By Dr. Ann Griffiths, 19 December 2022
Would it be fair to say that there have been serious teething problems with the new Arctic and Offshore Patrol Ships? Not long after the navy celebrated the successful voyage of the first ship, HMCS Harry DeWolf, through the Northwest Passage, down the West Coast, through the Panama Canal and back to Halifax, things start to unravel a bit. Harry DeWolf is now out of service until spring because of ongoing mechanical problems, including problems with the diesel generators and fire suppression system. Irving will not cover repairs because the one-year warranty on the ship has already expired. The third ship Max Bernays has had problems with the bow thruster which affects the ship’s manoeuvrability. And now there are problems with the water systems aboard the ships, due apparently to higher-than-acceptable lead content in the fittings. New classes of ships inevitably experience problems but it’s discouraging that the problems seem to be multiplying.
31 thoughts on “Arctic and Offshore Patrol Ship Woes”
I think bugs in the first ship of any class of ship is always going to happen however I believe the “spirit of the law” with regard to Harry DeWolf’s DGs & Fire Suppression system should not be placed on DND’s dime to repair ($$). Irving should at least help to solve the Diesel Generator and Fire Suppression system problems even though the warranty has expired after only one year. You can bet the first CSC Frigate will also have “teething problems” as well. I believe that flaws in systems that Lockheed Martin “controls” will be solved by LM. Will the same be said of Irving Shipyard? Probably not as their bottom line is…., their bottom line ($$). The AOPS contract should have anticipated these problems and accounted for that in writing.
I agree that initially when a new class of ship is built there will be defects. Most of the time they are minor in nature however sometimes they are fairly significant. I disagree with your contention that “the spirit of the law” should compel the prime contractor to repair some of these items out of the 1 year warranty which is standard in the industry. The issue is that once you do it for one client then you have to do it for everyone. This is not a sound business model. This is a business riddled with risk for the builder and client and everyone knows that. If it was just a matter of accounting for defects in the contract, the prime contractor is just going to ask for more money. It is up to the RCN to catch these defects when the ship is being built prior to acceptance, after all they have a large detachment of subject matter experts looking for potential issues at the ship yard. Post acceptance the crew needs to ensure the ship is put through its paces and report all defects for warranty work, obviously this wasn’t entirely successful.
It’s easy to get down on the government and the builder for these problems, and there is some justification, especially for the generators. But the drinking water problem is really caused by our modern safety standards, which have gotten out of touch with the hazards. We are talking about lead that has leached from the alloys in a few fittings; in other words, a miniscule amount. It was only two or three generations ago that much of the drinking water system was run through lead pipes – not alloys: 100% lead. And if you live in an older home, there is still likely to be a lead connection to the main line, and lead solder even in copper pipes. Anyone born before the late 1980s spent their childhood breathing exhaust from leaded gasoline. Most of us are still here and perfectly healthy. This risk is vanishingly small and in a rational world would not have required a corrective action, except for making the next ship better.
It is also far from clear that bottled water represents an improvement in safety. I remember a study not long ago showing that microplastic particles could be found in just about all bottled water; and there are also potentially bio-active chemicals in plastic. Those with children may recall there was a bit of a panic around baby bottles in 2008 due to the chemical Bisphenol A, which was banned by Health Canada. It was also used in the liner of steel cans and the soft insert found in the lids of bottled drinks.
Regardless, the amount of lead in the water was due to the prime contractor not following the spec for the potable water system. The lead in the water exceeds Canadian safe drinking water standards and needs to be addressed. End of story.
It would be fair to say that the Halifax and Kingston Class had their fair share of defects so this is no different. The one year warranty is standard in the ship building industry as this platform is not the same as a car. This is where the comprehensive maintenance package comes in to address each and every corrective item. The fire suppression system has since been rectified and the bow thruster will be addressed under the one year warranty. The cooling issues with the diesel generators is being addressed as well as the fittings causing the higher than normal lead.
