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Originally Posted by Zulu29
Between our navy getting run down(supply ships, destroyers, submarines and the Halifax frigates aren't spring chickens either), our airforce (cf18 replacement, sea kings, sar plane replacement) and no new cargo trucks or armoured vehicles for our army it's safe to say our military is on the verge of crisis.
Not to derail this too much but do you think in today's modern CF one of the three branches is gonna have to go or be reduced to an auxiliary force? We'll always need boots on the ground so I feel the army is safe but we may have to look at a reduced Air Force or navy.
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This is the final results of decades of neglect and underspending, and yes I do blame Conservative governments as well. But the worst one being successive Chretien Governments.
While I give some credit to Harper for trying to spend on the military at this point the rot has set in. Just prior to him coming to power the Forces was facing what they called Rust out, this was deemed as a terminal condition as most of the equipment in the Forces was at end of life or well beyond life, we were within a decade of a complete end to be able to do any military operations. As it stands with one of the most crucial aspects which is disaster assistance, if there was more then one disaster in this country natural or otherwise, the Canadian Forces would only be able to respond to one.
Afghanistan exposed the military issues for all to see, from vehicles that were woefully under standard Iltis jeep to our lack of heavy lift transportation for equipment, to other more flagrant issues including not having desert style cams when we deployed.
While the Federal Government crash spent specifically for equipment for Afghanistan and the smart purchases of heavy lift aircraft. The Navy and the Airforce continued to suck hind tit.
These things all come to roost at some point and while we delayed rust out its on the way again due to
The F-35 issue, our F-18's are beyond shelf life and starting to fail out, microfractures are a big issue from what I understand
The Helicopter issue, Chretien's vindictiveness and hatred of anything green rivaled his mentor. The cancellation was ridiculous and stupid and put lives at risk, and even years later we're still having problems getting helicopters
The Halifax Frigates which are excellent boats are officially past their half life upgrade, while Canada has announced a aggressive ship building campaign to replace our supply ships, our frigates and our destroyers, this program is full of problems, like under-estimated budgeting, design issues and construction and facilities issues, this was also a big part of our sovereignty program in the Arctic. We've now seen problems in the cohesiveness of our navy with a lack of Command and Control ships that allow us to form task forces with our navy, but with our allies. We are also into a resupply problem due to a recent fire on one of our Re-supply ships.
The Victoria Class Submarine purchase was a brilliant stroke by Jean Chretien where he basically went on Kijiji and bought the cheapest subs that he could find and couldn't bother to do the due diligence on it and we continue to struggle with that to this day.
Canada was due to start replacing our LAV's which took a beating in Afghanistan, I believe that's been cancelled as well as the replacement of tanks that will need to come eventually.
Can any one service afford to wait 5 years? I don't believe so, and in the military all services are inter combined. Our airforce is designed to not only maintain our border security but to provide close in air support for our troops in the ground. Our Navy is designed to defend our water ways but its difficult to do that when most of our Frigates don't have dedicated sub hunting helicopters for example.
Our search and rescue and disaster response ability is compromised as well.
Successive Governments have blown more defense money on stupid and at time vindictive purchases and cancellations then I'd want to calculate. It makes my head explode to be honest that we expect our men and woman to put on the uniform and fight and put their lives at stake and then we make it worse by not supporting them.
What the forces needs is a 5 year crash program of replacement and refreshment. Put out a green book of specifically how we want to defend our country and work with our allies and unfortunately the UN and refresh and upgrade every piece of equipment that needs to last for the next 25 years. Yeah it costs more, but there would be a reduction in maintenance and replacement costs
BTW for an excellent read on this very subject "Who killed the Canadian Military by JL Granatstein is an excellent read, it is a little dated now as it was written in 2004, but its an entire history of the way the government has treated, worked with and procured for the military.