New Naval Weapons: Leaving the RCN Behind?
Dr. Ann Griffiths
In the past few years, we’ve seen some interesting developments in naval (and land) warfare. The Ukrainian armed forces have managed to sink a number of Russian Navy ships using uncrewed surface vessels and uncrewed aerial vehicles (drones). It’s amazing to watch a country without a navy inflict so much damage on another, bigger, country’s navy, and force it to relocate away from the combat zone. These aren’t in the naval arena, but Russia has responded with its new hypersonic missiles, as well as huge numbers of relatively cheap drones it purchased from Iran, and now builds itself. We’ve also seen a small, but well-armed, group in Yemen cause major disruption to international shipping, and force navies to use sophisticated weapons to shoot down missiles and drones in the Red Sea. The United States has been working on directed energy weapons (aka high-power lasers) and has now installed the weapons on several USN ships. The United Kingdom has also been working on these weapons, and on 19 January 2024 successfully tested the DragonFire weapon against aerial targets. According to the UK Ministry of Defence, DragonFire is so accurate, it can “hit a £1 coin from a kilometre away.”[1] While there are certainly challenges with these weapons – particularly the high energy consumption and dependency on environmental conditions – they can fire thousands of 'shots' without ever consuming 'ammo'. It also may solve the problem of having to head to shore to reload VLS missiles.
The trend in naval warfare now is to develop and utilize both complex and expensive weapons (hypersonic glide weapons and directed energy weapons) and cheap but fairly effective weapons (uncrewed aerial, surface and subsurface vehicles). Naval warfare is changing and perhaps the lesson to be learned is that a navy needs to keep up if it plans on participating in naval conflicts in the future.
[1] Doug Faulkner, “DragonFire laser: MoD tests weapon as low-cost alternative to missiles,” BBC News, 19 January 2024, DragonFire laser: MoD tests weapon as low-cost alternative to missiles (bbc.com)
2 thoughts on “New Naval Weapons: Leaving the RCN Behind?”
Yes, Drones are becoming more and more of an issue now and in the future. Canada does have (or will have) the Skeldar V200 UAV-176 Gargoyle Helicopter drone for both the RCN and Army. UAVs, AUV”s & USVs are all becoming more prevalent with most western allies. It is interesting to note that the Dragon Fire Directed Energy Weapon (DEW) System is slated to be deployed on the U.K BAE Type 26 frigates as well. Don’t know how its power consumption will affect overall power availability for the both the BAE or perhaps the CSC Type 26 Frigates though. The USN is still trialing their AN/SEQ-3 Laser Weapon System or XN-1 LaWS but it does seem to consume a lot of power. Canada should seriously consider some sort of DEW for the port/stb’d waist areas on the CSC Frigate as a “future-proofing” system (perhaps Dragon Fire as well).
So what future (or past) Naval Combatant wouldn’t want to issue the command “Lock ph… er… lasers and shoot”?
Unfortunately ghosts of Canadian ship building past indicate that our procurement process and/or decision makers fail to be forward thinking enough to incorporate state of the art technology either due to initial expense or lack of understanding of what the technology brings to the platform.
We can look at the Tribal build of the 1970’s. The debut of the “Sisters of the Space Age” lacked in basic anti-ship missile systems (I will disregard the initial Sea Sparrow system) given the available mature systems available at the time. It wasn’t until their life extension programs finally brought them into the 21st century.
To Dr. Griffiths’s point, yes, the government of Canada will let the RCN lag in technology. With respect to Direct Energy Weapons though this probably not a bad thing as these systems are in their infancy and any incorporation into the CSC would only delay the actual laying down of the first keel as the power problems are sorted out.
Oh! Wait a moment! Maybe Canada should consider this system so they can continue to push back the build citing concern for the men and women who may be better served with a DEW on board (sarcasm definitely intended).