Vanguard Magazine

NAVAL www.vanguardcanada.com DECEMBER 2020/JANUARY 2021 31 ing "The Victoria-class submarine is, as you know, an incredible strategic asset for the Government of Canada and for the Canadian Defence Forces – persistence, stealth, and lethality make it a unique ca- pability …" The two Navies need submarines to op- erate over long ranges, requiring longer endurance and greater self-sufficiency. The two countries share the complexity and ex- pense of two coasts bases with Canada hav- ing to consider another area, the Arctic. "You can't afford a second eleven men- tality – both coasts need a full basing and support capability," said RAdm Briggs (Ret'd). The lessons he drew from Austra- lia's experience with Collins transition and the start of the Attack Project are: 1. Avoid designing your own submarine if you possibly can. Evolving, adapting, or preferably, buying off the shelf a submarine developed by someone else will be far quicker, cheaper, and with less surprises. 2. Politics should take second place to the nation's defence interest. He points out that if two ocean basing is an agreed requirement, then Canada should be looking at two lots of four submarines at least or preferably two lots of six, as the Canadian Senate Standing Committee on National Defence recommended in May 2017. He concluded by saying that the timelines should be quicker than Australia's experience, as time is not on Canada's side. "So, an early start seems advisable," he said. The first panel for the day was moder- ated by Cdr Martin Byrne, Director Naval Requirements 9, PD VCM with panelists Jason Reid, Director of International Mar- itime Programs, Serco Canada Marine; Thomas Ljungqvist, Director for Business Development & Strategy, Saab Dynam- ics Underwater Systems; and David Shea, Senior Vice President of Engineering for Kraken Robotics. Shea talked about mili- tary threats as a concern in the Arctic, emerging stealth platforms as a threat, and that we need to leverage capabilities to take ownership of the Arctic. Ljungqvist delved into underwater vehicle systems for defence applications and Mine Counter- measures (MCM) with a look at traditional vs future MCM. MCM of the future will be safer, faster, and cheaper. Reid talked about the challenges of autonomous ve- hicles for the underwater domain, show- ing where we are today and where we need to go. He pointed out that we need data and information to provide the necessary knowledge to UUVs to get results. Maritime and underwater environments are becoming more complex. The technol- ogy used in these environments must meet very stringent standards. For submarines, this means more sophisticated technology and growing challenges for the crew. As such, training and simulation before sea operation is becoming increasingly impor- tant. Thomas Paul, Senior International Sales Manager, Rheinmetall, talked about this important aspect of pre-operation and the tools and technologies being used to- day to aid in underwater training. The Canadian Integrated Shaftline Sys- tem (CISS) has been developed by a con- sortium of three world-leading manufac- turing companies with a long track record of supplying advanced low noise technol- ogy components to Canadian, Ameri- can, and global navies. Sandy Thomson, Founder, Thordon Bearings Inc.; Bodo Gospodnetic, President, Dominis En- gineering Ltd.; and Robert Dimitrieff, President, Patriot Forge Co. shared their emerging technologies that can provide a fully integrated, complete shaft line system for frigates, destroyers, and submarines for Canada. The final panel of Deep Blue Forum 2020 was moderated by Capt(N) Keith Coffen, Director Maritime Equipment Program Management (Submarines) with panel- ists: Tony Winter, Vice President, Project Delivery, Victoria Shipyards; Mark Potter, Vice President, Babcock Canada; Keith Cunnane, Vice President, Operations, Canada, BMT; and Scott Dewis, Chief Vi- sion Officer, RaceRocks. Capt(N) Coffen led the discussion on the VISSC program and how it is a "Made in Canada" solution for submarine sustain- ment, complementing other contracts and G2G arrangements, as well as, the RCN's Fleet Maintenance Facilities to support sub- marine capability in Canada. He also delved into the VCM – Victoria Class Moderniza- tion program, which is comprised of 24 equipment upgrade projects. The panel ex- amined questions of how the national enter- prise for ship and submarine repair is struc- tured currently, how it could be restricted, and what could be done better. Canada's current capability was examined along with what it should be in the future. Also, how to better schedule and manage repair without disrupting operational readiness. Mark Potter highlighted the key capa- bilities that Babcock brings to VISSC, including maintenance, repair, refit, mod- ernization, engineering, design conver- sion, build support, equipment, vessel and fleet management along with supply chain management, warehousing, and de- livery. Scott Dewis touched on their full- service training that provides Technolo- gy-Enabled Learning (TEL) systems to clients and their visual data analytics tools that allow decision-makers to make in- formed decisions in real-time. He talked about TwinView, a software that they are developing for Babcock's iSupport360 and VISSC. Keith Cunnane talked about the chal- lenges of submarine sustainment – lim- ited space and access to staff to work on a platform, highly integrated systems, tight design margins, the reliance on special- ist competences, and stringent safety and certification regimes. In his presentation, Tony Winter provided some tips on build- ing and maintaining ships and submarines. He touched on locking down the design before starting any work, focusing on physical interfaces and interferences with other systems, have the right materials and equipment ready, avoid changes to primary and secondary structures, don't over-spec- ify and have enough budget to complete the known scope with a realistic allowance for growth and contingencies. For those who have registered for Deep Blue Forum 2020, please note that on-de- mand videos of the sessions will be made available over the next 60 days on the vFairs platform. "The Victoria-class submarine is, as you know, an incredible strategic asset for the Government of Canada and for the Canadian Defence Forces – persis- tence, stealth, and lethality make it a unique capability …"

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