Silence beneath the Pacific: Canada and South Korea join the submarine hunt

Off the western coast of Vancouver Island, the Canadian and South Korean navies ran a joint exercise in which submarines and maritime aviation took centre stage. Modest in scale and strictly bilateral, the drill is nonetheless another marker of Ottawa's deepening role in Indo-Pacific security and an opportunity to take a closer look at one of the world's most advanced conventional submarines, which made the long crossing to Canadian waters.

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13 june 2026 | 07:49 | Source: Gazeta Morska | Prepared by: Kamil Kusier | Print

fot. Marynarka Wojenna Kanady

Three days off Vancouver Island

From 2 to 4 June 2026, in the waters of the North Pacific off the western shores of Vancouver Island, the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN), together with the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) and the Republic of Korea Navy (ROKN), conducted a series of advanced maritime operations. The programme rested on three pillars: anti-submarine warfare (ASW), air–maritime integration, and coordinated task-group operations at sea.

According to Canada's Department of National Defence, the exercise was designed to let both navies operate in complex maritime environments and sharpen their ability to respond to evolving security challenges. One detail stands out as more telling than the headline manoeuvres: personnel exchanges took place throughout the drill, with Korean and Canadian sailors embarking aboard one another's vessels the kind of hands-on interoperability that no amount of formation steaming alone can build.

The Canadian contribution: a frigate, a submarine and wings overhead

Canada brought a full three-domain package to the table. The surface element centred on the multi-role frigate HMCS Ottawa (FFH 341), a Halifax-class veteran of Canada's Indo-Pacific presence that has previously operated in the South China Sea and transited the Taiwan Strait.

Working below the surface was the submarine HMCS Corner Brook, a Victoria-class boat whose very presence underscores how far the rebuild of Canada's submarine arm has come. The boat returned to full operational service after a long and costly modernisation undertaken in the wake of its well-known 2011 grounding near Nootka Sound — and now once again pulls its weight within the Canadian Submarine Force (CANSUBFOR). Its participation in an ASW exercise is concrete evidence of restored capability rather than a statement of intent.

From the air, the group was supported by CH-148 Cyclone shipborne helicopters of 443 Maritime Helicopter Squadron and a long-range CP-140 Aurora patrol aircraft of 407 Long Range Patrol Squadron a textbook Canadian sub-hunting triad pairing surface, subsurface and airborne sensors.

The star of the show: Dosan Ahn Chang-ho

It was the Korean side, however, that gave the exercise its weight as an industry event. Alongside the Daegu-class frigate ROKS Daejeon and its embarked AW-159 Wildcat helicopter, the ROKN deployed the submarine ROKS Dosan Ahn Chang-ho the lead boat of the KSS-III (Batch I) programme and widely regarded as one of the most advanced conventional submarines in service anywhere.

Why does that matter? Dosan Ahn Chang-ho is South Korea's first 3,000-tonne-class boat built largely on indigenous technology, with a domestic-content rate of roughly 76 percent about double that of its licence-built Son Won-il (Type 214) predecessors. Propulsion is the familiar diesel-electric arrangement supplemented by an air-independent propulsion (AIP) system based on fuel cells, allowing the boat to remain submerged for as long as around 20 days without surfacing a decisive quality for stealth across the vast Pacific.

Yet propulsion is not the class's headline feature. Abaft the sail sits a six-cell vertical launch system (VLS) capable of carrying conventionally armed submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). That makes the Dosan Ahn Chang-ho class the world's first AIP-equipped submarine fielding an SLBM land-attack capability a pairing of non-nuclear stealth with a weapon historically associated with nuclear-powered boats.

The fact that Seoul sent so prestigious and high-value an asset across the Pacific to drill side by side with a Canadian submarine is a political signal in its own right.

Why anti-submarine warfare, specifically

The choice of ASW as the exercise's centre of gravity is no accident. Undersea warfare is among the most technically demanding and coordination-intensive naval disciplines, requiring hull-mounted sonar, dipping-sonar helicopters, maritime patrol aircraft and friendly submarine data to be fused into a single coherent underwater picture.

For both navies it is also an area of growing strategic weight. Across the Indo-Pacific the number and quality of submarines is rising steadily, and the ability to detect, track and if necessary neutralise them is becoming a pillar of deterrence. A shared submarine hunt run by allies from two different continents builds practical procedures that are hard to develop anywhere but at sea.

Ottawa's Pacific jigsaw

The manoeuvres fit a broader logic in Canada's Indo-Pacific strategy, under which Ottawa has consistently maintained a forward military presence in the region. HMCS Ottawa previously completed a five-month deployment under Operations HORIZON and NEON, exercising with Japan, the United States, South Korea, France, Australia, India and others, and contributing to the enforcement of UN sanctions against North Korea.

Rear-Admiral David Patchell, Commander Maritime Forces Pacific and Commander Joint Task Force Pacific, has emphasised the value of working alongside like-minded allies and partners and Canada's readiness to host them. In practice it is precisely these small, bilateral exercises not only the large multinational set pieces such as RIMPAC that weave the dense web of operational ties binding the region's navies together.

What it means for the maritime sector

From an industry standpoint, three takeaways are worth keeping. First, Canada has genuinely rebuilt its undersea capability a serviceable HMCS Corner Brook taking part in a demanding ASW drill is proof rather than promise. Second, South Korea is projecting naval power well beyond its immediate neighbourhood with growing confidence, and the KSS-III boats are becoming both its technological calling card and a potential export asset. Third, the Pacific security axis is increasingly anchored by partners outside the classic circle of regional great powers, building a more multipolar architecture of maritime cooperation.

For the sector as a whole from shipyards and undersea-warfare system suppliers to maritime logistics operators the message is clear: the Pacific will remain one of the most dynamic naval theatres in the world.

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Kamil Kusier
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