As the day goes on, more and more info about Mr. Fuhr’s visit to Korea is coming out. While news has been trickling in slowly, that doesn't mean it has been for nothing. A lot of credit should be going to Judy Trinh, who, along with the CTV crew, is currently tagging along with everyone.

She's been a superstar at getting info out since people first arrived, and for that, I thank her greatly! It's from her that we are getting first confirmation that the ROKN is planning for a visit to British Columbia with a KSS-III later this year, likely around May.

This isn't too shocking. If you're going to be trying to win a competition, getting out to the public can be important. At the end of the day, a lot of public opinion goes into government decisions around defence spending. So, coming in with the actual submarine—an advantage Hanwha has—is something that honestly felt bound to happen.

Very reminiscent (for those of you old enough to remember) of the French bringing Saphir, a Rubis-class nuclear submarine, to Halifax back in 1987 at the height of Canada’s nuclear aspirations. Of course, that never came to be; however, there are some similar feelings to how France played at the time, especially on the public side, and how the Koreans are playing now.

If I can, I would love to get out myself and see it! Another trip among many, maybe. CANSEC time, though. For those of you in that area, it's an amazing opportunity to get a once-in-a-lifetime look at a KSS-III, even if it's a Batch-I. I would not miss it if I were you.

On a secondary note, it isn't the only thing coming out today. Along with this, we also get some not confirmed officially, but basically confirmed, partnerships coming out of this meeting. The big one is that Hanwha and Ontario Shipyards have apparently come to some sort of agreement, likely an MOU, that would see Hanwha and Ontario Shipyards collaborate on Mechatronic and Autonomous technologies in the shipbuilding industry.

Of course, Ontario has long been speculated here as a potential partner with Hanwha in CPSP, and while they are unlikely to be the major maintenance yard for the east coast, it does tie into the strategies that I have heard Hanwha undertaking—one that sees multiple shipyards brought on to leverage capacity and help bolster the supply chain.

Yards like Ontario might not do major maintenance on a KSS-III; however, they can assist on the fabrication and parts supply side, as well as potentially hosting a backup location for minor maintenance. All of which goes into leveraging underused assets, like those we see in Port Weller.

Often forgotten is how massive Ontario Shipyards is as a company. They are a legitimate shipyard, with multiple Seawaymax-sized graving docks and almost an entirely free schedule as of now. There is a serious debate one can make about whether they're utilizing themselves to their full potential.

So, these kinds of partnerships are very nice in my eyes. They present opportunities for underutilized assets with few remaining major contracts to find a role in the National Shipbuilding Strategy, even if not through traditional means. It also plays a bit into CDC. Whatever hypothetical benefits come out of such a partnership present themselves as assets when someone like Vard/Ontario present Vigilance as a potential solution.

Physical assets and infrastructure are not project-specific. That makes them extra beneficial for companies in these scenarios. It also makes my job a lot more fun when discussing stuff like CPSP. We also got some news outside of the usual Hanwha/Hyundai bubble of note today.

Korean media is also now reporting that if the KSS-III is selected, LIG Nex1 will establish a local production facility for the manufacturing of torpedoes for the future Canadian Patrol Submarine. The primary armament of the KSS-III is the K761 Tiger Shark (Heavyweight Torpedo-II), a 533 mm heavyweight torpedo developed by LIG Nex1 to replace the previous White Shark torpedo.

It uses a fibre-optic/wire guidance link with an inertial navigation system for mid-course updates and switches to active/passive acoustic homing in the terminal phase. Published performance figures indicate a length of roughly 6.5 m and a mass of around 1.6 tonnes, with a design range on the order of ~50 km. Top speed is claimed to exceed 55 knots.

LIG Nex1 has been open to the idea for some time, and while the KSS-III (utilizing Babcock’s Weapons Handling System) could hypothetically utilize whatever torpedo we wanted, the established idea was that we would retain the primary armament that whatever host partner selected utilizes.

Scoring a commitment to domestic production is a net benefit, although there are challenges at play. Torpedoes, especially modern ones, are highly digital, complex systems in themselves. Modern torpedoes are no easier to construct in terms of technology and infrastructure as, say, a modern cruise missile. Both require significant investment and technology.

