Is NOTCANZ in trouble?

Vincent J. Curtis

14 Aug 2025

NOTCANZ, elsewhere known as AUKUS, (for Australia, United Kingdom, United States) is a military alliance within the Anglosphere that does not include Canada or New Zealand.  It was organized for the purpose of transferring US nuclear submarine propulsion technology to the Royal Australian Navy. Its wider purpose was to counter increased Chinese presence in the Indo-Pacific region.

Something nuclear is a new departure for Oz.  The settled policy of Australia since Hiroshima was to shun nuclear power technology, and there have never been nuclear power electric generators in Australia.  The country has no means of dealing with nuclear waste. By contrast, Canada was an early world leader in the development of peaceful nuclear power, with the first CANDU reactor in service in 1962.  The nuclear reactor at McMaster University in Hamilton, ON, has since 1959 supplied the world with medical radionucleotides. But the political powers in Oz wanted nothing to do with nuclear technology.

The NOTCANZ saga began when Australia started looking for replacements for their Collins class diesel-electric submarines, which had been built in the 1990s by Kockums, a subsidiary of Saab.  The Australians turned to the French, and ordered a dozen of the French Barracuda class submarines, which are nuclear powered, but Oz wanted them with conventional diesel-electric propulsion; these were to be called the Attack class.

This complication caused delays and cost overruns that had the Australians worried. Despite assurances from President Macron himself about the rapid fulfillment of the contract, the Australians suddenly dropped the contract, and embraced an offer for US nuclear propulsion technology for the new fleet of Aussie subs. The cry of “maudit anglais” could be heard from Paris to Canberra, and the Australians paid the French some US$584 million to settle the cancellation.

Aussie submariners had worked aboard US nuclear powered subs, and were absolutely sold on the superior capabilities of nuclear propulsion for the task in view, namely the countering of Chinese presence in the Indo-Pacific region, a strategic end that happily coincided with American strategic policy.  Going with American technology had strategic advantages to the RAN: one being it would strengthen the strategic alliance between the RAN and the USN generally, and especially for the end of countering China; another lying in the difference between French and American nuclear propulsion technology.

American nuclear propulsion technology calls for the uranium to be enriched to the level of 93 percent, whereas the French technology utilizes uranium enriched only to the 6 percent level.  The higher American enrichment enables the reactors to run for the life of the submarine, making refueling unnecessary; the lower enrichment of the French technology requires refueling after ten years service.  Because Australia has no means of dealing with the nuclear waste from refueled nuclear submarines, any jump to nuclear propulsion would favor an American option.  And so, on September 21, 2021, AUKUS was born.

The two Pillars of AUKUS are (1) the acquiring by Australia of nuclear powered attack submarines, the AUKUS class, and the rotational basing of US and UK nuclear powered subs in Australia; while (2) entails “the collaborative development of advanced capabilities in six technological areas: undersea capabilities, quantum technologies, artificial intelligence, autonomy, advanced cyber, hypersonic, and counter-hypersonic capabilities, and electronic warfare; and two broader functional areas: innovation and information sharing.”

Then, in June 2025, just like that, the United States Department of Defense launched a review whether to scrap the AUKUS agreement with Australia and the United Kingdom.

As we’ve seen, the US is falling behind in deliveries of nuclear subs for its own fleet; the capability of delivering AUKUS class boats may not be there; and the US will not deprive itself of nuclear subs in order to fulfill a commitment to another country, no matter how close an ally.

There is a diplomatic opening for Canada here. It is to acquire French Barracuda class subs, with the prospect of leveraging a closer military and diplomatic alliance with France, counterweighting our dependency on the US.

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A Glance Over the Fence

Vincent J. Curtis

9 July 25

 After years of neglect, declining equipment readiness, retention problems, and procurement delays, the nation’s military, under new political leadership, is about to receive a surge of new funding.  This surge presents problems of a different kind.  No, I’m not talking about the CAF and the promises of the new Carney government, but about the US military under President Trump. It’s worthwhile to see how the US military is addressing its problems with acquisition and budgeting, a year before the CAF confronts similar problems of its own.  For this review, I’m going to concentrate on the US Navy.

In his first term, President Trump said he wanted a 350 ship fleet, but the US Navy operated 287 ships in Fiscal Year 2025, six fewer than in FY24.  For FY24, the US Navy requested funding for nine new ships; in FY25, six; but for FY26 the request is for nineteen!

The request for new ships includes the following:1 Columbia class ballistic missile submarine; 2 Virginia class attack submarines; 2 Arleigh Burke class destroyers; 1 America class amphibious assault ship; 1 San Antonio class amphibious transport dock; 9 medium landing ships; 2 John Lewis class oilers; and 1 Tagos class ocean surveillance ship.

