Fire onboard HMCS Protecteur.

[CaptainCrunch]

I think we can all agree that the Sailors in the RCN are exemplary and that this could have been a far worse ending without their fast actions.

I would agree with recognition or a unit citation, that makes the most sense.

[IgiTang]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

I think we can all agree that the Sailors in the RCN are exemplary and that this could have been a far worse ending without their fast actions.

I would agree with recognition or a unit citation, that makes the most sense.

Much appreciated. I just hope the general public realizes how dedicated we are and doesn't see us as just a bunch of "drunken sailors". I hope the Feds get us the kits we deserve and need to be a leader in the world Naval community and not a running joke in terms of ability restrictions due to said kit.

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by IgiTang

Much appreciated. I just hope the general public realizes how dedicated we are and doesn't see us as just a bunch of "drunken sailors". I hope the Feds get us the kids t we deserve and need to be a leader in the world Naval community and not a running joke in terms of ability restrictions due to said kit.

Why would the gov't start now.

I am with CC, non effin way I am getting on a ship, nope never. At least when you are wearing green you only have to worry about the enemy.

[Barnes]

Is the Protecteur used a lot as an oiler or mostly used for dry goods/ammo resupply etc? Does it transfer standard shipping containers while underway? Can a leased cargo ship with a big crane do some of the things the Protecteur class currently does?

What other things happen aboard these ships? Are they fitted out to act as flagships with command and staff accommodations?

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by Barnes

Is the Protecteur used a lot as an oiler or mostly used for dry goods/ammo resupply etc? Does it transfer standard shipping containers while underway? Can a leased cargo ship with a big crane do some of the things the Protecteur class currently does?

I'm no expert on navy resupply, but its Oil food ammo and general resupply on one ship. I don't know if a cargo ship would be able to do it because of the multi-role aspect of supply ships, on top of that re-supply on the move is incredibly complex and specialized.

There was an exceptional mighty ships episode where they spent time on a U.S. Navy resupply ship and it was amazing.

Originally Posted by Barnes

What other things happen aboard these ships? Are they fitted out to act as flagships with command and staff accommodations?

I don't think I would be comfortable with using a resupply ship loaded down with huge amounts of fuel and ammo as a command and control ship. Canada was is dependent on the Tribal Class Destroyers as our Command and Control ship. The concept was to build task forces based around a Destroyer and multiple Halifax Class Frigates. But the Tribal Class Destroyers are at end of life, I believe there are only two left in service.

Part of the CSC ship building program is to build replacements to these destroyers.

[IgiTang]

There are 3 tribal class left, 1 works.

As for the AOR, Pro and Preserver on the east coast carry JP5 jet fuel, weaponry, medical and disaster relief. Plus your standard food supplies and such.

Pro does a lot of work with US task groups in terms of fuelling everything from OHP's to Eisenhower class carriers (jet fuel obviously).

Canadian AOR's play such a significant role in contributing to our joint task force efforts in the Pacific and our NATO efforts in the Atlantic that its hard to imagine being down to 1 for the entire fleet..

Side note- in San Diego, the USN has at least 5 sitting around at any moment doing nothing as they have manning issues and have turned to civilian contractors. They probably have 10 based out of SD alone and I would say 25+ for their entire fleet.

[Bigtime]

Originally Posted by IgiTang

Side note- in San Diego, the USN has at least 5 sitting around at any moment doing nothing as they have manning issues and have turned to civilian contractors. They probably have 10 based out of SD alone and I would say 25+ for their entire fleet.

Lend/lease one to us to fill the interim gap?

[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.

[undercoverbrother]

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.

Couple of things.

Our military has always, always been poorly equiped. My experience supports this and I believe others support this, hell I think history supports this.

I don't see how you can reduce the Navy or the Air Force when you have a country with such large airspace and coast. Both are needed for patrol and saftey (rescue). We havn't even touched the Coast Guard yet, those poor #######s really are the red headed step child of funding.

I don't have the answer, beyond funding.

[Zulu29]

Originally Posted by undercoverbrother

Couple of things.

Our military has always, always been poorly equiped. My experience supports this and I believe others support this, hell I think history supports this.

I don't see how you can reduce the Navy or the Air Force when you have a country with such large airspace and coast. Both are needed for patrol and saftey (rescue). We havn't even touched the Coast Guard yet, those poor #######s really are the red headed step child of funding.