However, the Tiger Shark does have a few benefits over many others on the market. The Tiger Shark utilizes a Lithium-Ion battery as its primary power source, unlike others that use limited supplier products like Silver-Zinc batteries—which are a niche, toxic, and expensive chemical process—or Otto Fuel II.

That is a net benefit; however, the process is still complex and would be a major technological feat for Canada. I should make note that while we don't currently produce torpedoes in Canada, Magellan specifically IS a major partner in the SeaSpider Anti-Torpedo Torpedo.

It isn't the same thing. I want to make note of that. However, they are similar to the point that it does provide some industry knowledge to working with undersea munition manufacturing, even if SeaSpider is still in development. Some people say it isn't, but it very much is.

LIG is also talking about cooperation with the likes of GeoSpectrum on Sonar Systems; however, I don't know exactly what this looks like from a Canadian perspective, and how much of the IP relates to this. However, having LIG Nex1, who manufacturers a significant amount of the internal systems to the KSS-III, on board and willing to be proactive is a major step that Team Korea needed to make the IP side of things work.

One advantage the Type 212CD has is that most of the IP is controlled by TKMS and Kongsberg, both major partners involved in the bid. LIG is technically outside of this, as are many others on the KSS-III, which always makes IP transfer and domestic benefits regarding the subsystems complicated.

Always better to limit the people you need to work with, and for the Prime to hold as much of the IP of their product as humanly possible when industrial and economic benefits are significantly on the table. As of now, we are again getting trickles of information, though I hope we will get some more big announcements this week from both sides! I'm confident in that.

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Another day, another info dump from Saab. As we rapidly approach the Swedish delegation visit to Canada, Saab is hard at work to detail their proposal for a Canadian Gripen order. This was reported in the Globe and Mail, who have done a good job at being able to reach the company, even visiting their headquarters.

We still have a lot of unknowns. Saab has not presented their full plan, nor has the government spoken openly about what was offered. However, the company has given tidbits of information.

Saab is in active talks with the federal government and Bombardier about producing the Gripen fighter jet under licence in Canada.

This would involve full technology transfer, allowing Canada to carry out:

• Final assembly

• Upgrades

• Component manufacturing

• Testing

• Long-term lifecycle support

There is no word yet on if Saab will be working with partners like Leonardo to secure the IP of other critical components such as the ES 05 Raven radar or Skyward G IRST. Saab estimates that this partnership would lead to upwards of 10,000 Canadian jobs, which would be created through:

• Assembly

• Component manufacturing

• R&D hubs

• Spinoff technology programs including drones

Saab had previously promised four such research facilities in their original bid:

• A Saab Sensor Centre to be based in Vancouver along with a new Space Surveillance Radar system

• A Cyber Security Resilience Centre to be built in Toronto

• The Gripen Centre, a hub for supporting and sustaining Gripen in Montreal

• An Aerospace Research Centre, also based in Montreal, tasked with developing, testing and producing next generation aerospace systems and components

Of course as of now we have no confirmation on if these are in the plan. However, they are a good base to look at when the topic is raised. As of right now, only Bombardier has been a confirmed partner with IMP and CAE also named.

Other partners likely to be included are GE, Arcfield, Magellan and StandardAero, as all were included in the first proposal. It is reasonable to assume many will return this time around. Although the shift to Bombardier has caused many to guess, I do not see many of these other partnerships shifting given their niche roles on the supply chain, primarily around the GE 414 engine.

Although Saab is not the only one lobbying here. The government of Ontario has been stealthily moving to secure as much offset as possible from a potential Gripen deal. The Ford government has been in discussions with Bombardier about possible production in Ontario instead of Quebec.

Quebec is expected to land this in a hypothetical deal, however Vic Fedeli, Ontario’s minister of economic development, job creation and trade, has met with Saab officials several times, including with Doug Ford, to discuss this topic along with other potential offsets.

The government has reportedly offered Saab incentives, both political and financial, in an attempt to lure their interest. Will that work? Unlikely. A lot of Saab’s proposal is centered around creating a Montreal cluster. They are trying though, with the expectation that this is going through.

