Canadian Military News

[undercoverbrother]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...ticle31570609/

The Liberal government is putting the United Nations on notice that Canada is ready to provide money and, more importantly, troops for peacekeeping missions around the world.

Up to 600 Canadian soldiers — including engineers and medical units — are being committed to future peacekeeping operations, as well as equipment such as helicopters and planes, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan and Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion said Friday.

“It is time for Canada to choose engagement over isolation,” Dion told a news conference in Saguenay, Que., where Liberal MPs are taking part in a two-day caucus retreat.

But the big question, which the government has yet to answer, is where Canadian troops would actually end up. The government says no decision has been made, but it’s believed Canada will participate in more than one country.

Speculation has been rife that the Liberals are eyeing a mission in Mali, the Central African Republic, South Sudan or the Democratic Republic of Congo. But all four represent complex and dangerous environments, with no easy solutions.

In Mali, for example, 86 peacekeepers have been killed since April 2013. The UN missions in the DRC and South Sudan, meanwhile, have been accused of not doing enough to protect civilians. The political situations in those countries are also extremely volatile.

For ####'s Sake

[btimbit]

Peacekeeping in Africa? Because it's worked so well,right?

[CaptainCrunch]

So f$$king stupid.

Keep what peace, there are very few country versus country conflicts anymore, and the main conflicts are happening between NATO nations and the Russians.

At the end of the day, the places where they're sending peacekeepers are based around ethnic, or religious lines, and peace keeping isn't going to do any good because you're facing off against irregulars on one side and governments on the other or other irregulars on the other side.

On top of that, lets say that its a government versus and insurgence rule, and the government is monstrous. IS Canada going to march in to help try to keep some unkeepable peace in Syria with Assad still ruling?

And frankly these groups are far more vicious and morally vacant then any nation versus nation conflict.

Most veterans are already stating this is a bad idea because frankly the UN is terrible at defining rules of engagements so the peace keepers usually have to stand by and watch atrocities happen.

What does Trudeau think is going to happen, that Canada is going to show up in the blue berets in white painted jeeps and stand bravely between two warring ethnic groups and say "please stop fighting" and its going to make a damn lick of difference? Instead what's going to happen is both groups are going to up the ante because the UN is weak with poor ROE, and on top of that both groups will start murdering peacekeepers.

Add to that the human costs, try making some soldier stand by and wait for a response from the UN when civilian's are being slaughtered and not being able to do anything and then having to live with it.

In this day and age of insurgents and religious groups and ethnic groups killing for the sake of killing, Peace keeping is only going to work if it changes to the term peace enforcement.

That means a ironclad set of ROE for the troops in the field, heavy weapons and air support and either physically displacing civillians to safe zones that are heavily defended, or cleaning out the offenders, or physically finding a way to separate them and putting heavy weapons and special forces on the ground and basically saying, stop fighting or we start killing you all.

Its just a dumba$$ strategy to me that makes little and no sense and harkens back to the 70's when the 201? are a different world.

[worth]

I'm interested to know how we can support a NATO deployment to Eastern Europe and a UN deployment to Africa at the same time.

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by worth

I'm interested to know how we can support a NATO deployment to Eastern Europe and a UN deployment to Africa at the same time.

Easy, you burn out the equipment and personnel.


Pffft

[btimbit]

Exactly. All that equipment that still isn't operational after being ran into the ground in Afghanistan? We'll just use that, no problem

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by worth

I'm interested to know how we can support a NATO deployment to Eastern Europe and a UN deployment to Africa at the same time.

You can't, remember at the end of Afghanistan the Forces was suffering from major deployment fatique.

the LAV's and other equipment used was either completely worn out or in serious need of an upgrade.

We had personal fatique because of the number of troops that rotated through the battlegroup.

On the plus side, the troops that we did use were battle hardened and experienced and Canada did what they could to get those people into training rotations to pass on what they know.

On the negative side we probable lost a lot of experienced troops who came home and left the military.

The nice part of using the F-18's in the mid east is that it allowed us to continue to rest and refurbish.

Now we're majorly committed to the Nato deployment in Latvia with 450 troops, that might not sound like much, but on any long term deployment with a military as small as Canada's its actually a lot. On top of that we still have troops deployed in "training" roles in the middle east as as well with operation impact which I believe is nearly 800 troops plus 2 patrol and refueling craft.