Hello Ted. You say the DG issues and fittings are being addressed but….ultimately, by whom? The German manufacturer “MAN Energy Solutions”; Irving Shipyard? Or, will the Canadian public be stuck with the bill again? There has to be some accountability somewhere along the line and in my opinion, Irving has to take most of the responsibility for a major system that makes the AOPS run.
That is why we have a wonderful maintenance package that will address these issues as none of these issues were reported within the 1 year warranty period. The accountability is the 1 year warranty period, if the issues don’t crop up within that period it’s not the responsibility of the prime contractor to fix. If you had product X and the warranty ran out you won’t expect a company to repair product X would you? 1 year warranty is standard in this industry regardless of the system and I would imagine more so the way this is being used, a naval ship at sea in the worse conditions and going through ice to boot. This is business and opinions are not going to get the ship repaired any faster. Morally, sure they should help and perhaps they are actually doing that but really it’s not their responsibility. This is another example of where any naval platform should be run through its paces to identify the issues and get them on record before the warranty period runs out.
Then why not just extend these warranties (say 2 or even 3 year warranties) in contract negotiations before the building of any of these major warships start. After all, Canada is paying a lot of $$ to acquire these AOPS “warships” and this would be extra accountability for the Canadian public even if we had to pay a little extra for this “extended” warranty. You wouldn’t buy a car, truck or an SUV from a major car company dealership that didn’t have at least a 5 or 7 year warranty on its major components like engines or transmissions would you? Warships are no different. But alas, this “sensible contract” will never happen with the AOPS, CSC Frigates, the JSS or any future programs as the government has no will to do so IMOO.
No shipbuilding company is going to extend a warranty for two or three years for a ship that has 100’s of complex systems that start to deteriorate as soon as they are installed. That’s what happens to ships’ systems, they deteriorate over time and it’s the preventive and corrective maintenance that maintains them for as long as possible. This is compounded by the fact that we don’t always drive our ships gently and operate in a harsh environment. Why do you think shipbuilders don’t have warranties like that? It’s because they would have to charge extra for that, adding tens of millions to the contract and be open to continued liability and now be in the ship maintenance and not the ship building business. Your comparison with a car or truck is simplistic because it’s not the same at all and your “sensible contract” is no different from any other ship builder. It simply doesn’t translate to the real world.
Hi Ted. One thing is quite clear. This extended warranty of two or three years should be offered to at least every “first of class” naval vessel including the AOPS to account for any of these hiccups. The AOPS Diesel Generators are no small piece of equipment and should have some sort of extra scrutiny. The Canadian Coast Guard would not accept anything less you can be sure, as the last two AOPS vessels are scheduled to be built by Irving Shipyard for them. You can be sure that the RCN have been treating these vessels with “kid gloves” since they have started to acquire the class. To have DGs go out of service after this short of duration is not common and should be thoroughly investigated to get to the probable cause. Did we buy the wrong DGs? Only time will tell.
Well again, no, that is not industry standard and no company will agree to that especially after the ship was put through its paces with the circumnavigation of North America. Perhaps the RCN should have kept the ship close to home and put it through more testing to identify potential issues. Any defects found should have been reported to the technical authorities ashore both for warranty and rectification.
The diesel generator issue is now identified and a repair class-wide implemented that will take some time. The CG has lots of its own issues with various ship systems including generators I can assure you and when they get their variant they will be under the 1 year warranty as well. The DA’s are a well known brand and used extensively throughout the world, however a cooling system issue was the problem and again identified and well on the way of being rectified.
Interesting. Most turn key propulsion and electric systems I have done, the warranty was 3 years from the time it hit the water (sea trials ) with extension to 10 years if wanted. I guess they got what they paid for ….
The teething problems that have manifested themselves in the AOPS Class, while disappointing, are not unexpected as they are a new class of ship. Rectification of the issues is urgent and necessary. The Navy and Irving need to work together to resove the issues.
Totally agree Brian, although some seem to believe that it is just the “price of doing business”.
For the AOPS, it is not about first of class technical problems or the length of the warranty, it is about ships that are useless as unarmed, and are supposed to be warships. In the end, and as usual, the government will pay all costs of repairs, upgrades, improvements, for the life of these ships and the builder will have been forgotten.