Saab is promising that a factory could be set to produce in three to five years after a contract is signed. This would align to the last of a second F-35 batch delivering hypothetically. The thirty two to forty number for F-35 is accurate to what I have heard the last two weeks, but it is not the only number. There are multiple options on the table, including a full F-35 order still.

So I am hesitant to call it the likely number. I have yet to see an indication it is. It is just one potential option among several. I will keep trying to dig into this number over the next few weeks and see what I can find.

Saab is also suggesting that Canadian produced Gripens could be used to support Ukraine, although they have also promised Ukraine their own production facilities as well. The idea would likely be that the first batch or few come from Canada before shifting to full Ukrainian production.

At this time I do not want to get fully into the economics, especially because it is not fair for me to assess when the whole picture is not available. Right now we have vague promises and some guessing, not enough to break anything down on my end.

I can however reiterate my concerns with this review because that is an ongoing problem I have. Since this review was launched in March we have gotten almost zero information about what is going on. We do not know the requirements. We do not know what is wanted. We do not know what anyone said. We have barely gotten any information at all.

We had a summer deadline that was completely forgotten even though I agreed that it should not have been set. It is still an example of how confusing and out of the public eye everything has been. How do I talk about something where we have no info and no one can get on the right page about anything.

It is the RCAF’s decision until it is not. It is going to come out at the end of the summer until it is not. It is going to be another competition until it is not. Almost every time somebody speaks about this project it ends up getting contradicted by somebody else.

If the aim is to be transparent then I cannot think of a worse example. If the aim is to be informative then I cannot think of a worse example, and this is not the only incident where we have seen this. We also saw very similar issues when it came to the Coast Guard.

It can be a bit frustrating for somebody like me whose job it is to analyze everything. How can I talk about things when nobody wants to talk about them. How can I accurately report information when ministers contradict each other. When everything is so convoluted and kept out of the public eye that even the small bits of information get treated like gospel.

And once information is out there, for those who do not know, it becomes incredibly hard for someone like me to bring up the fact that it is inaccurate. It is hard for me to go out there and say that this is not what actually happened or this is not what is actually happening.

That is why having clear and decisive information, especially at the government level, is so important. Once it is out there, it is very hard to get people to see any clarification or update. Not everyone will see every little update for a project or initiative.

Perhaps it is more of a personal gripe because this is what I do. However, I feel like I still need to bring it up because at the end of the day we all want a government that is going to be transparent and open about things.

We have a right to know as citizens what our government is doing, especially when we are talking about projects worth billions and billions of dollars that have billions of dollars tied in economic benefits and obligations. We deserve to know what is going on and what the government is talking about with manufacturers.

So to say I am a bit disappointed is an understatement. However, I will continue to fill my role as both an analyst and an investigator. I have a duty and a responsibility to all of you to get you as much of the accurate information as possible. It is my job and my role to clear the veil of secrecy that is currently existing on this project. I do not know how well I will be able to succeed in that. However, I am going to try my best.

Hopefully we will be getting some more information in the coming weeks. We certainly will be getting more as the Swedish delegation gets closer to visiting. Until then we deal with what we have and we look at what we are given until such time as things become clear.

Defence Industrial Strategy, procurement overhauls, and a vow to claw back sovereignty from decades of polite deferral. It was framed as a national awakening – an overdue recognition that geography is no longer a moat, Russian submarines are testing our Arctic resolve, and allies are no longer willing to pretend Canada is pulling its weight.

But buried underneath all the ambition is a policy that will quietly sabotage it: the Industrial and Technological Benefits (ITB) framework – the mechanism Canada uses to ensure foreign defence contractors reinvest in the Canadian economy and the quiet architecture of our own dependency.

On paper, it’s a sound industrial strategy. So much so that other countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE – both of which are aggressively seeking to onshore the lion’s share of their own defence spending – have implemented very similar policies as part of their respective Vision 2030 programs.

In practice, however, Canada’s ITB is a compliance machine that has mastered the art of doing nothing loudly. It is a mechanism through which American and European primes deepen their control over Canada’s industrial base while giving Ottawa the comforting illusion of self-reliance. We're not victims of clever contractors. We're architects of our own dependency, moralizing away the muscle to build someone else's blueprint.

