Arctic/Offshore Patrol Ship AOPS

[Rainbow1910]

I don’t think we’re the target audience with detailed knowledge of the subjects. His audience is either folks with no knowledge, or military-adjacent folks without specific knowledge in that particular video subject.

It’s kind of like a “survey” course for whatever topic he is covering. Some of the multi-part series are pretty good and seem to delve deeper, such as the corruption series of videos. His specialty is defence economics so naturally that’s what he’ll know (and speak of) the most…but that’s not really something most YouTube audiences care about.

I wouldn’t have such an issue with this if people didn’t take what he says as gospel, meaning whatever is said or not said tends to be taken as authoritative fact. Yet another source for AOPS misinfo to spread while not even giving the CCG the time of day in a video that rightly should have us front and center.

These people with little or no information on the topic take in what he says and makes that their basis, which is concerning when you have lost context and dumbed down topics to such a degree. It’s not even that what I want is a 1:1 breakdown of individual ships, it’s the fact that not even acknowledging our plans makes us look even more incompetent than what we actually are to an impressionable audience.

The body of the video is fine but it is very lacking in other aspects.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

He did acknowledge that Canada currently has one of the larger fleets, but the reason for that larger fleet has less to do about the Arctic and more about ice affecting Eastern Canada's ports. If Canada was a parent and the arctic our child, likley the child would be seized by the ministry and the parent charged for neglect and abuse. so if Canada is embarrassed enough by this to create more movement, all the better. I did leave a comment on our future plans for new icebreakers.

 

[Kirkhill]

Been playing silly buggers again....

What if...

The Coast Guard works by Homeporting vessels.

The Marine Security Enforcement Team vessels, the Hero Class Midshore Patrol Vessels, seem to be homeported in Victoria, Sarnia, Burlington, Quebec and Dartsmouth.

What if the 8 AOPS ships were to be dedicated to Canadian waters and homeported in the Arctic?

I have 4 candidates for the homeports:

Inuvik
Churchill
Moosonee
Fort George

All four are anchorages.
All four have airports
Inuvik and Fort George both have road connections (subject to improvement)
Churchill and Moosonee both have rail connections (subject to improvement)

Moosonee has become my new "good idea".
The rail line to Moosonee connects with Cochrane which is on the Trans Canada Highway (Highway 11 to Toronto), the CN main line and, most importantly, the Trans Canada Natural Gas Pipeline.
Cochrane is 300 km from Moosonee and Salt Water.

Would a Moosonee LNG terminal be viable? Has anyone looked at that yet? It seems to be the shortest distance from existing transmission infrastructure to salt water.

 

[Stoker]

Been playing silly buggers again....

What if...

The Coast Guard works by Homeporting vessels.

The Marine Security Enforcement Team vessels, the Hero Class Midshore Patrol Vessels, seem to be homeported in Victoria, Sarnia, Burlington, Quebec and Dartsmouth.

What if the 8 AOPS ships were to be dedicated to Canadian waters and homeported in the Arctic?

I have 4 candidates for the homeports:

Inuvik
Churchill
Moosonee
Fort George

All four are anchorages.
All four have airports
Inuvik and Fort George both have road connections (subject to improvement)
Churchill and Moosonee both have rail connections (subject to improvement)

Moosonee has become my new "good idea".
The rail line to Moosonee connects with Cochrane which is on the Trans Canada Highway (Highway 11 to Toronto), the CN main line and, most importantly, the Trans Canada Natural Gas Pipeline.
Cochrane is 300 km from Moosonee and Salt Water.

Would a Moosonee LNG terminal be viable? Has anyone looked at that yet? It seems to be the shortest distance from existing transmission infrastructure to salt water.

Wouldn't work. You would need access to a vast network of sub contractors and FMF.

 

[dapaterson]

Wouldn't work. You would need access to a vast network of sub contractors and FMF.

Canada simultaneously lacks a defence industrial base, and wants to steer defence contracts to Canadian suppliers.

 

[Kirkhill]

Wouldn't work. You would need access to a vast network of sub contractors and FMF.

How about just cycling the vessels from their homeports through the existing FMFs and civilian yards?

 

[Stoker]

How about just cycling the vessels from their homeports through the existing FMFs and civilian yards?

Again that wouldn't work. You would have ships that would be tied up icebound in the winter and to be honest crews would not want to stay in those places. Remember during the winter we use these ships in places other than the Arctic.

If we were serious spend a billion to build a tankfarm, large jetty, warehouses, workshops and accommodations in Iqualuit. Base some AOPS with a combined USN, Danish, Norwegion, British and German Arctic task group that is stationed there during the summer navigation season.

 

[Rainbow1910]

How about just cycling the vessels from their homeports through the existing FMFs and civilian yards?

AOPS was not designed to operate homeported far away from effectively all reasonable infrastructure, the Arctic is too underdeveloped and isolated to make such a concept work without considerable investment. Notable redundancies baked into the ships design would be required and personnel burnout would be considerable for little gain.

 

[Rudburg]

Anything is possible if enough resources are committed, but I agree with Rainbow and Stoker. The burnout factor would be a serious problem.

