that an additional $9.2 billion alone does not get Canada to 2 percent. The real increase needed for 2 percent would be closer to $19 billion, for a total of ~$60 billion.

At first glance, that difference leaves a gap for skeptics who believe the spending to be shell-game to make their case. Even if Carney’s $9.2 billion is real, perhaps the rest is coming from re-profiled, existing, spending.

The only way that wouldn’t be a reasonable conclusion is if a significant increase in defence spending was already planned for 2025, and Carney’s $9.2 billion was additional spending layered on top of that.

This seems unlikely, though. It would mean that an even larger increase had already been programmed for 2025 under the previous Trudeau government, which was widely viewed as hesitant to prioritize defence spending. An increase of that magnitude wouldn’t be subtle - it would stand out clearly in past budgets’ numbers and probably show up in graphs or charts as well.

Charts like this one:

This chart is from page 303 of Canada’s 2024 Federal Budget. On it, we can see a planned increase in the Department of National Defence’s budget of just over $10 billion between 2024 and 2025.

Before relying too much on this figure, it’s important to verify it shows what it appears to show. The $10 billion increase between 2024 and 2025 is obvious. However, the $44.2 billion figure here, added to Carney’s new $9.2 billion does not add up to the ~$60 billion needed to hit the 2 percent of GDP threshold.

The key to understanding that gap is to realize that the $44.2 billion from this chart, plus the $9.2 billion Carney announced are both (almost) entirely DND spending. However, NATO’s definition of defence spending is broader than that, and includes spending from other departments when it contributes to defence. There is no public figure for what this non-DND defence-related spending is expected to be in 2025, however, the Library of Parliament’s paper on “Making Sense of Canada’s Defence Spending” indicates that the 2023 figure was $7.3 billion. If we assume that hasn’t changed, and add it to our DND figures, it entirely closes the gap to ~$60b.

Regardless, what matters most here is that in addition to Carney’s $9.2 billion, there was already an pre-programmed increase of approximately $10 billion in defence-related spending for 2025. There is no “gap” which requires re-profiling of existing expenses to explain how it will be filled.

This doesn’t mean, however, that the increased spending planned under Trudeau deserves the benefit of the doubt. It’s important to confirm that this is also spending that’s actually contributing to Canada’s defence.

Doing this is slightly more complicated with a budget. It addresses a longer time horizon than Carney’s more immediate announcement.

Some examples of specific defence spending listed include:

1. Around $38 billion over 20 years in the largest upgrade to NORAD

2. $11.5 billion over 20 years for Canada’s contribution to increasing NATO’s common budget and to establish a new regional office in Halifax for NATO’s Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic; and,

3. $10.4 billion for up to 16 new P-8A Poseidon aircraft

These are intended to be representative, not comprehensive. The budget contains a couple dozen spending items of this sort, with no clarity about what portion of each item’s budget will be spent in the 2025 fiscal year. There are other public documents which may provide more insight, but what’s important here is that this is the pool of projects contributing to the significant increase in programmed spending in 2025, and that, going by their descriptions, they appear to be substantively defence-related projects.

However, project descriptions alone are not perfect proof of legitimacy. There’s no guarantee that top-line descriptions accurately represent what’s happening within the programs, while secrecy and technical details can make it difficult for outside, public-information dependent, analysis to look deeper.

What’s needed is an assessment from someone outside the Canadian government, with expertise and access to detailed project information, who can look at these individual projects, determine if they meet NATO’s defence spending definitions, and share their final conclusions publicly.

Fortunately, we have exactly that.

Earlier in this discussion, one of the reasonable rationales presented as a justification for skepticism about whether Canada’s increases in defence spending are substantive, or just a paper exercise, was that Canada has previously submitted spending claims to NATO which were deemed ineligible under the alliance’s common definitions of defence spending.

However, this history also demonstrates that NATO does not simply accept member states’ claims at face value. Instead, countries submit detailed data which is reviewed, scrutinized, and vetted before being included in official reports. This allows us to treat information in such reports as having been confirmed as legitimate spending by informed, impartial, experts.

NATO’s most recent Defence Expenditure of NATO Countries report was released in August, and includes estimates for the 2025 fiscal year. In that report, Canada’s estimated defence spending for 2025 is $62.713 billion - equivalent to 2.01% of GDP.

There are, of course, caveats. GDP figures are based on OECD projections and could change. The spending targets are based on government plans, not signed contracts and prices can fluctuate. Either of these factors could sway the final percent-of-GDP figure somewhat. Also, Canada actually needs to spend the money it’s told NATO it plans to spend - which relates back to earlier questions about Canada’s capacity to spend so much extra money in a single year. But that’s still a topic for another time.

This brings us to the final reason why skepticism that the government intends to spend this money on defence doesn’t make sense. Mark Carney did not have to promise to hit the 2 percent benchmark in 2025.

