By Les Mader, 11 January 2025
Over the years Canada’s new Arctic and Offshore Patrol Ships (AOPS) have been the source of much discussion. The points made have tended to focus on their possible uses, their perceived irremediable flaws, and the value of these vessels. There have also been numerous comments about the shipbuilding program that has produced them.
Personally, I have found that none of the discussions included a clear description of the ships’ actual capabilities.
Thus, I was very pleased to discover this 66-minute video tour of HMCS Max Bernays on YouTube. I found that gave me a much better understanding of what the AOPS are, and are not. It also left me wondering how much of the capabilities shown in the video also exist in the 23-year-old Norwegian coast guard ship, Svalbard, which is routinely described as the model for the AOPS.
It is hoped that this video will be a useful reference for future discussions about the AOPS, their present and future roles, and their possible improvements.
Inside the Canadian Navy’s Harry DeWolf class Arctic and Offshore Patrol Vessels! | Go Bold S3 Ep5
2 thoughts on “Arctic and Offshore Patrol Ships”
Yes, it is a beautiful video. Those who have watched the previous videos in the series (on the Orca-class training ships and Maritime Coastal Defence Vessels) will notice how much more capable, better laid-out, spacious, and (of course) new-looking the DeWolf-class ships are. I particularly noted that there were designated areas for boarding parties, a crucial capability for their intended role policing illegal trade and transits of commercial ships, but that the ship does not ordinarily set sail with a boarding party embarked. I believe the navy also doesn’t have legal authority to use force against civilian ships engaged in obvious lawbreaking, under ordinary circumstances. It seems Canada has made a good start in the purchase and design of these ships, but hasn’t thought things through; in any incident requiring the use of force, the ship that is close enough to take action will not have the power to take action.
The ship seems to have more amphibious capability than I had realized, with two specialized landing craft.
The video appears to have been made in June while the ship was preparing for RIMPAC. There was tremendous activity going on, including preparations for helicopter landings. Hopefully they work this up to a full embarked helicopter capability in the very near future. Critics of the AOPS program will note that the ship was stuck in Hawaii because of a pump failure just after RIMPAC, which is embarassing.
Yes decent video. Yes normally RCN ships do not have the peace officer status to act against illegal activity although it could be granted to the CO. However that is rare. AOPV as stated do not normally have an organic boarding party but can embark and operate a RCN or RCMP or anyone with peace officer status dependent on mission. Normally on missions to the Arctic they will embark law enforcement.
The ship has one landing craft and 2 multi-mission rescue boats. It will, for various reasons, be years before the class will be able to embark a helo unrestricted.
Yes the class does have failures and failures happen all the time in ships. For your situational awareness the issue on RIMPAC was several fouled valves that needed to be cleaned and normally be part of a preventive maintenance schedule. More maintenance on a greater frequency will be carried out. The ship had the ability to sail but no redundancy. Unfortunate, but failures happen.