The Russians turned a logging camp in the Arctic Circle into the port of Murmansk in WW1. The Soviets took it over just after it was completed, and basically forced people to move there until it became a major port and a city of half a million. But it was awful to live there, being bitterly cold and subject to 40 days of continuous darkness. As soon as people had the chance to leave in the early 1990s, the population quickly dropped by almost 50%. The people that stayed have an elevated suicide rate and one of the world's highest rates of alcoholism. About a decade ago a Russian study estimated that a third of all deaths in Murmansk are alcohol related.

If we want to operate a large port in the Arctic, it's not enough to build the facilities (and that will be hard enough). It will need major quality of life investments to be viable, and anyone working there will need to be very highly paid to make it worth their while.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Major investments in Community centres, recreation activities, airports, communications, water, power and sewer. Plus roads and port facilities. During the Western Arctic exploration phase, they even had a floating drydock up there. That would be a goal worth aiming for at some existing port.

 

[lenaitch]

Defence is a whole of government exercise. That isn't just a slogan. That is a fact.

Internal Communications are a strategic necessity. The Ports of Halifax and Esquimalt, Quebec, Montreal and Kingston all had military value as well as commercial value. The Rideau, Trent-Severn and St Lawrence waterways were all built with military considerations in mind. The railways and telegraph. The Royal Mail. All of those are part of the defence infrastructure. The Mounties were raised as a military force to maintain public order.

The Alaska Highway and the CANOL pipelines were military ventures. Most of our northern airports were military ventures, generally American, that were taken over by Canadians and made available to civilians.

Satellites that generate pictures of farmers' fields, forests and icefields also generate military maps.

Governments subsidizing communications in the form of telegraph and telephone lines, Royal Mail planes, ships, trains, vans and bicycles and yes, even the CBC's national radio broadcasting hardware as well as satellites and cables, all of that is part of the defence effort.

Ferries and highways. Civilian aircraft and crews. All of them have a role in Defence.

....


This isn't new nor is it just a dodge.

Ships Taken Up From Trade in the Falklands.
Civilian Reserve Air Fleet in the States
Military Sea Lift Command
Royal Fleet Auxilliary
Point Class Ship Charters
Hitler's Autobahn's
Britain's Railways and Canals.
Wade's Roads in Scotland.
Roman Roads.
Cyrus's Persian Royal Road.


...


The Canadian crime is that defence and strategy are not baked into every domestic infrastructure decision.

Defence is not just Boots on Parade.


...

Pet peeve

Herc's cost more to operate than most civilian aircraft. But they have greater utility militarily and in commercial logistics. Beyond the fact they are not built in Canada (although they use Canadian parts), why isn't the Canadian government picking up the operating cost differential to support a large, northern, civilian Hercules fleet?

Related

Pay ferry and northern logistics companies to maintain surplus capacity that can be diverted to military or government use when necessary and that can supply cheap transportation that will assist in exploiting frontier development. And that development will increase the number of potential FOBs and FOLs and OSBs available to support military activities.

Fair enough, but my argument was WRT NATO spending, even if it somehow endorses such activities.

Moosonee has become my new "good idea".
The rail line to Moosonee connects with Cochrane which is on the Trans Canada Highway (Highway 11 to Toronto), the CN main line and, most importantly, the Trans Canada Natural Gas Pipeline.
Cochrane is 300 km from Moosonee and Salt Water.

Would a Moosonee LNG terminal be viable? Has anyone looked at that yet? It seems to be the shortest distance from existing transmission infrastructure to salt water.

Moosonee is about 15 shallow, thready sandbar-riven kilometers from James Bay, suitable for small flat-bottomed barges. It would require constant, absolutely constant, dredging for any kind of draft. At low tide you can pretty much walk to Moose Factory Island. If we're going to have an LNG port, it should at least be year-round.



This is pretty much your port facilities.



My mom was from Ayr.

 

[Kirkhill]

Fair enough, but my argument was WRT NATO spending, even if it somehow endorses such activities.


Moosonee is about 15 shallow, thready sandbar-riven kilometers from James Bay, suitable for small flat-bottomed barges. It would require constant, absolutely constant, dredging for any kind of draft. At low tide you can pretty much walk to Moose Factory Island. If we're going to have an LNG port, it should at least be year-round.

View attachment 85152

This is pretty much your port facilities.

View attachment 85153

My mom was from Ayr.

Floating LNG | Shell Global

www.shell.com

We could stock up on shore in the winter and then ship in the summer.

Also, if the port opens in April and May then it could start supplying the northern communities from south to north and not have to wait for the Montreal traffic to find an ice-free passage around the top in Jun and July.

As well, if there were an LNG terminus at Moosonee then the northern communities could start switching to LNG themselves.

...

Moosonee may not be the best port but it is a port and it is close to existing infrastructure as well as Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. And it is this side of the Quebec border so we wouldn't have to disturb their hydrocarbon free zone.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

What's the depth in the bay? no need for the terminal to be at Moosonee, but just nearby.