The government decided to buy eight AOPS, based on the design of the NoCGV Svalbard, a Norwegian Coast Guard Vessel, to be built by Irving Shipyard, with six going to the navy and two to the coast guard. But the Canadian naval variants are not fitted with the original weapon system suite which included a 57mm naval gun and Simbad Surface to air missiles. Instead, they are fitted with what is called a constabulary gun, emphasizing their roles as a coast guard element instead of a combat-capable naval unit. The two coast guard units will not be fitted with the constabulary gun. Again, it makes no sense for the navy to be satisfied with a ship that has no combat capability, that does not have a basic weapon suite at least for self-defence.
If a crisis surfaces some time down the road, there will then certainly be a mad dash to equip them with naval weapons as was done in 1991, for Operation Friction. Three ships were sent to the Persian Gulf, HMCS Protecteur, HMCS Athabaskan and HMCS Terra Nova, as part of a multinational force. But, before the ships could sail for the gulf, there was a mad rush with dockyard crews and contractors working around the clock to fit them with critical weapon systems. Given the world’s unstable situation today, the next time, the navy may not have the luxury of time to fit its ships with weapon systems before they urgently need to be deployed for armed operations. Maybe there are still old Bofors guns laying around that could be fitted on ships in an emergency, or they could be borrowed where they were erected as monuments.
Of course, in the meantime the ships will surely be backdrops for government photo ops for newspapers to show that the Forces stand on guard for the north. What is more distressing is that these non-warships will be around for at least three decades to protect Canada’s Arctic, with what? The ships cannot even defend themselves, the original version had a naval gun and surface-to-air missiles, but these were replaced with a law-and-order constabulary gun. When the AOPS are in the North, in summer months, they will certainly not frighten the Russian northern fleet and have them heading back home at full speed.
I would love the ships to have a large caliber naval gun, if anything to keep people from endless complaining about the current gun it has as if it really matters. It is based on the Norwegian CG Svalbard design however very little of the design was actually used including some of the hull form that had significant differences in the Canadian variant. The Simbad system is no longer used as they have been ear marked as military aid to Ukraine and honestly I haven’t seen any evidence they were ever used on the class. The Norwegian CG is part of their Navy by the way so really not that much difference unlike our own CG. As for making no sense we also have the Kingston Class, Asterix and the new AOR’s that will be lightly armed but still have a role to play in the RCN as non-combatants do in world navies.
Everyone seems to be hung up on these ships defending themselves which really, unless it’s a task group with layered defence or a surface combatant with ASW and bristling with missiles, there is no defending itself with what they possibly put on it. You mentioned Terra Nova and really that was window dressing put there for political purposes. These ships are a tripwire to build the maritime picture in the Arctic including patrolling the NW passage and supporting the Rangers. They also have a whole duffle bag of other things they can do like supporting anti-piracy and anti-drug tasks. The likelihood of the ship barging into the Russian Northern Fleet without prior warning unless it’s a submarine is so remote it’s laughable. I don’t know if you checked lately but the Russians seem to be not doing so well let alone invade the Arctic. Continue to be distressed but the sailors sailing on these modern ships are not.
Well said. Thank you.
Having just completed my doctoral dissertation that, in part, examines the details of Norwegian and Danish Arctic naval systems, I feel the need to post a correction. There is no indication that the Norwegian Svalbard is, or has ever been, armed with Simbad surface-to-air missiles. While NIP’s Guide to World Naval Weapons lists them, I have failed to find any actual evidence of such equipment in either imagery or primary source texts. Norwegian secondary-source books on their coast guard and navy also make no mention of any such missiles. If you do have firm evidence of the Svalbard being equipped with Simbad at some point, I’d love to see it! As it is, I’m not sure where they would even put it: other than the helicopter deck, I do not see any obvious position on the Svalbard where the mounting would be placed without significant obstructions to its firing arcs.
