Canadian Surface Combatant offers multi-role capability in one ship

Navy News / February 18, 2021

The Royal Canadian Navy’s (RCN) forthcoming single class of 15 Canadian Surface Combatants (CSC) is being designed from the keel up to be a highly capable and effective multi-purpose warship. It will allow Canada the ability to deploy across a broad spectrum of missions, with the agility needed to adapt to a new mission in hours, not days or weeks.

At its core, the CSC will be combat-capable through the marriage of high-tech equipment and highly trained RCN sailors – able to conduct air, surface and sub-surface missions simultaneously. The crews will be trained and organized to be capable of conducting warfare operations 24/7 and to both fight the ship and, at the same time, respond to any sustained damage.

The CSC will also be able to be re-rolled from one mission to another while remaining deployed. This improved level of operational agility will be crucial for a country like Canada, where its two naval bases are a continent apart and its ships are often deployed half-way around the world.

Essentially, this means that when one ship becomes unavailable to perform a task for any reason, there will be sufficient depth available in the fleet to fill the gap and complete the mission. This is especially important when a navy is limited to a relatively modest fleet size like the RCN.

Additionally, the multi-role CSC will generate critical supporting effects beyond the maritime domain, such as providing naval support to military forces ashore, like controlling remotely piloted vehicles to conduct intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations or intelligence analysis.

In a nutshell, modern technological advancements mean that the multi-role CSC will have all the capabilities and inherent flexibility required to respond to a myriad of operational contingencies at the same time – including anti-air, anti-surface and anti-submarine missions – as well as providing support to forces ashore, and performing the functions of a command platform.

The Canadian Surface Combatant – the right ship for the RCN and the right ship for Canada.