Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch
I agree and disagree, it’s in the same kind of line as an article that Peter Worthington who I really respect published earlier.
There are two reasons for the accelerated defense spending
1) obviously the deployment to Afghanistan, and it directly links to the second point that I'm going to make that successive governments since Korea were willing to allow the Military to rust out. The out of sight out of mind theory. Suddenly leading into Afghanistan the Canadian Forces were woefully under equipped and actually the men and woman that served over there were put into greater jeopardy then necessary. Now with the end of Afghanistan in sight, a lot of the equipment will have to be replaced. For example the LAV III end of life is accelerated due to the rough environment.
2) Beyond Afghanistan the neglect of the Military by multiple Liberal and one conservative government in particular put the Canadian Forces into crisis mode in terms of equipment. so a lot of the accelerated spending is actually catch up to bring the Canadian Forces up to a fairly close approximation of modern TOE. However the Canadian Forces is still in equipment trouble. The Helicopter replacement program thanks to the Liberals has taken far too long, and the helicopter that was chosen is a cheap imitation of the original that was picked. Our Halifax frigates have effectively reached their half life refurbishment. The Destroyers that we depended on to form independent task forces around are basically done and we need to replace that Command and Control ability. Our Fleet Replenishment ships are end of life to and it’s critical that those be replaced.
In terms of the F-18 replacements, the F-18's are 30 years old and at their end of life, they can't be upgraded anymore from at technology standpoint, and they're starting to develop problems such as cracks in their airframe. Further the maintenance hours/flight hours are starting to accelerate just like they did with the Sea Kings.
I've looked at some of the alternate jets such as the Eurojets, and their costs per plane are similar to the F-35 original price tag but there are no Canadian Economic Benefits.
We also have to realize that the air force will effectively be shrinking with the same mission, when we bought the F-18's we bought I think 130 of them, now with the f-35's we're buying I think 68, so if you're going to buy fewer jets, you have to have greater capability, a higher ability kill ratio, and a better survival rate.
The F-35 because of its multi-role capability, stealth capability, and technology would rank this jet as a better purchase then something like the Super Hornet.
We also have to remember that these are the jets that we need to fly for 20 years, so instead of buying behind the curve, you need to buy ahead of the curve.
Frankly Canada has the disadvantage of having to cover a large country with few assets, so in that term we need to make sure that we have the capability to do it.
We need to prevent future rust out crisis
As a further, if we're going to deploy abroad, we need to make sure that we have the logistics to be able to support our own missions, that means no more renting of foreign planes and ship transport.
We also have to make sure that our forces can follow the mandate of being able to support multiple natural disasters at one time.
In terms of Military spending, Canada is spending 1.3% of their gross domestic product Australia which is in some ways comparable though they focus more heavily on their navy spends 1.8%, but in terms of first world nations, Canada does trail in defense spending.
To be honest Harper has provided a minor miracle in terms of upgrading air lift, and ground forces equipment (New jeeps for example) while not spending what I would consider to be a massive percentage of dollars.
Anyways, I'm hoping this made some sense, it did in my head
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