The Columbia class will replace the Ohio class of subs that form the sea-based leg of the nuclear triad. (The others being land-based ICBMs and USAF carried bombs). The Columbias are supposed to be extremely stealthy carriers of ballistic missiles, and will be equipped with 16 Trident 2 D5s.  This class of 12 subs is expected to cost $132B. (Surprise: The program is already running behind schedule!)

The Virginia class sub is the USN’s current fast attack submarine. It can track enemy subs, and launch Tomahawk missiles. One of these requested ships will include a Virginia class payload module, which increases its missile load-out significantly.  Delivery of Virginia subs already on order is nearly three years behind schedule.

The Arleigh Burke class destroyers escort aircraft carriers, launch Tomahawk cruise missiles, and provide a ballistic missile and, with their Aegis combats systems, air defense also. The FY26 acquisitions are of the so-called the Flight III models, which come equipped with the AN/SPY-6 air and missile defense radars, a major upgrade over the AN/SPY-1D system on the Flight IIs. The Flight II DDGs are now pushing past $2.2 billion in cost, up from $1.8 billion. 

The America class Assault Amphibious ships are a mini-aircraft carrier for Marine Corps F-35Bs and helicopters.

Tagos ocean surveillance ships tow a sonar array that tracks submarines, and can map the ocean floor

Costs are rising, and deliveries are falling behind schedule: seventy percent of construction is behindhand.  Despite the shipbuilding budget doubling over the last 20 years, the number of ships the US Navy operates has remained essentially unchanged.

The FY25 ships won’t enter service for another 4 to 6 years. Delays are a real problem: the Kennedy, the next aircraft carrier, is delayed by two more years; and this may force the fifty year old Nimitz into another deployment or two. American procurement doesn’t run like a Swiss watch either, and looking to the US to supply Canada with naval assets may prove futile.

Out of a total defense budget request of US$962 billion, the USN portion is $292 billion, of which $248 billion is for the base budget.  The USN wants to increase its authorized strength by 12,300 to reach 344,600 sailors in FY26. In the US, funding above base is optional, and the selection of programs comes down to political decisions, if they’re funded at all.

One observes that the capabilities and size of the USN are astonishing, that delays and cost overruns are the norm at the bleeding edge of technology; that political neglect has ramifications years after it ends, that hesitation inhibits readiness and costs lots of money. The RCN can’t window shop and think over too much longer if it expects no gaps in capability and meet the budget,

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I Decline an Invitation

Vincent J. Curtis

12 Aug 2025.

I received the following invitation to attend a “TD Walter Bean Lecture” at the University of Waterloo, to be delivered by Sir Andrew Steer, as follows:

Hi Vincent,

The climate crisis is accelerating — and so is the need for courageous leadership.

Join us Monday, September 29 for a compelling public lecture from Sir Andrew Steer, former President & CEO of the Bezos Earth Fund and one of the world’s most influential climate leaders.

From building resilient cities to restoring ecosystems, Dr. Steer will explore what’s working, what’s failing, and how countries like Canada must lead — at home and on the global stage.

I replied as follows:

Dr. Frayne;

I’ve been a critic of the global warming/climate change fraud for over 30 years. Regardless, the question for Canadians is why, given that Canada is responsible for only 1.5 percent of global CO2 emissions, should Canada attempt to lead on anything related to CO2 reduction? Canada isn’t a part of the problem and therefore can’t be part of the solution. India and China far surpass Canada in emissions, and they’re doing nothing to slow the growth of their emissions of CO2. Even now, our burning forests are emitting multiple times the amount of CO2 that Canadians themselves emit annually, making a mockery of any feeble attempts on our part to reduce our CO2 emissions by some fraction.  A question, often asked but never answered, is by how many degrees will sacrifices by Canadian reduce the global temperature in the year 2100? The answer is in the hundredths of a degree Celsius. Immeasreable.

The very concept of a global temperature, on which the climate change panic rests, was destroyed in 2007 by two Canadians, mathematician Chris Essex of UWO, and Ross McKittrick of UG. They observed correctly that the earth, not being at thermal equilibrium and temperature being am intensive thermodynamic variable, the earth has no temperature, and that statistics can’t supply what physics denies. Their paper is found in J. Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics Vol 32 No 1 pp 1-27. They demonstrated that, given the many ways of calculating an average, from a set of numbers, trends of temperature both up and down can be obtained from the same data set by different methods of calculating the average.

Given all this, that Canada should lead on anything related to climate change reduction, is absurd, and never mind the implicit assumption that climate change can only be for the worse!