Even if they did have the Simbad, the performance of their Mistral missiles is not dramatically better than most shoulder-launched MANPADS. The Simbads used on the Norwegian minesweepers are manually-operated and aimed, with minimal integration with the ship’s sensors and combat systems. If there is the need to fit a Simbad-like system on the DeWolfs, it would be relatively straightforward to put some Army personnel on board the DeWolfs if the Army recapitalizes their very-short-ranged air defence systems. That is to say, a couple of soldiers with a shoulder-launched SAM wouldn’t be much different from a permanent Simbad mounting.
In regards to the gun, there is no evidence that a larger calibre weapon is more usable or more effective than a smaller one during constabulary operations. In the early 2000s, the Norwegian coast guard ships with their 40-57mm guns never had the chance or authorization to employ those weapons during their chases of Russian illegal trawlers Elektron and Chernigov. The Danish OPV Hvidbjornen was similarly not authorized to employ even its .50 calibre machine guns, nevermind the main 76mm gun, in the 2006 attempted arrest of a French trawler off the Faroe Islands. In contrast, note the successful employment of a “mere” .50 calibre machine gun by the Cape Roger in 1995 when it arrested the Spanish trawler Estai. Given the sensitivities involved in the use of force for constabulary operations, it is highly unlikely that a large calibre naval weapon would be approved until every non-lethal option had been exhausted. Long gone are the days when a naval ship could fire their 5″ guns from kilometres away as “warning shots” – the ICJ’s reprimand of the Danish navy frigate Niels Ebbessen in 1962 when it employed such weaponry against the Scottish trawler Red Crusader (which, in any case, failed to stop despite being hit with multiple rounds!) put a firm stop to such exciting practices.
I concede that in certain military operations, a larger gun might be of more use. However, such situations would seem to be more fitting for a frigate than a patrol ship. If a military intrusion in our Arctic waters is the concern, sending CF-18s or F-35s would seem to make more sense. If the fear is some kind of surprise cruise missile attack on an AOPV in the Canadian Arctic, the ship would need something much more capable and expensive than a glorified MANPADS for its self defence!
Like you Tim I scoured the internet for video on the Simbad and talked to Norwegian naval personnel and came to the conclusion it was never fitted. The Simbad is being phased out and given as aid to the Ukraine. In the future with the Canadian Army eying their own manpads it would be very easy to embark these in a Harry DeWolf Class if deemed necessary. Having a main gun fitted is not the be all end all to naval operations like some portray.
Thank you for adding facts to the discussion. Will your dissertation be publicly available in due course?
Could not agree more Roger! The AOPS should at the very least have been fitted with Bofors 57mm, as the Halifax class is, and some sort of surface to air missile like the VLS Sea Ceptor silos or at the very least a MANPADS system like the Saab man-portable MANPADS air defence system RBS 70 VSHORAD. Perhaps even the OTO 76mm gun system. Also, as the Halifax class ships are retired in the future, their Bofors 57mm guns could be retro-fitted on the AOPS. My opinion anyway,
Yes and it could have been fitted with a MK 41 VLS system or all kinds of goodies. The issue is that the design and intent of the ship is not for it to be a warship – that’s what the government has decided. As for the Bofors, like the 76mm from the 280’s they will be returned to the manufacturer for credit.
Hello,
Respectfully, a wikipedia review of the Russian Northern Fleet suggests there isn’t much that could frighten it. However, it is not an expeditionary force; it is charged with littoral defense and the ability to repel anything within 1,000 km of its coast, integrated with onshore systems and air defenses. Our Northwest Passage is about 4,000 km from its Murmansk HQ, so hard to see Russia as a logical naval threat there.
Happy to have more AOPS and more icebreakers to establish a firm and permanent presence in our northern regions.
I could be naive but these ships seem sufficient to support our populations and facilities without fear of the Russian or Chinese or Iranian fleets invading.
As for teething, that’s fine, but part specs should be followed, and subsequent ships of any class should not have these deficiencies.
Regards.
