Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch
I think you're incorrect, especially in a branch of the government where you're either putting lives in jeopardy, or trying to save lives.
The fact is that we spend less then 1%, I believe that last year we were at about .88.
Countries that aren't under threat like Australia, Italy, Brazil and France are all up around the 1.5 to 1.8% point.
The necessity of not treating the Forces like the ####### beggar in the back alley is plainly illustrated in the fact that the spending strategy of 1% or below is an abject failure and eventually you face what we're facing in Canada which is a failure of almost all equipment simultaneously.
If Canada had the foresight to evergreen equipment the effect on our defense spending would be far less dramatic.
Its stupid to sit there and think that you can nickel and dime things and then cry when you send troops into harms way and not give them what they need to succeed until you have to do a crash spending program (Afghanistan and others).
You can argue that maybe we need a smaller armed forces, but the fact is that we have a relatively puny military that was strained to capacity when we did a single battlegroup deployment, and then the military becomes basically broken after that for 5 years, because of accelerated rust out and troop fatique.
|
Let's be honest, the CF has be continually abused and under funded for decades and decades, even dating back to Korea.
The 70's and 80's were by all accounts an dark dark time in the CF. It was treated like #### and told to make due while more & more was cut.
It really all came to a head in the 90's with Unprofor and SFOR. To be frank the military was still exhausted from the mission in The Balkans. They were flat out from '92-'04 (although I think Canada might have rolled back involvement sooner than '04). Then they jump into The Sandbox in 2001 for 2011. That is 20 years of non-stop deployments.
Multiple missions for multiple soldiers, it was train, deploy, re-train, deploy, and continue.
It's a disgrace.