I think we also have 200 troops as part of UNIFER in the Ukraine as well.

IF we do deploy to Africa, its going to be a complex mission, we're going to need probably significant troop numbers, and its going to stretch our logistics and air lift to the limit.

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

You can't, remember at the end of Afghanistan the Forces was suffering from major deployment fatique.

the LAV's and other equipment used was either completely worn out or in serious need of an upgrade.

We had personal fatique because of the number of troops that rotated through the battlegroup.

On the plus side, the troops that we did use were battle hardened and experienced and Canada did what they could to get those people into training rotations to pass on what they know.

On the negative side we probable lost a lot of experienced troops who came home and left the military.

The nice part of using the F-18's in the mid east is that it allowed us to continue to rest and refurbish.

Now we're majorly committed to the Nato deployment in Latvia with 450 troops, that might not sound like much, but on any long term deployment with a military as small as Canada's its actually a lot. On top of that we still have troops deployed in "training" roles in the middle east as as well with operation impact which I believe is nearly 800 troops plus 2 patrol and refueling craft.

I think we also have 200 troops as part of UNIFER in the Ukraine as well.

IF we do deploy to Africa, its going to be a complex mission, we're going to need probably significant troop numbers, and its going to stretch our logistics and air lift to the limit.

The forces were fatigued from The Balkans before they even went to The Sandbox.

The forces have been flat out since what '92, Roto 0 in Yugo. A military the size of Canada's can't go flat out for 20ish years.

[Baron von Kriterium]

Originally Posted by undercoverbrother

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...ticle31570609/





For ####'s Sake

Just another Sunny Ways group announcement, amigo.

This, http://news.gc.ca/web/article-en.do?...=1&nid=1117209

and this, http://news.gc.ca/web/article-en.do?...=1&nid=1117199

from the Info Machine.

"The new Peace and Stabilization Operations Program (PSOPs) will have a budget of $450 million over three years, and it will be managed by Global Affairs Canada. It builds on the more than a decade of experience and achievements of its predecessor, the Stabilization and Reconstruction Task Force, or START, as well as lessons learned by the international community on how best to promote peace, security and stability."

So, $450 Million to change names. Canada is back! lol

Note that Global Affairs Canada used to be known as External Affairs way back when. It has gone through many name changes in between, making the Sign Maker Union quite happy.

[CaptainCrunch]

Back in the bad days, the US military was counted on to be able to fight 2 wars, 2 holding actions and up to 5 major peace keeping duties simultaneously.

When "Peace" broke out that requirement was shrunk to 1 war 1 holding action and up to 5 major peace keeping assignments.

Canada currently has 1450 soldiers deployed or meant to be deployed by 2017.

That's equivalent to a brigade group. to put that in perspective Canada has I believe 4 active duty divisions in the army, Each of them basically made up of 3 to 4 combat brigades, when they're at full strength, which is doubtful.

so it looks like we probably have close to 5% of our active forces deployed to various missions which is pushing it right now. If we go into the hole that is Africa, this isn't going to be some small deployment of men in jeeps observing, because that would be the height of worthlessness. If Canada goes into Mali, the requirement is probably going to be a enhance battlegroup of probably 1000 soldiers and their logistics support groups.

A deployment into Mali or the other trouble spots will be brutal and violent and nasty and the various groups fighting there will chip away and bloody us, and the UN will piss them away, because that's what the UN does when it comes to peacekeeping.

This is a tremendously bad mistake drawn up by Stephen Dion who's a weak incompetant, backed by a Minsister of Defense who seems to be confused and overwhelmed by the job and spear headed by a Prime Ministers with visions of standing on the UN stage and hooting that Canada is back.

This is a bad idea.

[peter12]

Captain, you should send your last two posts in this thread as a letter to the National Post and Globe & Mail. Excellent stuff.

Specifically: #143 and #150.

[automaton 3]

Great posts Captain.

I know two people that served in the Yugoslavia "peacekeeping" mission. Both are of the view that it was a colossal waste of time, energy and blood. There was no peace to keep and the blue helmets meant nothing. They were ill equipped for the mission and our rules of engagement were nonsensical.

One has PTSD and nightmares that linger to this day (he and his squadmates were asked to clear a road of mines multiple times, crawling along on their bellies in the dirt while both sides shot at them).

I would hope that our civilian leadership would take lessons from such folly, but I have no faith in Trudeau and Dion whatsoever.