If anything I learned that Wikipedia is not the most accurate source of information. Of course the Northern Fleet is powerful however its really been proven in the Ukraine conflict that everyone had Ukraine written off and Russia would just roll in and the reality is that the Russian Army is just a shadow its former self. I would imagine the Northern Fleet while powerful has its issues.
Hello Curious Civilian: If Russia were to deploy naval vessels (including Polar 1 class Ice-breakers) from its High Arctic into Canada’s sovereign territories, it would never send just one frigate, but a Task Group of 3 to 4 vessels (probably 2/3 Admiral Gorshkov class frigates at a minimum and an AOR). You can also bet your bottom dollar Russia would send at least one Nuclear Attack sub along with them as part of this Task Group as well, and that any AOPS would never be able to find let alone do anything about it. Sounds scary but that’s just the way Russia operates. Ready to establish dominance in any part of the Arctic including the Northwest Passage Archipelago region.
IF Russia were to send a naval task group into our territory we would see it coming long before they would arrive and NATO would engage them and we would be at war.
Exactly!
This is my point. Any significant Russian or Chinese naval presence within 1,000km of North America would be an all-out war situation.
Such a threat is also unrealistic as Russia has consistently shown to favour long-range standoff engagement with specific objectives. Should the current NATO-Russia conflict escalate, no Russian fleet would be anywhere near our continent’s defense umbrella, just as no Carrier group would survive in Russian or Chinese waters.
Submarines are the obvious exception; nuclear ones go where they please, regardless of their nationality.
Discussing the size of the AOPS naval gun and planning for an old-school naval engagement in this context seems moot.
I would just let the AOPS do what it’s meant to do, constabulary duty, showing the flag, support of our Northern settlements and facilities, survey, etc…
Best regards.
Heaven forbid, you could be right Ted. But how would you “see” an Akula class attack Nuc threat coming over the horizon from the high Arctic? Certainly not with an AOPS or quite possibly even with a Halifax class or future CSC Frigate. The only alternative to a Russian or Chinese SSN threat is another submarine. Certainly not a Victoria class SSK as they could not even get to the far north to intercept these subs let alone any Russian task group.
You seem to be excluding the more-likely possibility of a ‘stealth’ incursion into the Canadian Arctic by non-governmental elements that may be proxies for one of the large predatory authoritarian powers. Such an event could seek advantage for that power while avoiding the risk of war by using ‘Fourth Generation Warfare’ to succeed using the media and Western disunity and fear of escalation. This threat argues for the possession of presence forces that can deploy North for a lengthy period of time to contain and confront such an intrusion. My comment of 16 Dec 22 at the linked Broadsides discussion amplifies my point.
https://www.navalreview.ca/2022/12/a-possible-canadian-arctic-amphibious-capability/
Saw an Akula on the surface in the Baltic last summer, passed within a few miles of it, very impressive. Well the good thing about having a submarine capability is that we see all intelligence on submarine movements. If there was an incursion, or if tensions were high we would more than likely pull AOPS out of the Arctic although they can and have deployed a TRAPS towed sonar in the Arctic but obviously that would only be in open water, that with a Cyclone or paired with an Aurora or Aurora replacement. That being said in the future we could do all sorts of things such as placing underwater sensors in the NW passage which we already have done research on and placement of actual sensors as a demonstration of the technology. In the future we may have conventional submarines that can do ice edge patrols and remember we have a nice NATO member next to us with lots of under the ice capable submarines that could and will help. In the past we have had deployments of the Victoria class in Arctic waters or there is that as well. Not too worried about the Chinese because they don’t have that capability as of yet.
The problems with the AOPS ships are not new, not for Canada and not for the USA. It is typical for any new ship construction, but it should not be. There must be stronger ship contracts that force the builder to fix the problems.
The US Government Accountability Office Report GAO-16-71 states: “The government, in most of the cases GAO examined, paid shipbuilders to repair defects. For the four ships with fixed-price incentive type contracts and guarantee clauses, the government paid the shipbuilder 89 percent of the cost — including profit — to correct these problems.”
I dare say it is the same situation in Canada. Perhaps the Parliamentary Budget Officer should look into this situation.