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The following text is best understood with a recent analysis in mind:
All things considered, nuclear-powered attack submarines are the best option for the kinds of missions for which Canada wants submarines, not least on account of Canada’s peculiar tricoastal geography and bicoastal naval infrastructure. Unfortunately for Canada, nuclear-powered attack submarines are very difficult to acquire, and not only on account of complexity and cost.
As things stand, the United States is in no position to offer Canada nuclear-powered attack submarines even if Ottawa and DC were so inclined, which appears to be a remote possibility given the current state of bilateral relations. Moreover, the American nuclear-powered submarine fleet and submarine industry face a series of challenges amid intensifying military and military-technological competition with China, including in the undersea domain. The United States will pull off quite a feat simply sustaining its existing force structure via new construction over the 2030-2040 timeframe, let alone doing so while also helping set up Australia’s own nuclear-powered attack submarine fleet alongside the United Kingdom, which has its own longstanding challenges as well as the trinational AUKUS framework to now deal with.
Stated differently, two of the most obvious potential suppliers of nuclear-powered submarines for Canada are essentially out of commission over the coming decade, if not longer, even if Canada and said other countries were inclined to make such transfers. Arguably, either Australia or Canada could have become an appendage to the United States and United Kingdom in this area, and Australia got their first. Canada does retain the option of turning to France, which has a wealth of experience in nuclear-powered submarines, but France is far from an ideal provider in multiple respects, not least on account of not having the scale in industrial capacity offered by the United States. Russia and China obviously cannot serve as Canada’s suppliers, so Canada’s options are limited in this area over the coming several decades, which is to say over a timeframe in which future Canadian governments may come to view that Canada requires nuclear-powered attack submarines.
The world is, however, changing. There will, over the coming decades, be three, if not four, new potential vendors for nuclear-powered attack submarines. Brazil, an unlikely vendor for multiple reasons, is set to finally have an operational nuclear-powered submarine. India, which has similarly had long-standing pursuits in this area, with Russian technological assistance to boot, is also developing its own nuclear-powered attack submarines. India is, as things stand, unlikely to be a vendor for Canada, at least not for submarines of a type that Ottawa is likely to consider competitive vis-a-vis Chinese and Russian nuclear-powered submarines in and around the Canadian Arctic, in the Northern Pacific, and in the North Atlantic. One—perhaps two—other forthcoming vendor(s), however, may end up offering designs that Canada might find interesting, and perhaps work with Canada and Canadian industry to refine said designs to meet Canada’s unique requirements.
In recent years, South Korea and Japan have taken steps toward eventually deploying indigenously produced nuclear-powered attack submarines of their own, with South Korea taking the lead following the formal approval of such plans. Both countries have a lot of experience in submarine design and construction and are, more generally, home to world-class shipbuilding industries, whether commercial or naval, as well as other relevant industries, including nuclear power. Both countries will, in principle, be well-positioned to facilitate Canada’s entry into the list of countries operating nuclear-powered attack submarines, although neither South Korea nor Japan is likely to offer an initial first-generation nuclear-powered submarine that will be very competitive relative to the latest in American nuclear-powered attack submarine technology, which is to say that their first-generation attack submarines are likely to be very expensive while underperforming relative to the state of the art, and, as such, perhaps a poor value proposition.
More generally, Canada confronts a reality in which countries like South Korea and Japan have very specific specifications when it comes to naval architecture that are, unsurprisingly, tailored to their exact military-geographical context, requirements, and intended missions. Canada is, of course, no different, but one of the downsides of importing any type of military technology is that the importer is, in effect, forced to import all the assumptions, whether doctrinal or rooted in geography, that are built into a given design. Simply stated, South Korea is going to develop nuclear-powered attack submarines that are optimized for the kinds of missions that Seoul is most interested in, which do not entail deployments of several thousand kilometers to a distant patrol box, such as in the Canadian Arctic, with the aim of detecting and, if necessary, countering adversary submarine movements in narrow waters.
Japan will, similarly, likely pursue a nuclear-powered attack submarine that is optimized for very different roles than what Ottawa will have in mind for Canada. There is no simple way to square this circle. If Canada is willing to, whether directly or indirectly, pay the vendor company and, by association the vendor country, a design can be modified within limits, at the expense of the customer and with the engineering risk ultimately borne by the customer, not least one that has no recourse of heading to another supplier to readily acquire a competing off-the-shelf design (on account of, among other things, long lead times), in the event that the design customized for Canada is delayed or cancelled.
There is another way to go about this: partner with a country like South Korea or Japan, or even the United States, or perhaps the United Kingdom and France, to design a distinctly Canadian nuclear-powered attack submarine more or less from the ground up. This will likely amount to a decades-long undertaking that will not deliver an operational Canadian submarine until the 2050s, if not later. A country like South Korea or Japan is likely to be more amenable to such an arrangement as it will help them recoup their immense research and development and production infrastructure startup costs. For the United States, in contrast, which struggles to sustain its own submarine force structure, exports are lucrative burdens unless the customer is a country like Australia, which can, in principle, complement the American submarine force. It is unclear that Ottawa intends to employ submarines in a way that Washington will fully approve, not without essentially committing Canada to join the United States in a war against China, and not only with respect to protecting the approaches to the Bering Strait, the Canadian Arctic, and North America’s eastern coastline.
Perhaps Canada-United States relations will improve in the post-January 2029 such that such a bilateral arrangement can again be countenanced by Canada and most Canadians. In any event, nothing happens quickly in the realm of nuclear-powered submarines, which are extraordinarily complex and expensive even by the standards of modern military technology. If Canada wants a more or less Canadian nuclear-powered attack submarine, it will have to commit itself to a multi-decade process and seek considerable foreign assistance, quite possibly including American assistance on the nuclear reactor front, as part of the process. If it wants an off-the-shelf nuclear-powered attack submarine from one of the established vendors (which happen to be its allies), it will have to wait a long time for one to be delivered. If it wants an off-the-shelf nuclear-powered attack submarine from a new vendor such as South Korea and possibly Japan, it will also have to wait a long time and also assume a lot of engineering risk in the process, albeit with scope to customize what will likely be suboptimal designs for Canada’s unique purposes.
The best time for Canada to pursue a nuclear-powered attack submarine was decades ago. Perhaps the best time, as of 2026, is never, but the current generation of Canadians inside and outside government would do well to consider how they are making decisions and investments on behalf of future generations of Canadians, who may well come to resent the current generation for their decisions and indecisions, much like the current generation often resents prior generations for their decisions and indecisions.