Does Norway show us the way forward?

Opinion

I am a bit jealous of Norway.

That might be a bit of a weird statement to make but it's true. Even at a time when we are undoubtedly moving forward on several major procurements, money is coming in, and people are excited for once, I still manage to find the space to be a bit grumbly at our Atlantic neighbours.

This week has been a fairly substantial week for Norway, and especially her navy. Not only have they ordered two more Type-212CD a year ahead of schedule, bringing their order up to the desired six hulls, but they also announced financial support for the future 212CD yard in Wismar.

BUT they've also signed a new agreement with the United Kingdom to strengthen maritime cooperation, set the path to joint operations and commonality with the Type 26, and create a framework for cooperation on Autonomous Systems and Subsea defence.

The Lunna House Agreement, named after the home of the fabled Shetland Bus of the Second World War that funneled personnel and supplies from the UK to occupied Norway, sets out the future basis for a proper ‘North Atlantic fleet’ outside the purview of organizations like NATO.

The major component of this is the Type 26 frigate, which Norway selected as its future frigate back in September. Under this agreement, Norway and the UK will aim to standardize equipment, technologies, and best practices between each other.

This will allow for both navies to operate a centralized design able to quickly share critical components, expertise, and facilities between each other. Norwegian and British Type 26s will be easily able not just to receive maintenance at each other's facilities to the same standard, but also open the door to future agreements regarding shared crewing, lifecycle management, and obsolescence management.

As part of this, Royal Navy Type 26s will come equipped with the Naval Strike Missile (as if that wasn't gonna happen) while Norway will seemingly adopt both the Merlin helicopter and Sting Ray torpedo. While not confirmed, it also seems like Norway will be tacking on with the UK's New Medium Helicopter project, expected to be the Leonardo AW149. Joint exercises and expanding the Royal Marines training in Norway are also on the cards.

Lastly, Norway and the UK will collaborate on both Autonomous Systems and new motherships to support them. These will be primarily tasked with Minehunting and Seabed Operations, something I talked about on Sunday in our big post about cables.

The cooperation here has already subtly been building over the last year. The Mine Hunting Capability (MHC) Block 2 has a mandate for up to three OSVs to act as motherships to Autonomous Systems. As part of that, the Ministry of Defence awarded a new contract to Kongsberg in October to investigate the feasibility of the company's Vanguard platform in that role.

That isn't a guaranteed order by any means, and it does not rule out a proper competition. It does set a potential avenue for Kongsberg to get a sole award if it's determined to be in the best interest. To quote the original notice:

“The Authority intends to place a contract with Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace AS for a short study of a pre-existing commercial ship design proposed to the Norwegian Navy, to enable the MHC Delivery Team (DT) to develop and de-risk a potential UK requirement for MHC Offshore Support Vessels (OSVs). The contract shall deliver core support within the year (FY24/25) with the ability to extend the contract for a further period of up to 12 months to enable continued support to be provided to the MHC DT. The total value is not estimated to exceed £300,000.00 for the entire duration of the proposed contract (inclusive of extension) with core support estimated to be lower than £150,000.00.

The Authority are exploring opportunities to ascertain whether the representative pre-existing commercial design developed by Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace AS can be used to demonstrate whether an indicative commercial design could be a suitable basis to meet a potential UK MHC OSV requirement.

The Authority’s decision is made for technical reasons, since only Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace AS have the necessary technical knowledge, experience and rights in the pre-existing commercial ship design to provide the required support and analysis, and this is justification for the award of the contract to Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace AS. The participation of Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace AS in no way precludes involvement in any downstream competitive process for a potential MHC OSV requirement.

The intention is to prove that a commercial ship design is a viable way forward and enable that the Authority’s subsequent definition of a requirement for a potential MHC OSV capability will ensure an open and fair competition.”

Vanguard is a fairly interesting platform. I would classify it as a modular family of vessels, utilizing the same design and hull in various sizes and configurations. Developed by Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace in partnership with Salt Ship Design, the Vanguard family blends commercial shipbuilding standards with military-grade technology to drastically cut costs, aiming for about 50% less than traditional warships, while speeding up build times to as little as two years.

Their focus around being a ‘plug-and-play' platform, relying on quick reconfiguring and containerization, will be familiar to those of you following our coverage of the Vard Vigilance family. The two share remarkably similar concepts, with similar choices in how they're produced.