Canada’s existing commitment was that it would spend 2 percent of its GDP on defence by 2032. If Carney’s goal had been international praise, or domestic approval, he could have accelerated the timeline to 2028 or 2029.

Choosing 2025, instead, creates political risk. It shortens the runway, increases scrutiny, and gives opponents a clear criticism it can use in the next election if the government falls short of its target at all.

The only motivation that really makes sense for setting such a near-term target is that the Prime Minister wants the effects of that increased spending - in terms of Canada’s real defensive capability and capacity - to arrive sooner. And if that’s the motivation for setting the target this year, it doesn’t make sense to play a shell game which makes it appear that the money is being spent, but doesn’t deliver the actual capability.

None of these arguments are ones which lend themselves to absolute conclusions. Defence spending is large, and complex, with a lot of gray area. Any claim that there’s zero re-profiling of existing spending, or zero cases where a non-defence project has been included under defence spending, can probably be proven inaccurate by a counter example.

However, the absence of any obvious flags in the descriptions of spending projects in the relevant spending announcements or the budget, coupled with NATO vetting, and the absence of any upside in taking the political risk this promise creates without the intention to follow through, combine to create a compelling case:

The Canadian government appears to genuinely intend to meet NATO’s benchmark of spending two-percent of GDP on defence in 2025 - and to do it in a way that shows up not just on paper, but in steel.

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Despite the fact that one of the first acts of the Mark Carney government was to announce a review of Canada’s purchase of 88 Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II fighter aircraft, it remains all but certain that Canada will acquire at least some F-35s.

The leading reason for this is fairly banal: we’ve already paid for sixteen of them.

Neither Lockheed Martin nor the current U.S. government seems likely to provide Canada with an escape hatch that returns those funds, and the Government of Canada seems unlikely to write off a multibillion-dollar investment.

Still, the government appears to be seriously weighing - and there is significant public discussion around - the possibility of acquiring a complement to the F-35. Despite some speculation that the review has cast a wide net, speaking to European, American, and possibly some Southeast Asian manufacturers, both government comments and public discussion continue to assume that the most plausible alternative is Saab’s JAS-39 Gripen E.

I don’t want to rehash all the arguments for and against each aircraft here. If you’re reading this but haven’t followed the broader discussion, three excellent pieces that explore it are Philippe Lagassé’s “Fighters Passing in the Night” (a balanced overview), Hush Kit’s “Why the Gripen vs F-35 Debate Isn’t Really About Hardware or Software — It’s About Canada Refusing to Be a Vassal” (a strategic-sovereignty case for a mixed fleet), and this thread on X by (a technical case for the F-35).

In watching - and participating in - the public discussion, I’ve noticed something curious. Proponents of a mixed fleet write long arguments on the strategic, operational, industrial, and sovereignty merits of the concept. While those who favour a pure F-35 fleet are much more likely to focus on a single issue: personnel. The F-35 proponents focused on personnel are also far more likely to be current or recent members of the CAF.

I don’t subscribe to the occasionally floated idea that the CAF should have complete autonomy over defence spending. But it would be foolish not to listen closely to the concerns of CAF members when making defence investments. So when personnel is repeatedly raised by CAF members, even if rarely elaborated upon, it makes me wonder:

What can we infer from public information about the personnel challenges facing Canada’s fighter capability - and how would a mixed fleet affect them?

At the risk of stating the obvious: both the CF-18 and its possible replacements require pilots. Pilots can learn basic skills in other aircraft, study theory in classrooms, and spend time in simulators. But they must also spend at least some real-world hours in the aircraft they will fly in combat.

A 2018 Auditor General report gave us a useful benchmark for that: the minimum number of hours the RCAF says a fighter pilot must fly to retain proficiency is 140 hours/year. That same report noted that many CF-18 pilots were not hitting this target due to aircraft unavailability - an issue it noted was rooted largely in technician shortages and a decline in average technician experience.

A 2019 Parliamentary Budget Officer report told us that Canada’s CF-18s were flying ~160 hours per aircraft per year.

This figure is now dated to just be accepted as still representative, but we know that by 2016 the average CF-18 had accumulated 6,000 of its 8,000 expected flight hours. The ex-Australian F-18s acquired in 2019 also had roughly 6,000 hours of flight time. Given those starting points, the 8,000 life expectancy, and the fact that Canada plans to fly the CF-18 until 2032, 160 hours per year per jet is almost certainly an upper limit of how much they may be flying today.

The purpose of these numbers is to determine an upper bound on how many fighter pilots the RCAF could possibly keep proficient. To do that, we also need the number of operational fighters generating those hours. This number is shockingly difficult to obtain with precision, but using the highest reasonable estimate - 95 aircraft - we can calculate the theoretical maximum number of pilots who could meet the RCAF’s proficiency requirement within the RCAF.

That number is 108.

