From an enormous ad blitz featuring Canadian broadcast icon Peter Mansbridge to a cupboard minister calling on shipbuilders to cough up a automobile plant, the transient race to interchange Canada’s aging submarine fleet turned heads in additional ways than one.
The unusually short competition to construct the navy’s next submarine fleet appeared to give attention to the whole lot however the boats themselves — though the 2 vessels within the running are, in some ways, very different.
At no point through the two-year-long procurement competition did the federal government ever really talk in regards to the boats’ capabilities. The navy made it clear very early on that either model would do exactly high quality.
With the July NATO summit right across the corner, the Liberal government is anticipated to announce its chosen supplier for as much as 12 submarines in the approaching days.
It’s an enormous order, value tens of billions of dollars — enough to be a focus for South Korean manufacturer Hanwha as Seoul aspires to make itself the fourth-largest defence exporter on the earth.
Hanwha launched an enormous ad campaign, plastering airports in Canada with advertisements and hitting broadcast TV and streaming platforms to showcase its KSS-III.
Even its competition — a European market leader chargeable for supplying most of NATO’s conventional submarines — took note of the ads that appeared as far-off from the coasts as Winnipeg and Calgary.
“That is nuts, truthfully,” said Oliver Burkhard, CEO of rival bidder TKMS, in an interview on the CANSEC military trade show in May. “We’re not used to this.”
A scale model of a TKMS (ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems) HDW Class 212CD submarine is shown on the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries annual defence industry trade show CANSEC, in Ottawa, on Wednesday, May 27, 2026.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang
His typical competitors — French, Spanish, Italian, British and Swedish submarine makers — “don’t do that,” he said. Submarines aren’t speculated to be so visible, in any case. These competitions often give attention to what the subs can actually do, and the sales pitches are aimed squarely at governments — not everyone.
“That is unusual. Allow them to try it,” he added. “In the event that they have success, then possibly say this was an enormous strategy and now we have won this due to our promoting. In the event that they don’t win it, then they’re the more popular one who has lost … the preferred loser.”
But Hanwha will not be a typical competitor. While it has never exported subs before, it boasts of its massive shipyard facility and has offered Ottawa a breakneck delivery schedule.
Get every day National news
Get every day Canada news delivered to your inbox so you may never miss the day’s top stories.
Hanwha says it’s making a long-term play with the ads. It’s a household name in Korea but not yet known in countries like Canada as a top defence supplier, said its Canadian CEO Glenn Copeland.
“It’s about brand recognition and it’s about understanding what our capabilities are, and as people have understood, it’s a reasonably powerful company,” Copeland said in an interview days after the massive defence trade show.
He said the ads also “actually got the eye” of several levels of presidency and resulted in a variety of knocks on their door.
Hanwha is likely to be latest to exporting subs but its boats are already getting used by the Korean navy. One sailed to Esquimalt, B.C. in May.
The TKMS model 212CD sub is the firm’s latest design and has yet to start out rolling off assembly lines. It offers cutting-edge engineering from a long-established manufacturer.
While all subs are quiet, the 212CD has a diamond-shaped hull designed to make it less detectable by sonar.
The TKMS campaign for the sub contract has focused on the incontrovertible fact that Germany and Norway, NATO alliance countries, are buying the identical model. Interoperability — doing things like training and repairs together — is a stated goal of the alliance.
While the main points of the bids remain classified, the general public side of the Korean campaign has wowed some observers.
“Korea has gone all-out to win this,” said Paul Mitchell, a professor of defence studies on the Canadian Forces College. “In some ways, I feel it’s theirs to lose.”
Royal Canadian Navy host the Republic of Korea Navy KSS-III, often known as Dosan Ahn Chang-ho, during a welcome ceremony at CFB Esquimalt in Esquimalt, B.C., on Monday, May 25, 2026.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chad Hipolito
Early on, Hanwha pitched an aggressive delivery timeline — 4 boats within the water by 2035, then one boat per 12 months. The Germans then revised their very own schedule to hurry up deliveries late in the sport.
Hanwha’s KSS-III is an even bigger, more spacious boat than the 212CD, something that may affect modifications and range.
Designed to maintain North Korea in check, it also comes with an added capability to vertically launch ballistic or cruise missiles from the ocean to hit land targets — something the German boats don’t have.
“The strengths that the German boat has over the Korean boat are harder to quantify — interoperability, the layout of the boat itself, and I might argue the language factor … You’re coping with navies which have extremely good English-language capabilities,” Mitchell said. “And language goes to be an actual significant issue.”
Most experts say the competition appears to be a dead heat or is marginally leaning to 1 bidder or the opposite. Nobody really knows, since Ottawa is keeping it tightly under wraps.
The federal government’s behaviour through the last two years has also been somewhat unusual. It modified the conventional rules and processes to hurry up what is probably going the most important military purchase in Canada’s history, advancing it by several years.
Ottawa made a surprise move to increase the bid deadline this spring. Industry Minister Mélanie Joly publicly declared she hoped the bidders would come with of their packages a proposal to open a brand new automobile plant in Canada to assist the struggling auto sector.
That led to an extra offer from Hanwha — a possible three way partnership to construct military vehicles.
Those that watch military purchases closely weren’t entirely shocked.
“I might say that’s par for the course for Canada, truthfully,” Mitchell said.
When Canada was about to order its current Victoria subs from the U.K. within the Nineteen Nineties, he said, Ottawa asked for an additional $50 million discount on the last minute.
With procurement projects this huge, economic advantages often come to the fore.
“It is a quite unusual capability acquisition, partly since it’s very significant in value,” said Darren Hawco, a retired naval officer now working with Deloitte.
“While many procurements of military capabilities are modest in value, relatively speaking … this procurement is different due to its size, due to its (geopolitical) strategic alignment outcomes, and due to the economic potential to Canada overall.”
Retired vice-admiral Mark Norman said he’s been “really impressed” by each bidders.
“The Koreans have been extremely aggressive and so they have led the best way in the general public domain. They’ve been on the market communicating, not only making deals but additionally communicating the character of those deals,” he said.
“The Germans equally have been working hard but more behind the scenes.”
He said he’s not convinced either company has a transparent edge since Ottawa’s decision will come right down to the way it assesses the worth of the economic advantages and strategic partnerships on offer. Publicly comparing capabilities only gets a sub maker up to now.
“The difference between a Toyota Camry and a Honda Accord is fundamentally buyer preference,” Norman said.
“They each principally do the identical thing. They each are the identical configuration, principally the identical product. They’re just packaged otherwise and so they deliver their capability in barely different and nuanced ways.”