To save both ourselves the embarrassment of my heckling the speaker, I must decline your invitation.

Regards;

Vincent J. Curtis. M.Sc.

 

The C2 we could have had

Vincent J. Curtis

5 Oct 23

The squad support light machine gun, or LMG, has been a part of Canadian fighting technique since the Hundred Day campaign of WWI.  Then, an infantry platoon was task organized into one section of Lewis gunners, one section of grenadiers, and two sections of riflemen.  When encountering a German machine gun nest, usually featuring a water-cooled Maxim MG-08, the Lewis gunners would put continuous suppressive fire on the nest, enabling the grenadiers to get close enough to take it out with Mills bombs, predecessor of the 36 grenade.

After the war, Canadian defence went to sleep.  The British, however, closer to the danger, kept awake enough that they had ready to manufacture the Bren LMG and the No. 4 Lee-Enfield.  During the war, Canada’s John Inglis Company manufactured Bren guns, both in .303 British, and, for the Chinese Nationals, in the rimless 7.92x57 mm Mauser calibres.  The Canadian government created Canadian Small Arms, a Crown Corporation, to manufacture No. 4 Lee-Enfield rifles in a factory in Long Branch, Ontario.

When WWII was over, millions of rifles and thousands of Bren guns were left in Canadian hands.  Bolt-action rifles were obsolete, and semi- or fully automatic rifles were the firearms of the next major war.  NATO was formed in 1949 to keep the Soviet Union from invading through the Fulda Gap; and, NATO being a collection of countries, standardization became essential.  One of those standardizations was on the 7.62 x 51 mm NATO cartridge.

No particular design of rifle was chosen as the NATO standard, and Canada settled on the FN FAL pattern, which was dubbed the FN C1A1.

FN in Belgium had been a distributor of Colt Patent Firearms in Europe since 1900.  One of Colt’s designs was the Browning Automatic Rifle, or BAR, which the United States Army adopted in 1918.  The BAR was never tactically deployed in WWI, but the BAR remained in American service as a squad support weapon.  FN sold commercially a few Colt-made BARs in Europe in the 1920s, and in the early 1930s FN tooled up to manufacture their own pattern BARs.  FN made some improvements, such as adding a pistol grip.

For FN, WWII came and went; their factory was overrun, but the Germans didn’t use the BAR.  A number of militaries were then in the market for new weapons, and FN sold them their improved BAR, named the BAR-D.  The principal improvement to the sturdy and reliable BAR was a quick detachable barrel, making the FN BAR a true LMG.  Anyone who’s changed barrels on the C6 will be familiar with how that detachment system worked, and when the 7.62 mm NATO cartridge came along, the BAR-D1 was chambered in that calibre.

John Inglis hadn’t made a Bren in a decade, and it made no sense tooling up to convert 3,000 Canadian Brens into 7.62.  The factory in Long Brach was also long idle, and it was tooled up to make the FN C1A1 under licence.  The C2 was just a C1, except for a heavy barrel, and a three position change lever, which permitted automatic fire.  Its standard magazine was 30 rounds instead of 20, for the C1; and it was nothing for Long Branch to make a heavy barreled version of their standard production rifle.

The lack of a detachable barrel, and being on the light side for an automatic rifle, made the C2 rather ineffective as a support weapon, and it was uncontrollable in longer bursts.  For a little more money, Canada could have purchased 2,713 BAR-D1s from FN instead, since it also used FN-FAL magazines, and Canada would have had an excellent Bren replacement in the section support role.

Canada, in the C6, did get a BAR, of sorts.  The working parts of the C6 are nearly the same as the FN BAR, except turned upside down for feeding from the top.

The BAR-D1 is the C2 that Canada should have had, but luckily didn’t need.

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Fifty-four or Fight!

Vincent J. Curtis

15 May 25

“..somebody drew that line many years ago, like a ruler, right across the top of the country..” observed President Donald Trump in his first Oval Office meeting with Prime Minster Mark Carney. That line, sometimes called the 49^th parallel, was drawn by his predecessors, in 1818 and 1846.

The Treaty of 1818, between the United States and Great Britain, settled matters, including boundary disputes, that arose from the War of 1812.  The 49^th parallel was agreed as the boundary from Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains.  West of that terminus lay the Pacific North West, and no final resolution was reached concerning that region.

Called the Oregon Country by the Americans, and the Columbia District by the British (whence British Columbia), the Pacific North West, which includes the Columbia and the Snake Rivers, may be defined as that part of North America bounded by the Pacific Ocean on the West, the 42ºN latitude on the south; the continental divide on the east, and 54º40’N latitude on the north; the last being the southern boundary of Russian America.  Louisiana Territory, purchased by the United States from France in 1803, lay on the east side of the continental divide.

Captain George Vancouver, on behalf of Great Britain, discovered and mapped its sea coast; and Alexander Mackenzie, trekking from Canada by land, reached the Pacific coast in 1792.  For America, Lewis and Clark reached the mouth of the Columbia River in 1805.  In these early days, the fur trade was the main economic reason for controlling the area.  Starting in 1807, explorer David Thompson began developing the region around the Columbia River on behalf of the Montreal-based North West Company, then a competitor to the Hudson’s Bay Company.  In 1811, at the junction of the Snake and Columbia Rivers, Thompson formally claimed the land on behalf of Great Britain, the company erecting Fort Nez Percés on the site.  The American Pacific Fur Company set up a trading post at the mouth of the Columbia in 1811, but the company collapsed during the War of 1812, and its assets fell into the possession of the NWC.

Americans were as bad at geography then as they are now; many believed that the Louisiana Territory extended up to Russian America; and in 1818 American negotiators offered to saw-off the disputed territory along the 49^th parallel, a westward continuation of the boundary from the Rocky Mountains.  The British counter-offered the Columbia River as a boundary, as this would protect the trade of the NWC, and later the HBC. No resolution was reached, and the Treaty of 1818 established a joint occupation of the region for a period of ten years.  Discussions continued, but the Americans could not accept the Columbia River boundary, for they would be left with no deep-water port on the Pacific coast.  (San Francisco Bay didn’t fall into their possession until the Mexican-American War of 1846) Lacking resolution on the boundary dispute, the joint occupation agreement was renewed.  It is noteworthy that in this period the only continuous white presence in the region were the employees of the HBC. At its height around 1840, 34 outposts, 24 ports, six ships, and 600 employees were managed out of Fort Vancouver (modern day Vancouver, WA), and by 1846, only perhaps 3,000 white people lived in the disputed area.

Facts on the ground began to change in the 1830s when Americans began to settle in the Willamette Valley, and American presence rapidly expanded after the opening of the Oregon Trail in 1843.

By 1844, the annexation of the Republic of Texas was a central issue of the presidential election of that year. Texas was a breakaway province of Mexico; her annexation would inevitably lead to war; further complicating matters was that Texas would enter the Union as a slave state, upsetting the balance in the U.S. Senate, and spreading slavery outside the South.  The Oregon Country thus represented to the Democrats the prospect of balancing future free states in the new territory against Texas, as well as appeal to American expansionist sentiment. The danger was having to fight two wars against two enemies simultaneously.  Fighting a war with Great Britain over Oregon would see, as in 1814, the Royal Navy bombarding the major U.S. cities that lay on the eastern seaboard, which included Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, and Charleston.  Hence, the pledge to “Fifty-four Forty or Fight” was an audacious move by James K. Polk and the Democratic party in the election of 1844, though the slogan itself was actually coined by the Democrat press.  Polk raised tensions further in his 1845 State of the Union address, declaring that that U.S. title to the entire Pacific North West was “clear and unquestionable,” and he later recommended giving one year’s notice of the termination of the joint occupation agreement. Newspapers urged that it was “by right of the manifest destiny of the United States to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us.”

The British, however, were equally adept at rattling the sabre; but were also aware of the low commercial value of the Columbia District to Great Britain as compared to trade and good relations with the U.S.  Both sides were therefore privately inclined to compromise, and it was President Polk who re-offered the proposal first made by his predecessor, President John Tyler, for the 49^th parallel as the boundary, sweetened by ceding the entirety of Vancouver Island to Britain.  Lord Aberdeen, who sought good relations with the United States, agreed, and the matter was settled by the Oregon Treaty, signed on June 15, 1846.  The Mexican-American War broke out on April 26, 1846.

And that’s why the 49^th parallel forms the boundary between Canada and the United States today: by the proposals and agreements of successive U.S. administrations, from James Monroe to James K. Polk.

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Buy American!

Vincent J. Curtis

29 Apr 25

Donald Trump is particularly responsible for driving Justin Trudeau from office. Confronting Trudeau with a list of complains and demands at a pre-inaugural meeting at Mar-a-Lago, Trump began teasing and, sensing weakness, taunting Trudeau as the “Governor” of the 51^st state. He claimed that the United States subsidized Canada to the tune of $200 billion, and said that he was tired of it. Canada, as an independent country didn’t work without these subsidies, and that Canadians would be much better off if they became American, with him as president.

