Gotcha! Canuck Sub "Sinks" Brit Carrier
Had [submarine HMCS] Corner Brook been a hostile, rather than a participant in NATO's exercise Noble Mariner, taking place in the North Sea and Baltic in May, "Lusty" would have been a matter of seconds away from taking a Mk 48 heavyweight torpedo in what British naval folk technically describe as the Khyber Pass. This came after the RN had issued a press release praising the ship's ability to dominate the battlespace. It is doubly ironic in that Corner Brook is the former HMS Ursula, one of four Upholder-class SSKs built at great trouble and expense by the U.K. and then sold to Canada when the U.K. government decided to standardize on nuclear boats.
This raises an important point, driven home by columnist Robert Smith, a former destroyer captain, in the latest U.S. Naval Institute's Proceedings: "Dominance of the seas inheres in those weapons systems that fly swiftly through the air or can hide in the depths." In light of this, the Navy's plan for building new ships is wrong, wrong, wrong, as illustrated by the massive, $4-billion DDG-1000 destroyer:
