I did however spend about 30% of my (so far) life involved in the community which was CAF "fast air". Due to this synchronicity with the time period (late 60's-mid-80's) we are discussing, I do know an awful lot about how the guys who were flying these machines thought and felt at the time.
This was a really interesting period in Canadian Politics and this had a huge effect on the day to day lives of the guys on the "pointy end" of the stick.
Much like today's situation, where the Air Force is being given operational goals/assignments but not getting the proper tools to do the job.
Just like morale crashed in the early 70's in 1 CAG (due to a mission our stock of aircraft could not meet), morale has been crashing in Canadian Fast Air for the past five years as well (also due to a mission set that our stock of aircraft can not currently meet).
Tempus Fugit...but it all remains (basically) the same.
As a taxpayer (one of the few admittedly) who actually understands this?
Pissed off is an understatement.
But I (yet again) digress.
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During the debate, which was taking place on the 75th anniversary of D-Day, Coun. Ben Isitt proposed an amendment asking “that council direct staff to engage [The Department of National Defence] DND/Veterans Affairs Canada officials to seek to recover costs associated with military events in the city.”
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Herb Peppard, a Second World War veteran from Truro, N.S., who was part of an elite special service force and was awarded the highest U.S. civilian honour, has died.
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His enlistment started a stellar military career that culminated in his membership in the Devil's Brigade, a U.S.-Canada combined force that was trained to do hand-to-hand combat, climb mountains, parachute on to targets and become demolition experts.
The Devil's Brigade was a precursor to special forces such as the U.S.'s Green Berets and the Navy SEALs.
The force was called the "black devils" by Germans after members of the brigade snuck behind enemy lines in Italy under the cover of darkness, their faces blackened with boot polish, to eliminate targets.
"I recall him saying he didn't even quite know what the force was when he first became part of it because it was so secretive," Dickson said.
The Devil's Brigade could have been called a experimental unit, tough and inventive they were designed to take on jobs that were deemed suicidal or impossible.
They fought in the Aleutian Islands, up through Italy, Anzio and participated in the liberation of France before being disbanded in 1944.
While the excellent movie portrayed Canadian soldiers as the best of the best trained army in the world who were hardened battle veterans of the Dieppe Raid, and the American's as criminals it was really true.
In reality while the Canadian's were tough veterans who had already been bloodied, the American's were drawn from recruited outdoors men, hunters, rangers and men that were used to tough environments.
However that doesn't mean that I still don't love this scene from the movie.
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Almost two months ago, on April 16, a soldier finished a 10-day sentence at the military’s prison, or ‘detention barracks,’ in Edmonton and was released.
He was the only person confined at the 25-cell medium-security prison, which costs about $2 million a year to run, and has 26 full-time staff.
Canada has faced repeated calls from the UN and at least one opposition party to stay for a few extra weeks to ensure there is no gap in service.
UN officials had warned the House of Commons defence committee that an interruption in service would mean that it would have to rely on civilian contractors which don't provide the same level of support.
Actually, even though it is still at least a decade away from viability, that thing would probably meet most (if not all) of the criteria for the Canadian competition. It sure as hell won't come cheap though. Still very early but those look like they will be amazing planes.
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OTTAWA, ON (May 6, 2019): In a hard-hitting new Macdonald-Laurier Institute report, MLI Senior Fellow Richard Shimooka takes a critical look at the government’s approach to replacing Canada’s aging fleet of CF-18 fighters. In the report, titled The Catastrophe: Assessing the Damage from Canada’s Fighter Replacement Fiasco,he argues that Ottawa’s performance on this file mirrors the SNC-Lavalin Scandal and the Mark Norman Affair.
“At their heart, these two incidents represent attempts by the Liberal government to circumvent established processes to meet their partisan interests,” Shimooka explains. “This description is just as apt for the fighter program.”
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From billions of dollars being wasted on a procurement process to fix a contrived capability gap to potentially threatening Canada’s defence relationship with the US, the report finds that political interests have consistently been put above Canada’s defence needs.
Shimooka argues that “the decisions made [regarding fighter jet replacement] were purely for reasons of political interest: not a single one could be claimed as being in the country’s national interest.”
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The “fiasco,” as Shimooka describes it, has caught the attention of both Canada’s Office of the Auditor General (OAG) and senior US officials. According to documents never before seen by the public, the OAG had specifically cautioned the government against its chosen course of purchasing Australian Hornets as an interim measure in a draft report – and the final OAG report was heavily revised to obscure that recommendation.
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Worse still, letters from US officials reveal that “resentment and distrust towards the government of Canada had grown, particularly within the US Air Force.” These letters, which again have not been made public until now, outline the significant strategic and economic benefits that have already been accrued from being part of the JSF Program. Yet they also contain an implicit (but clear) threat that Canada could be kicked out of the Program – if Ottawa continues with its current policy of trying to obtain guaranteed industrial benefits that, by their very nature, are not allowed under the JSF Program.
“There was a complete lack of logic of Canada’s policy, which seemed to ignore basic facts about membership in the JSF program, including clear advantages in cost and capability that the F-35 provided.”
Despite these persistent, high-level issues with the government’s chosen approach on the fighter jet replacement, the file has avoided serious public scrutiny. Shimooka finds that this happened in large part due to the successful gag orders levelled by the government.
“The government has also suppressed negative viewpoints within and outside the Department of National Defence, allegedly up to and including the deletion of portions of Memos to Cabinet that highlighted why certain decisions should not be taken.”
There's a thread on Canada's reddit page that the current state of the military has come up. Lots of people blindly think things are just fine. Really shows a lot of the problem, people either don't know or don't care.
Moral is at its lowest since the bad old days of Justin's dad. We have a shortage of pilots, naval personal, and NCO's in the ground forces. Our equipment is moving rapidly towards a complete rust out. The Fighter Jet replacement is a sh%t storm that had the American's looking at us like we're idiots. The Frigate replacement is a show piece of corruption. We have a CDS that's a complete idiot. We have a dishonest defense minister that doesn't know what he's doing.
Yup things are fine.
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There's a thread on Canada's reddit page that the current state of the military has come up. Lots of people blindly think things are just fine. Really shows a lot of the problem, people either don't know or don't care.
The public doesn't a flying #### about the military in Canada.
The government definitely doesn't give a #### about the military in Canada, never has.
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Captain James P. DeCOSTE, CD, 18 Sep 1993
I'm not going to lose much sleep over a US official scolding us over not buying as many F-35s as early in the production line as possible. They're trying to sell them, and wanted as many sales as possible at the most expensive part of the procurement process, anybody backing out of purchases costs them hundreds of millions in the long run, and costs LM billions.
Maybe we can just contract the work out to the US military?
We practically do now any ways, they just haven't submitted an invoice.
Our airforce is at a low point of readiness, if we want to do northern interceptions we're depending on the yanks to pretty much fuel our planes mid trip.
Our Navy isn't in great shape. Our intelligence gathering in our waters is poor, and on top of that we can't really form naval task groups on our own because we lack command and control.
Our army is way stretched, and on top of that surprisingly we don't have any way of protecting our own troops from air threats.
It was horrible under Trudeau senior, bargin basement bad around Chretien to the point of embarrassment when we deployed troops over seas and they were poorly equip, Harper tried to fix things and did do a good job in terms of transport, and emergency up grades with the ground forces, but at the end of the day he couldn't even put a dent in the rust out caused by Trudeau and Chretien. Then Justin came in and not only made a super shyte show around procurement with a smell of corruption. He basically cased a embarrassing situation with the vindictive Mark Norman trial.
Basically Nato isn't impressed with us at all and hasn't been in a while. Norad pretty much thinks we're a joke. And we continue to push men and woman into danger with the UN to try to get a security council seat.
The rust out is here now, and with it we're seeing an exodus of trained officers and NCO leaving us with what is going to be a training gap.
Right now the American's don't see us as a partner in the defense of North America, they see us as an obligation who can't carry its own weight.
A few years back on this board when I was board, I put together what I thought was a sensible going forward process in terms of what the forces needed to buy. I'm not going through that exercise again. But when you look at the major platforms
Subs - We have the four victoria/upholder class boats. At the time the upholder was a nifty concept of a diesel boat with a SSN set of sensors and weapons. But we've gotten very little use out of them, they're a late 80's design and woefully inadequete. The DND recently announced that they're going end of life in 2025 without a major upgrade. We have no submarine strategy right now.
Frigates - We have the new ship replacement which is great, but its mired in controversy right now and the winning bid was more political then about ship capabilities.
Air force - The F-18's are a tired bird, and we went out and bought the Aussie F-18's for political reasons with a fake fighter capability story by Saijan. The fact is we've bled out pilots. Screwed the pooch on the fighter replacement program and its become a disgusting cesspool of corrupt.
The army - a mess, and a incomplete group. Very little int he way of anti-air defense. Our armored vehicles are pretty battered at this point, and we're under manned.
If I had a kid that wanted to join the military tomorrow, I'd probably tell him or her not to bother at this point. The government doesn't take good enough care of them or the veterans.
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The U.S. Air Force F-35 demonstration team will visit Ottawa in September on the eve of this fall's federal election — just as the competition to replace Canada's aging CF-18s starts heating up.
The stealth fighter is one of four warplanes in the $19 billion contest, which was formally launched with a request for proposals by the Liberal government on July 23.
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Officials with the Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed Martin, the world's largest defence contractor, conducted a background briefing on Tuesday to tout its planned bid, pointing out that the warplane — which has been well over a decade in development — is now in service with eight nations and has even flown combat missions with the U.S. Air Force, the Marine Corps, the Royal Air Force and the Israeli air force.
"This a mature aircraft," said a company official who was authorized to speak with the media only on background.
Critics and competitors have slammed the stealth fighter over both its upfront price tag and the ongoing cost to maintain it.
Lockheed Martin officials insisted Tuesday that by the time Canada is ready to buy its new fighters — roughly in 2022 — the purchase price is expected to be lower than US $80 million per plane and the per-hour cost of maintaining and flying it will be reduced to US $25,000, which would be a 25 per cent drop from the current figure.
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The Canadian Forces’ mission to Latvia has been dogged with complaints of harassment and unprofessional behaviour, prompting the military to send an investigator to the country to get to the bottom of the problems.
The investigation, launched last year, focused on the behaviour of staff in the civil-military co-operation or J9 section of Canada’s Task Force Latvia and was the result of a complaint alleging harassment and unprofessional conduct.
The probe discovered that some staff openly mocked the senior leadership in Canada, circulated negative cartoons about the military’s gender advisor assigned to the mission, and conducted a “whisper campaign” against an incoming commanding officer.
There was a “culture of withholding information” and “members of the J9 section were habituated to unprofessional comments in the presence of junior officers and NCMs (non-commissioned members),” according to a March 2018 report by Lt. Col. Jeremy Fountain, who was sent to Latvia to investigate and interview staff members. Postmedia obtained the report under the Access to Information Act.
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Captain James P. DeCOSTE, CD, 18 Sep 1993
Its no secret that moral is at a real low point in the Forces, there is also the problem that a lot of the more veteran NCO's and Officers have left the Forces and that leaves a training and discipline vacuum.
There is a definite top down leadership issue in the Canadian Forces.
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