South Korea put political weight behind its bold, high-stakes bid to sell submarines to Canada on Thursday as Prime Minister Mark Carney got a look at one of the country’s new boats and toured the shipyard that would do the construction.
South Korea Prime Minister Kim Min-seok accompanied Carney during the visit to the Hanwha Ocean Ltd. facility in Geoje, 96 kilometres from Gyeongju, where the Asia Pacific Cooperation (APEC) summit is being held. Earlier in the day, Carney also met with South Korea’s new president, Lee Jae Myung.
Hanwha Ocean and its partner Hyundai Heavy Industries have been fairly aggressive in pitching the KSS-III (Batch 2) submarine to Canada, delivering an unsolicited, detailed proposal to the federal government last winter — just ahead of the last election.
The submarine Carney got to see was only recently launched and built for the South Korean navy. Yet, in a bold marketing move, it flew a Canadian flag from its mast, while a second boat under construction nearby had Korean and Canadian banners draped across it.
…
So a few Samsung submarines are going to make a difference against the two largest military powers in the world.
These toys are funded by killing Canadians with healthcare and social support cuts. Anyone who thinks this is seriously about defense is a fucking idiot.
Okay well hard to have a conversation with someone who says anyone who disagrees is a “fucking idiot,” but here I go anyway.
Never said I agreed with buying those submarines, specifically. But we have real, ongoing threats in a big ass watery zone that’s about to get more watery where, yes, a few submarines would make a massive difference. One submarine is capable of monitoring hundreds of kilometers of ocean at a time, and an attack submarine is capable of moving quickly to engage — which is exactly what we need in the north.
Currently, we use NORAD and ancient F-18’s that have been frankenstein’d with modern technology they were never built for. I could say a whole lot more about Canada’s bullshit selling out our aviation industry to the states, but that’s another issue.
Point is, Russia has been testing our northern borders for decades, often, and they are demonstrably imperialist. How do I know? I lived on the base where we scrambled our jets to greet them. Where we already spend a fuck ton of money keeping those antiques in the air.
I’m absolutely with you on healthcare spending. There’s a lot of shit about the budget I don’t like.
At the same time we need to be monitoring and protecting a zone where Russia will have submarines if they don’t already, and we don’t currently have the technology to engage them.
More Canadians would die if we had American healthcare once we become the 51st state. Funding the military might not stop it but it might delay it.