The numbers are damning. Since 2011, more than one hundred thousand industrial activities have generated over $64 billion in promised economic activity. And for all of that motion, not a single global defence technology titan has emerged. The work done in Canada – machining, composites, test benches, components – is real, but when the world shifts and architectures evolve, the capability evaporates. It was never ours. The most strategically important capabilities are designed abroad, integrated abroad, and updated abroad. We have activity without ownership – a nation performing sovereignty instead of exercising it.

Call it what it is: Phantom Capacity. The illusion of industrial muscle – until the country is forced to lift something heavy.

The core flaw is structural. ITB rewards dollars spent, not capability created, even as it dangles multipliers of up to 9x for R&D and startup work. A prime receives one-to-one credit for $5 million in routine machining, yet could theoretically earn nine times that for backing a Canadian breakthrough. But the theory collapses in practice. Multipliers accounted for less than one per cent of fulfillment between 2015 and 2019, and auditors still cannot prove they delivered any meaningful innovation. The system does not discriminate between activity and advancement. And when a system does not discriminate, the market follows the path of least resistance.

Predictably, primes funnel work to the safest, most administratively convenient suppliers. It is the industrial equivalent of a potluck where everyone insists on homemade dishes but quietly prefers the store-bought tray. Innovation is welcomed rhetorically and ignored in practice.

This leads to the second, more corrosive consequence: Canadian startups are structurally excluded from shaping Canada’s defence future. They move on six-month innovation cycles. Their technology evolves. Their architectures iterate. But in a system where every offset must be pre-approved, credit-verified, documented, and mapped against a prime’s global program calendar, startups cannot operate on their own terms. They must reshape their roadmaps to fit into architectures designed abroad, updated abroad, and controlled abroad. The result is not partnership but subordination.

A Canadian company can build a breakthrough sensor, a next-generation autonomy stack, or a northern detection layer – but it cannot enter a Canadian program of record unless a foreign prime decides to adopt it. The startup becomes a module inside someone else’s strategy. Sovereignty becomes subcontracting with better branding.

This structural conservatism might be tolerable if defence innovation still moved on decade-long cycles. It does not. Modern capability evolves on timelines measured in months, not mandates. This is the third and most consequential flaw: The ITB framework is structurally misaligned with modern defence innovation cycles. It’s a Zamboni on a speedway: engineered for slow, polished laps around a legacy ice rink, then deployed onto a track defined by drone swarms, autonomous threats, hypersonics, and adversaries learning faster than we can draft a memorandum.

The danger is not merely inefficiency. It is strategic self-delusion. When a country mistakes industrial invoices for industrial strength, it begins confusing participation with power. Canada’s industrial base looks active because the system generates activity by design. But activity is not capability. And capability cannot emerge from a system that rewards primes for minimizing risk, avoiding disruption, and keeping Canadian firms in subordinate roles.

The new budget recognizes that the world has changed. But recognition is not readiness. Canada has no shortage of innovators. It has no shortage of ideas. What it lacks is a system that values capability creation more than administrative comfort.

If Canada wants sovereignty, it must build for it. Not perform it. Not simulate it. Not subcontract it. The stakes are too high, the world is moving too fast, and even $81.8 billion will not buy what Canadians think they are paying for unless the country stops mistaking administrative comfort for industrial power.

Sovereignty is not a sentiment. It is a capability. And Canada will not regain it until it stops financing everyone else’s.

About Author

Omar Saleh is a strategy and technology leader with a background in engineering and global innovation. Formerly the Chief Operating Officer at North Vector Dynamics, he has led ventures and initiatives across sectors including clean technology, advanced manufacturing, and international development.

A graduate of the University of Oxford’s MBA program, where he earned Distinction, and the University of Waterloo’s Chemical Engineering program, Omar’s career has spanned roles with organizations such as Innovate Calgary, UNICEF, and Qdot Technology. His work bridges the worlds of engineering precision and strategic vision, focusing on scalable impact, sustainability, and systems transformation.

Hawky says he may do more of these if we like it. So email him at cdn.p.hawk@gmail.com or message him on Twitter @cdn.policy.hawk to share any feedback!

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