It never occurred to Trudeau to reply that if Canada were a 51^st state, she wouldn’t be able to extend political asylum to Mr. Trump when the Democrats attacked him with lawfare. President Putin of Russia missed a chance to humiliate the Biden Administration by not offering Mr. Trump political asylum in Russia, in the midst of his legal travails before his election in November, 2024.  But I digress.

To date, no one has asked President Trump to account for this $200 billion claim.  In recent years, Canada has opened up a trade surplus with the United States in the order of $60 billion a year.  In every voluntary economic transaction, both sides think they benefit. In this annual set of voluntary transactions, America nets $60 billion worth of Canadian stuff, and Canada takes in exchange, pieces of paper covered in black and green ink, and embossed with the image of a deceased American worthy. Canadians consider this fair exchange!

An accumulation of large amounts of these pieces of paper, ordinarily, would become intolerable; but Canadians continue accepting these pieces of paper in exchange for their stuff because other people will take these pieces of paper in exchange for their stuff that Canadians want. A German will exchange these pieces of American paper for a new BMW.  The Chinese will exchange them for an iPhone.  Americans will even exchange them for other, virtual, pieces of paper known as stocks and coupon-bearing bonds.  That’s the splendour of having the world reserve currency; and, even more wonderful, is that, if America runs short of these pieces of paper for her own domestic needs, she can always print more of them on the presses in basement of the Federal Reserve building.

To reduce the trade imbalance, Trump introduced tariffs.  From the founding of the Republic to the introduction of the income tax in 1913, the U.S. Federal government earned most of its revenue from tariffs.  They’re easy to collect.  The era of the greatest expansion in economy, population, and power of the United States was from 1870 to 1910, and this is the period that Trump looks to for inspiration.  With tariffs, Trump can reduce income taxes without loss of revenue to the Treasury.

What can Canada do to deal with Trump? One smart thing the Canadian government can negotiate is to buy American made military equipment: that satisfies simultaneously a number of Trump’s demands: to take active measures to reduce the trade deficit; to increase military spending, and it’s an endorsement that American made military equipment is the best in the world.

So, what to buy: the F-15EX, the F-16 Viper, or (okay) the F-35? In WWJD (What would Jacky Do, EdC Vol 28, No. 5.), I showed that small were the differences in dimensions between a Type 26 Frigate and an Arleigh Burke class destroyer, and the American made ship costs less than half the projected cost of the frigate -- with exchange.  Canada needs more helicopters, drones, the latest in mobile artillery; Canada could use Abrams tanks, and there are plenty of innovative small arms from Knight Armaments that could be purchased for trial in lots of 500 to 1000.

How can Canada pay for all of this? By completing the Keystone XL pipeline, which will enable America to ship American produced oil and LNG to Europe by substituting Alberta production for American for consumption.

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Russian Su-35 shot down

Vincent J. Curtis

12 June 25

A Russian Su-35 Super-Flanker was shot down over Russia on June 9, 2025, and Ukrainian sources suggest it was downed by a Ukrainian flown F-16V Viper aided by a SAAB 340 Airborne Early Warning & Control (AEW&C) aircraft.  The reports are unconfirmed, but the German newspaper BILD reports that a Ukrainian F-16V fired a long-range AIM-120 guided missile at the Su-35 from a distance of 50 miles using tracking data provided by a SAAB 340 AEW&C, which had been tracking the Russian place from a distance of several hundred miles.  The Russian air-superiority fighter crashed near the Russian city of Korenvo, which lies in the Kursk Oblast. The Russian pilot parachuted safely, and survived.

The AIM-120 missile is a “fire and forget” type that ordinarily obtains its initial tracking data from its host plane, in this case the Ukrainian F-16.  Had the F-16 used its own internal radars to obtain a lock on the Russian jet, the Russian jet would have detected the presence of the F-16 and the pilot become aware of the possibility of an attack. The radars on board the SAAB 340 are much more powerful than can be fitted into an F-16 and, to the Russian jet, an AWE&C aircraft, being unarmed, posed no threat, besides being hundreds of miles away from it.

But the tracking data from the SAAB 340 provided the initial lock to the guided missile, enabling the F-16 keep its radars turned off, remaining effectively invisible to the Russian jet. If the Su-35 saw the F-16 at all, it would have seen it turn away at a great distance and the Russian pilot would not likely suspect that an attack was coming.  If the Russian pilot detected the incoming missile, it would have been too late to take evasive action.

There are other theories as to how the Su-35 was shot down, but there is no doubt that one was, and if it was by an F-16 carrying an AIM-120 aided by a Saab 340 AEW&C, it demonstrates a new development in air combat.

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