 

[KevinB]

What's the depth in the bay? no need for the terminal to be at Moosonee, but just nearby.

 

[KevinB]

Not a lot of depth in that route.

 

[Navy_Pete]

Considering Norway and Germany approached Canada recently with some sort of proposal for Arctic defence placing some of the CG under the RCN may be a smart thing to do. Going to a crewing model similar to the CG or Norwegions at least in the Arctic maybe a way to attract more personnel to the RCN. AOPS is a non-combattant anyways, so fits right in but also still carries out other non Arctic roles such as Caribbe.

I don't think the CG will want to do that for some fairly practical reasons; their current level of internal bureaucracy is a fraction of what DND does, and there are enough senior CCG people that came from the RCN to be aware of that and how much it slows things down and complicates them.

They also at least maintain their ships to normal commercial standards, and probably wouldn't look for things like waivers for not having enough lifeboats, so it's a pretty massive cultural difference. They seemed to have retained a lot more internal expertise than the RCN as well so some pretty significant differences on the crewing, maintenance and general requirements/bureaucracy side. If I was in their shoes I'd go work anywhere else than chop over to the RCN.

 

[KevinB]

What’s AOPS safe operating depth? Wiki says 18.8’ draught, and I’m guessing that they want a safety margin of a few feet at least.

 

[lenaitch]

Floating LNG | Shell Global

www.shell.com

We could stock up on shore in the winter and then ship in the summer.

Also, if the port opens in April and May then it could start supplying the northern communities from south to north and not have to wait for the Montreal traffic to find an ice-free passage around the top in Jun and July.

As well, if there were an LNG terminus at Moosonee then the northern communities could start switching to LNG themselves.

...

Moosonee may not be the best port but it is a port and it is close to existing infrastructure as well as Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. And it is this side of the Quebec border so we wouldn't have to disturb their hydrocarbon free zone.

But it's not a "port" in pretty much any practical sense of the word. It's a town - on water, shallow water - that provides some small level of barge service. Any bulk pressurized gas ship I have seen photos of are pretty large.

The whole area on the west side of Hudson's and James Bays is the Hudson's Bay Lowlands; a wide area of peat bogs and salt marshes (near the coast), interspersed with patches of sand/gravel outcroppings. I don't know the geography up there that well but will take a guess that the reason the original factory/post was located several km inland was because there was no suitable place on the Bay itself.

I doubt the infrastructure to handle, store and maintain LNG is economical for small, scattered remote communities and (not being a great chemist) I'm not sure how well it is suited for use in extreme cold.

All of this ignores the protracted battle there would be with FNs who would likely be less than thrilled with a large capacity gas transportation and storage facility in their traditional territory.

 

[Underway]

What’s AOPS safe operating depth? Wiki says 18.8’ draught, and I’m guessing that they want a safety margin of a few feet at least.

Take the draught and add 2m at a minimum. I would expect their limiting danger line would likely be drawn at ~10m

 

[Kirkhill]

But it's not a "port" in pretty much any practical sense of the word. It's a town - on water, shallow water - that provides some small level of barge service. Any bulk pressurized gas ship I have seen photos of are pretty large.

The whole area on the west side of Hudson's and James Bays is the Hudson's Bay Lowlands; a wide area of peat bogs and salt marshes (near the coast), interspersed with patches of sand/gravel outcroppings. I don't know the geography up there that well but will take a guess that the reason the original factory/post was located several km inland was because there was no suitable place on the Bay itself.

I doubt the infrastructure to handle, store and maintain LNG is economical for small, scattered remote communities and (not being a great chemist) I'm not sure how well it is suited for use in extreme cold.

All of this ignores the protracted battle there would be with FNs who would likely be less than thrilled with a large capacity gas transportation and storage facility in their traditional territory.

But the thing is though, somebody has already invested in a railway to Moosonee from Cochrane and is reinvesting in it now.

Ontario Newsroom

news.ontario.ca

Ontario making major investment in passenger rail for Northern Ontario

The Ontario government is buying three new trainsets as part of its plan to bring back Northern Ontario passenger rail service. The cost of the train sets will be just under $140 million. The rail service will also require an annual operating subsidy of approximately $450 million per year...

bayobserver.ca

So, good port or bad port, with dredging, lighters or floating infrastructure, seasonal or otherwise, it is access to salt water.

It is also the most southerly access to the north. And as noted it is the shortest distance from existing infrastructure to the World Ocean.

It is about 1000 km up Yonge Street from Ontario Place to Moosonee. Together with an existing railway for moving heavy goods it doesn't seem like a bad bet for establishing a northern port.

The port opens in April and the shipping season on the Bay lasts until November or December.

An interesting article from the history books.

MHS Transactions: Navigation of Hudson Bay and Straits

www.mhs.mb.ca

Ships that over-wintered on the Bay could leave in May, sometimes earlier.
Ships could enter the bay from June and July.
Hudson Straits were clear from at least June until November-December.
Whalers from New England and Britain were whaling open waters in the Bay from June to November.

Churchill has operated as a seasonal port in the modern era as have Thunder Bay, Hamilton, Toronto, Montreal and Quebec.