Quote:
Originally Posted by calgarygeologist
Maybe we can just contract the work out to the US military?
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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.