To be clear, that is the maximum possible number of proficient pilots the RCAF can maintain at once, assuming perfect allocation of flying time. Realistically, not all 140 hours are interchangeable: some pilots may meet the total but miss specific skill requirements; others may need more attempts than planned to meet performance thresholds.

Training is also going to drag down this number, at least in terms of combat qualified pilots, as both new pilots and pilots returning to fighter squadrons from other posts require additional flight hours being combat qualified.

While the fact that pilots rotate to other posts and back into the fighter squadrons implies that the RCAF may have some additional depth beyond the squadrons themselves, the 108 figure still represents the bulk of Canada’s fighter pilot capacity - and again, it’s a best case.

Considering these factors, it seems almost certain that Canada has fewer than 100 combat-qualified fighter pilots, and it wouldn’t be especially surprising if the number were closer to half that.

What this reveals is a fragile personnel structure. Losing even a single-digit number of pilots will significantly impact capacity. In some specialized roles - such as instructors, tactics officers, flight leads, squadron commanders - a handful of individuals may represent the entire available pool of those qualified for the role.

This is the backdrop against which we must view the challenges of choosing a multi-fighter fleet. Several experienced fighter pilots have reportedly already left CF-18 squadrons to transition to the F-35. We don’t know how many, but we do know that they are generally the type of experienced pilots who are most scarce, because they will form the instructor cadre and initial leadership for the Canadian F-35 community.

Adding a second fighter type would require a doubling of the number of experienced pilots to leave CF-18 squadrons for these purposes. If Gripen is selected as a second aircraft, and it arrives on the timeline being publicly discussed - three to five years - this group of officers must be identified and removed from CF-18 units soon - meaning the personnel demands required for a Gripen fleet transition would be felt in parallel, rather than in sequence, with the demands of the F-35 fleet transition.

There is no way that this doubling in the pilot-drain from CF-18 squadrons wouldn’t negatively impact the effectiveness of those squadrons. A reduction in effectiveness which will bite while they’re still our only operational fighter force - which is the plan until at least 2029 - and continue through the remainder of their operational life which isn’t expected to end until 2032.

The challenges to CF-18 squadrons would extend beyond just those caused by this pilot-drain. The RCAF will also need to pull experienced technicians from CF-18 squadrons to retrain on new aircraft. As with pilots, the first group must be composed of the experienced maintainers, who will become the trainers and leaders in their roles for the new fleets.

The 2018 Auditor General report emphasized technician shortages and declining technician experience as risk factors for CF-18 fleet effectiveness at least on par with the risk created by pilot shortages. It noted that recent losses of experienced technicians had increased maintenance hours per flight hour from 21 to 24, and that aircraft availability fell correspondingly.

Earlier we calculated pilot flying hours based on the number of aircraft in the fleet. But the true limiting factor is maintenance; both how many technician hours are available and how many technician hours are needed to complete a job. Removing experienced technicians reduces both sides of the equation: the number of hours available for maintenance decreases, while the number of maintenance hours required for any given job increases.

In a force with so little redundancy, this combination could easily reduce aircraft availability to the point where maintaining proficiency across all required roles becomes impossible - meaning the fighter force would, in at least some respects, no longer be combat capable.

So why not fix all of this by training more pilots and technicians?

Three reasons.

First, pilots and technicians don’t grow on trees. That’s a phrase sometimes used when something isn’t abundant, but its original intent was to refer to when the process to create something isn’t abundant. That’s the case here. As we established earlier, pilots need flight time, which is capped by the number of aircraft. Technicians also need to be trained on the aircraft they’re going to maintain and service, and aircraft numbers limit capacity for that as well.

Second, expanding the training pipeline for pilots and technicians before they reach the squadrons requires the same experienced pilots and technicians whose shortage we’re trying to solve. In the short term, increasing training throughput actually intensifies those challenges.

Third, anyone recruited today will have limited impact during the transition. The acute personnel pressures of the transition period - whether to one aircraft or two - will peak over the next decade. The people who are most in demand during that transition are those who already have ten years’ experience. There’s no short-cut which gets today’s recruits 10 years’ experience during this transition. So, while recruiting new personnel today is essential for the post-transition future, it does little to ease the bottleneck between now and 2035.

So what can we conclude?

Those raising “personnel” as an obstacle to a mixed fleet have a legitimate concern. It is reasonable to claim it’s not just a challenge, but the binding constraint of a mixed fleet proposal.

Does this make it so significant that a mixed fleet is impossible? That’s a claim I’m not prepared to make.

But the challenge is large enough - and the solutions unclear enough - that any mixed-fleet proposal must grapple directly with personnel constraints. Any proposal that doesn’t grapple with them - whether that be through a plan for addressing them, or an acknowledgement and acceptance of the trade-offs those challenges create - is not a serious proposal.

A mixed fleet may not be impossible. But it’s not free. And any discussion which fails to acknowledge that is leading us away from the best course instead of towards it.

Fin.

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