I don't have the answer, beyond funding.

Yeah, kind of depressing. More funding likely won't come as that means more taxes or cutting something else. In my opinion there the funding should be directed at one of the branches for 5 year rotations for procurement. Army, you've got 5 years to get the kit you need, then you wait 10 til your next turn kind of thing. I think you'd be able to keep all the branches fairly modern. There would obviously be training/ maintenance budgets for the other two while they wait for their turn for procurement. There would have to be the ability to direct money to a certain branch in case of emergency.

[FireFly]

Just found out a high school buddy was on this ship. Kind of suspected but wasn't confirmed until he posted on facebook that he was in Pearl Harbour again. Scary stuff. Glad everyone is ok.

[CaptainCrunch]

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.

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.

[Zulu29]

Good write up CC, however I take issue with the 5 year crash program you propose. That's just frankly impossible. The amount of cash to do that would be insane. The reason I proposed a cycle(doesn't need to be 5, could be 3 or whatever) was to ensure a cycle of replacing equipment rather than having a situation that we face now where we have to replace everything at once. Governments regardless of stripe are god aweful at supplying the military with what they need. I think that if everything we needed was purchased today we'd just end up exactly where we are today in 25 years. Cycling the procurement allows the military to never have equipment that is too old and allows each branch to get their moment in the sun with regards to new kit.

By the way, I thought Canada purchased a whole bunch of Leo 2's from the Dutch so were good for tanks?

[CaptainCrunch]

Yeah we purchased 120 2's from surplus

At some point they're going to been to be upgraded as well.

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

Yeah we purchased 120 2's from surplus

At some point they're going to been to be upgraded as well.

How many were used in Afghanistan?


Operational usage kicks the #### out of equipment and casuses it to age fast, especially in some of the env'ts over there.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by undercoverbrother

How many were used in Afghanistan?


Operational usage kicks the #### out of equipment and casuses it to age fast, especially in some of the env'ts over there.

I read somewhere that two squadrons were always deployed over there, however I'm not sure if we were rotating them back or leaving them there.

Probably a quarter or more of our tanks went over three.

And yeah they got the crap kicked out of them, with the A2's we had to jury rig air conditioners on them so that the crew wouldn't cook like turkies in an oven.

But tanks proved their versatility in Afghanistan and showed why tracked vehicles are still superior to wheeled vehicles.

Thank god we didn't buy into the Stryker program.

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

I read somewhere that two squadrons were always deployed over there, however I'm not sure if we were rotating them back or leaving them there.

Probably a quarter or more of our tanks went over three.

And yeah they got the crap kicked out of them, with the A2's we had to jury rig air conditioners on them so that the crew wouldn't cook like turkies in an oven.

But tanks proved their versatility in Afghanistan and showed why tracked vehicles are still superior to wheeled vehicles.

Thank god we didn't buy into the Stryker program.

Tanks are still needed, you still have to have the hammer to bring down on the battlefield.

[Zulu29]

Our Leo 1's were over there and from what I recall we leased 20 or so Leo 2A4's from the Germans to use there. I don't think any of our Leo 2's set track in Afghanistan.

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by Zulu29

Our Leo 1's were over there and from what I recall we leased 20 or so Leo 2A4's from the Germans to use there. I don't think any of our Leo 2's set track in Afghanistan.

The 2's are still an old vehicle, IIRC.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by undercoverbrother

Tanks are still needed, you still have to have the hammer to bring down on the battlefield.

It was funny but one of the early discoveries was that the 25 mm main chain gun on the LAV III couldn't penetrate the thick mud walls in the farm fields in Afghanistan so the Taliban would sit behind them and snipe all day.

The Leopard 2's 125 mm smooth bore would basically reach out and touch someone from miles away.

I remember when I was in the infantry, and I got all cocky when we talked about fighting tanks. You know I'll just kill it with this nice Tow or LAWS rocket.

My Instructor looked at me like I was ######ed and asked me a simple question. What's the range of a Tow missile. I muttered about 4000 meters.

He then nodded and said what's the range of a main tank gun

I whined, come on sarge, that involves math and match is for girls

He slapped me across the head and yelled 8 to 10000 meters. So twice the distance and he can shoot 10 rounds a minute at you while yer crying and trying to wire guide a missile under fire.

Yer a moron Crunch, now go dig a latrine.