[Baron von Kriterium]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

Canada currently has 1450 soldiers deployed or meant to be deployed by 2017.

Well, to be honest, the majority of those are staff positions in various HQs. OP IMPACT, for example, has a small number of operational troops in Iraq. The rest of the mission is scattered from Jordan to Lebanon to Kuwait working in joint HQs. Also, they aren't all Army and they aren't all Reg Force. The Canadian Armed Forces is very adept at building up HQs in order to employ as many Majors and Colonels as possible.

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

That's equivalent to a brigade group. to put that in perspective Canada has I believe 4 active duty divisions in the army, Each of them basically made up of 3 to 4 combat brigades, when they're at full strength, which is doubtful.

Canada really only has 1 division (1 Cdn Div HQ) in Kingston. This is the deployable HQ, but it doesn't have any brigades as subordinates.

The other four divisions are in name only because it looks good on paper, but they aren't constructed as proper divisions and are not "active". That is, they aren't deployable and aren't capable of independent operations. Three Divisions (2, 3, and 4) have one mechanized brigade group each. The other brigades in each division are not mechanized and are Primary Reserve. None of the Reserve brigades are deployable/operational; they are administrative. The Reserve soldiers from these brigades will augment the Regular Force in the Mechanized Brigades as required.

5 Division in Atlantic Canada has two Reserve Brigades. That's it.

[CaptainCrunch]

Canada's submarine faces end of life before new submarines can be purchased unless $3 billion is spent on a end of life extension upgrade.

This is what happens when you cheap out on purchases

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/...g-in-2022.html

[Baron von Kriterium]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

Canada's submarine faces end of life before new submarines can be purchased unless $3 billion is spent on a end of life extension upgrade.

This is what happens when you cheap out on purchases

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/...g-in-2022.html

In all likelihood, the government will pursue the option of upgrades over replacement. This is the SOP for the government over the past couple of decades: namely, push back the decision for procurement of a major capital project to the next government.

Until the political parties - all of them - agree on a defence policy and a procurement system to meet that policy, we will continue to keep on tripping over our own feet and not have the equipment when we really need that equipment.

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by Baron von Kriterium

In all likelihood, the government will pursue the option of upgrades over replacement. This is the SOP for the government over the past couple of decades: namely, push back the decision for procurement of a major capital project to the next government.

Until the political parties - all of them - agree on a defence policy and a procurement system to meet that policy, we will continue to keep on tripping over our own feet and not have the equipment when we really need that equipment.

I struggle to really identify any equipment purchase that was equipment that was needed, when it was needed.

Maybe the Leopard?

[GoinAllTheWay]

Originally Posted by undercoverbrother

I struggle to really identify any equipment purchase that was equipment that was needed, when it was needed.

Maybe the Leopard?

That's the only one I can think of.

Read an article on CBC the other day discussing the difficulties in acquiring new tents. How hard can that possibly be?

[edslunch]

Originally Posted by Baron von Kriterium

In all likelihood, the government will pursue the option of upgrades over replacement. This is the SOP for the government over the past couple of decades: namely, push back the decision for procurement of a major capital project to the next government.

Until the political parties - all of them - agree on a defence policy and a procurement system to meet that policy, we will continue to keep on tripping over our own feet and not have the equipment when we really need that equipment.

Given we don't have a functioning submarine fleet would we better off not throwing good money after bad and just retiring them? Start again with new subs, accept a gap in the timeline. How critical is this capability?

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by edslunch

Given we don't have a functioning submarine fleet would we better off not throwing good money after bad and just retiring them? Start again with new subs, accept a gap in the timeline. How critical is this capability?

I wonder if we really need submarines.

Perhaps, with our limited budget and large coastline we should focus on surface ships that can double for Search and Rescue as well. Let's not even bring up the Coast Guard....

[Baron von Kriterium]

Originally Posted by undercoverbrother

I struggle to really identify any equipment purchase that was equipment that was needed, when it was needed.

Maybe the Leopard?

There were a few examples from Afghanistan, including the RG-31 and heavily armoured transport/recovery vehicles. Because they were immediate operational requirements, DND avoided the normal (ie, slow) procurement process.

The reality is that the Government (and many taxpayers) views CAF procurement as a waste, until a situation arises where it isn't. In cases like trucks, it is easier to fill that capability hole. For submarines, it isn't.