28-09-21, 08:02
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re: AUKUS: UK US & Australia PREP For WORST--NEW Nuclear SUB Deal
Royal Navy Could Expand into The Canadian Arctic to Support Allies
Closer military ties with Canada may be necessary as strategic rivals show interest in untapped oil and gas reserves
NEW Nuclear Submarine Ready to Join Royal Navy Fleet
UK Navy Starts Converting OLDER & Developing Future Ships, Designed to Keep the Elizabethan Class Aircraft Carriers
BBC News 28 SEP 2021
The Royal Navy could expand into the Canadian Arctic in a bid to comprise strategic rivals Russia and China.
General Sir Nick Carter, the Chief of the Defence Staff, mentioned the UK was “keen to cooperate” with Canada in studying how to combat in the chilly, in monitoring melting ice, and in “helping Canada do what Canada needs to do as an Arctic country”.
His feedback are available in the wake of the Aukus pact underneath which the US and UK will present nuclear-powered submarine expertise to Australia.
Heightened British involvement in the Arctic could be seen as a means to beef up Nato’s countering of Russia, and China, in the area. It would additional the UK’s goals of post-Brexit realignment underneath a brand new Global Britain international coverage.
The Arctic is seen as an rising strategic precedence as local weather change opens up delivery routes and priceless pure resources.
In March, the Kremlin launched a video of three of its submarines breaking via 5 toes of ice to floor inside 1,000ft of one another, and it has been modernising Cold War-era bases.
There is as but no agency dedication, however there’s some concern in Canada about its omission from the Aukus pact because it watches three of its closest allies deepening their ties.
Speaking to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Sir Nick mentioned: “I think we have military capabilities, certainly in the maritime domain and in terms of our science that would be useful to Canada, and I think operating alongside Canada in that regard is clearly going to be good for both countries.”
He was talking earlier than the AUKUS deal was made public.
Canada at present has solely diesel-electric submarines, purchased from the UK in the Nineteen Nineties, which can’t function for lengthy durations underneath the Arctic ice.
A report this week by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute mentioned Canada’s skill to management its huge maritime area can be examined in the coming years and “serious questions remain” over whether or not it’s going to have alternative submarines prepared when wanted, between 2036 and 2042.
Britain has a coaching base in Suffield, southern Alberta, however it’s over 1,000 miles south of the Arctic Circle.
‘Canada is one of the UK’s oldest and closest allies’
In the previous, Canada has been hesitant to settle for an excessive amount of assist in the Arctic due to disputes about its personal sovereignty in the area, in accordance to allies.
Earlier this year, Norway cancelled a sequence of chilly climate workout routines involving hundreds of worldwide troops, together with from the US and UK, due to the pandemic.
The withdrawal from Afghanistan can also contribute to a refocusing on winter warfare for British forces.
Military analysts imagine the Arctic is a area the place a small British contribution could have an outsized influence.
The Arctic is believed to maintain up to one quarter of the Earth’s undiscovered oil and gasoline.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has put the potential worth of Arctic minerals at $30 trillion and is in search of to assert affect over vast areas of the area.
Russia’s Nagurskoye air base in the Arctic, which throughout the Cold War was little greater than a communications outpost, has had its runway prolonged to settle for all sorts of plane together with nuclear-capable strategic bombers.
Rob Huebert, an skilled in Arctic safety at the University of Calgary, advised CBC: “We do not have the capability of engaging Russian submarines or Chinese submarines [in the Arctic] if and when that ever becomes a reality. That’s the number one capability that the British [would] bring to the Arctic.”
A UK Ministry of Defence spokesman mentioned: “Canada is certainly one of the UK’s oldest and closest allies. We work collectively to handle safety challenges round the world, together with via Nato and the Five Eyes partnership.
“The UK will continue to work with all our allies, including Canada, on countering shared threats to our security.”
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