According to US media reports, recently, Canadian Defense Minister Bill Blair and German Defense Minister Pistorius discussed Canada's future procurement of new submarines during their meeting. Pistorius also submitted a letter jointly signed by the defense ministers of Germany and Norway to Bill Blair, expressing his willingness to cooperate with Canada to develop its next generation of submarines.

The Canadian Navy now has four Victorian class conventional submarines, which were originally supporters of the British Navy. These submarines were built in the 1980s. After decommissioning in 1994, they tried to sell to the Pakistan Navy but failed to clinch a deal. Later, they were purchased by the Canadian Navy and served in succession from 2000 to 2004. Some of them are close to their service life. It is reported that the Canadian Navy may need 12 new submarines.

According to the report, the Canadian Navy believes that the new submarine should perform three tasks, including providing defense for Canada and North America, supporting Canada's expeditionary deployment, and safeguarding Canada's global maritime interests. New submarines need to have the ability to navigate under the ice cover of the Arctic Ocean, and be able to perform tasks under extreme sea conditions. In addition, the new submarine should be able to deploy underwater unmanned submersible and have the ability to launch submarine launched ground attack missiles. Analysts believe that based on these needs, Canada's new submarines should have larger tonnage and better silence performance than Victoria class conventional submarines, be equipped with AIP systems or nuclear power, and have the ability to break ice and float up. This is particularly important because when sailing in the Arctic Ocean, the ice cover may hinder submarine communication, and the submarine needs to break the ice and float to the surface to receive the latest instructions.

At present, Germany and Norway are promoting their 212CD conventional submarine to Canada. Canada is also interested in Germany's 216 conventional submarine, which is in the conceptual stage. The submarine is equipped with three multi-purpose modules, which can flexibly perform a variety of tasks, including launching submarine launched cruise missiles, deploying special forces, and carrying manned or unmanned underwater vehicles. If these three modules are all missile vertical launching modules, this type of submarine can carry 21 submarine launched cruise missiles at a time. In addition, the French Barracuda, Japanese Dajing, Korean KSS-III, Swedish A26 and Spanish S-80 conventional submarines may also participate in the bidding.

Although the above submarines are equipped with AIP systems, which can stay underwater for a long time compared with traditional conventional power submarines, the AIP system does not extend the underwater operation time indefinitely. After a period of time, the submarines still need to float to the surface or expose the vent pipe to supplement air and charge the batteries. At the same time, due to the tonnage limitation of conventional submarines, the strength of their enclosures is limited, and they do not have the ability to repeatedly break the ice and float up, which makes conventional submarines can only move in the edge area of the ice sheet, and cannot go deep into the thick area of the Arctic Ocean ice sheet.

In this case, some Canadian analysts suggested that the new submarine should use nuclear power, so that the Canadian Navy can go deep into the Arctic Ocean to carry out underwater combat missions. Nuclear submarines can also significantly shorten the time for the Canadian Navy to deploy underwater combat forces between the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean. For example, it only takes 14 days for nuclear submarines to complete the above tasks under the Arctic Ocean ice cover. Conventional submarines that cannot navigate in areas with heavy ice cover need to go through the Panama Canal, which can take up to a month.

Analysts pointed out that Britain's smart class attack nuclear submarines, the United States' Virginia class attack nuclear submarines and France's Barracuda class attack nuclear submarines could all be the targets of the Canadian Navy. Among them, the tonnage of smart class and Virginia class is about 8000 tons, which may pose a technical challenge to the Canadian Navy, which has previously operated only 2000 ton conventional submarines. The tonnage of the barracuda class attack nuclear submarine in France is 5300 tons, which is relatively moderate. However, in view of the fact that the relationship between France and Canada is not as close as that between the United States and Canada, Britain and Canada, and the sensitivity of the export of nuclear submarines, its export is less likely.

In addition, given that the Canadian Navy needs to purchase 12 new submarines, if all are nuclear powered, the cost may be too high to bear. As far as the various types of submarines currently available are concerned, conventional submarines are affordable for Canada but not enough to meet the demand. Nuclear submarines can meet the demand but the cost is too high. In the end, the choice that the Canadian Navy will make needs further study and weighing. (Sun Yilong and Li Xiang)

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