Various configurations of the Vanguard family

Vanguard takes that steps farther than Vigilance, with a much larger, more scalable family. In fact, Kongsberg has actively been offering Vanguard as a potential solution to the Continental Defence Corvette, with the family able to quickly be adapted to a multitude of different roles across various sizes.

Again very Vigilance-like, although I have yet to see something to the degree that we would like in terms of armament. Perhaps the platform is as modular and flexible as advertised, and Kongsberg will surprise me with some sort of Vanguard frigate. Who knows.

Case in point, the framework is there, and seeing its inclusion made me revisit a point I had made back when I wrote about Sealift. There I spoke of the need for Canada to be actively involved in forming the basis for a true North Atlantic force. One that had a heavy focus on the use of common platforms and cooperation on procurement.

Norway is an especially interesting case. One might not realize it, but Canada and Norway especially share a level of equipment commonality that few others share.

We both use the F-35, P-8, A330 MRTT (if we count the Multinational Multi-Role Tanker Transport Fleet Programme), the Leopard tank, soon to be Type 26, and potentially the Type-212CD. There are also other areas, such as discussions on MEDCAV, where we might further align.

Now there are others who share similar commonality; the UK and Australia are also very close in that regard. I just find it funny how well we already align to the Norwegians in many aspects. They're someone that you rarely think about in these discussions, even before getting to similar issues and environments, though I am always one to mention that the Norwegian ‘Arctic’ and Canadian Arctic are both very different environments that we shouldn't easily transpose to each other.

At the same time, we are also heavily discussing the role of ‘Strategic Partnerships’ and the roles they play. The current government is obsessive with the concept of these partnerships. They dominate almost every major procurement discussion, to the point of being the centerpiece as in CPSP.

Yet so far we have been limited in securing such partnerships, and their discussions are often more tied to the economic impact they can have. We have yet to see similar partnerships, built off of mutual procurement, standardization of platforms, and securing of multiple capabilities.

Even something like CPSP is focused, defence-wise, on the submarines themselves. There is little discussion of potential bundling, or other areas in the defence space for future cooperation. We do have a pseudo-form of this. The Germans for example are procuring CMS330, but that is treated less as part of a wider partnership and more of an offset.

And we should be distinct in that an offset is not the same as something codified into a mutual partnership. They are, at the end of the day, transactional. They certainly are nice but they aren't what we're talking about here.

In the meantime, our allies are forming these partnerships, partnerships almost perfectly tailored for us to slip into. Yet we remain here, talking about what we might do. We have had success, great success with the ICE Pact. I hope it serves as a major influence that these efforts can deliver value and be of importance.

Yet overall the current strategy of doing things is slow, isn't as ambitious as we need it to be. The truth is we need to be pressing on these things. We need to be a player, an active, vocal influencer.

We need to be promoting this collective network. We need to be promoting allies to align with us. That is hard when we have spent so long on the outside, cut an ocean away from the majority of our allies. However, these moves are all being made now, and are being made quickly.

We can't rely on frameworks like SAFE to deliver those results. They never will. They provide the opening, the doorway to entry. We still need to work harder to secure these partnerships. They do take time; I above many am one to emphasize the slow process.

Yet when I see countries like Norway, so aligned to us, a principal validation of the value of effort come along and form these partnerships with one of our premier allies, all tied to platforms we use, tackling issues we are discussing, all for the same threats and issues we face in the same North Atlantic? I feel a bit jealous, a bit excluded.

It feels so perfectly aligned to us. It feels like we should be there. Are the River-class different in many regards? Sure, absolutely. Yet the core remains, the same design, with a lot of the same internals are still there, and the other areas for cooperation are also well in potential for us.

And I'm not suggesting that we sacrifice for such things. I am not saying that we should pick something like Vanguard solely for this relationship, even if it doesn't fit. However, there are some allies who are closer to us than others, allies that are easier to cooperate with than other allies.

There are also areas like the North Atlantic where we need to position ourselves as a real partner, an active player. The more that we're out of these conversations, outside the purview of such agreements, the more we sacrifice our position, the more opportunities we lose out on.

Eventually they'll slow down, people will fall into camps, and we will be further shut out. We do not have the luxury of time, to advertise ourselves and wait for people to come to us. Norway demonstrates to us what leveraging our desires, our opportunities can be used to secure the partnerships we keep hearing thrown around.

Yet that requires work, and I feel like we might be quick to squander those opportunities in the name of aversion and complacency.