Canada’s Next Generation Combat Vessels

The illustration above comes from the Canadian ship builder Seaspan. Under Canada’s new National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy, their Vancouver shipyard will be building all of the Canadian government’s” non-combat vessels, including all their Coast Guard vessels.

There are details here I had not seen previously about their new icebreaker:

• Length: 150.1 meter
• Displacement: 23,700 metric tons

Their three new Offshore Fisheries Science Vessels:

Offshore Fisheries Science Vessel (interesting underwater body)

• Length: 63.4 m
• Displacement: 3,212 MT

An Offshore Oceanographic Science Vessel:

• Length: 85.9m
• Displacement: 4,490 MT

and “…up to five new Medium Endurance Multi–Tasked Vessels and up to five Offshore Patrol Vessels…” I have seen no details on these ships since we first heard about them four years ago. (Anyone seen anything concrete?) Only the cost, $3.3B (Canadian) seems firm. Even the number is simply an upper limit. If there are specifications, they must be keeping them open and close to the vest. This follows the example of the Canadian Navies Arctic Offshore Patrol Ship (AOPS) where the price seemed to have been set and the numbers given as six to eight.  At least now we have a conceptual view in the illustration at the top. Its not clear if there will really be a difference between the OPVs and the MEMTVs. Obviously they will have a helo deck and probably a hangar. I will guess that these will be designed by either Vard or Damen and will be about 1800 tons full load and 80 to 90 meters in length. Like all Canadian Coast Guard Cutters they have no permanently installed weapons, but should they decide to change policy and arm these, and it has been discussed, it probably would not be to difficult to add a gun of up to 76mm

Thanks to Lee for bringing this to my attention.