Canadian Military News

[peter12]

I really, really tried not to lose the machine gun barrel.

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

I got seriously pooped on because during an ambush, I dropped my pack so I could move faster and forgot where I left my pack.

Nigh time ambush after being awake for seemed like weeks, young private UCB got word down the line that we were moving. Buddy to my right passed it onto me, as had his buddy on his right and so on.

As we start to move out we get maybe 1/2 km down the track and behind us see a form running down the road.......yeah, buddy to me left got ####ed.

I was so happy to be heading back to the bivouac i got my #### together and never let him know we were moving. To this day I still think he was asleep and never heard me crashing around the bush to get to the track.

[CaptainCrunch]

One of the funniest night fights I've ever been in.



My platoon was patrolling down the road, when me and my buddy who were on point saw a shape on a hill. It was pitch black but it looked like a tuck. So we halted our move and I crawled back to the corporal who was one of our instructors who was in charge. He didn't like the idea of leaving something un checked on our flank so he sent me and my partner up the hill to flank it.


So we slowly went up the hill and decided it was a truck, and we decided to take each side and sneak up on it.



Of course it was an exercise monitor, and he was us coming. So he waited for us to get within a few feet and hit us with the high beams blinding us. The best thing that still makes me laugh is the sound of my buddy stumbling and falling down the hill swearing all the way, and me sitting there trying to clear the spots from my eyes while the monitor was killing himself laughing.

[CaptainCrunch]

This could be a major story

https://twitter.com/user/status/1115058950762790913

[peter12]

I'm all about a mixed fleet now for the RCAP. 70/30 split between Gripens and F-35s.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by peter12

I'm all about a mixed fleet now for the RCAP. 70/30 split between Gripens and F-35s.

I get it, but for a country with a small airforce and limited budget, it creates a lot of problems to have role specific aircraft.


You have to look at distinctive


Parts, maintenance training, flight training, upgrades, interoperability difficulties.


It works for the larger airforces that need role specific aircraft.


but in an airforce with between 65 and 85 aircraft you're buying huge problems.


As well the cost difference vs benefits between the F-35 and the Griphen F doesn't make as much sense.


The the Saab expected to come in at a cost of $60 million per plane vs the F-35 which has reduced in price as manufacturing has increased to about an expected 80 to 85 per plane. The performance vs cost doesn't make as much sense as it used to



The sensor systems alone as well as the EW portion of the F-35 is far ahead. The Griphen is a gen 4 to 4.5 versus a 5th generation F-35. The interoperability of the F-35 and data share is better. In terms of carrying power, the F-35 can carry more.


Also you look at the future generation expandibility of the platform if you're going to fly it for 30 to 50 years, and the F-35 has a much better road map.






When it was a difference of double the price the Griphen F would make sense, but its not that difference anymore.


If you want to have a small airforce with a single airframe you need as many advantages to the plane as possible and a high as possible survival vs kill ration as possible.

[btimbit]

Biggest thing for me, aside from which performs the best, is that we know that in another few decades replacing the next plane will be a ####show as well. Might as well get the one that will have the longest shelf life now rather than have to go through this again in just 20 years

[peter12]

CAF procurement is so bad, and will probably always be bad, I just prefer to live in the realm of fantasy now.

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

This could be a major story

https://twitter.com/user/status/1115058950762790913

I know a few guys that aren't right as a result of this drug.

[CaptainCrunch]

Yeah, I know one or two that to this day aren't the same people that I used to know.

[CaptainCrunch]

McDonald-Laurier releases a report on the disaster that is the Canadian Fighter Jet replacement program


https://www.macdonaldlaurier.ca/asse...ew-mli-report/

OTTAWA, ON (May 6, 2019): In a hard-hitting new Macdonald-Laurier Institute report, MLI Senior Fellow Richard Shimooka takes a critical look at the government’s approach to replacing Canada’s aging fleet of CF-18 fighters. In the report, titled The Catastrophe: Assessing the Damage from Canada’s Fighter Replacement Fiasco, he argues that Ottawa’s performance on this file mirrors the SNC-Lavalin Scandal and the Mark Norman Affair.

Shimooka argues that “the decisions made [regarding fighter jet replacement] were purely for reasons of political interest: not a single one could be claimed as being in the country’s national interest.”


The “fiasco,” as Shimooka describes it, has caught the attention of both Canada’s Office of the Auditor General (OAG) and senior US officials. According to documents never before seen by the public, the OAG had specifically cautioned the government against its chosen course of purchasing Australian Hornets as an interim measure in a draft report – and the final OAG report was heavily revised to obscure that recommendation.

Worse still, letters from US officials reveal that “resentment and distrust towards the government of Canada had grown, particularly within the US Air Force.” These letters, which again have not been made public until now, outline the significant strategic and economic benefits that have already been accrued from being part of the JSF Program. Yet they also contain an implicit (but clear) threat that Canada could be kicked out of the Program – if Ottawa continues with its current policy of trying to obtain guaranteed industrial benefits that, by their very nature, are not allowed under the JSF Program.


“There was a complete lack of logic of Canada’s policy, which seemed to ignore basic facts about membership in the JSF program, including clear advantages in cost and capability that the F-35 provided.”

Despite these persistent, high-level issues with the government’s chosen approach on the fighter jet replacement, the file has avoided serious public scrutiny. Shimooka finds that this happened in large part due to the successful gag orders levelled by the government.


“The government has also suppressed negative viewpoints within and outside the Department of National Defence, allegedly up to and including the deletion of portions of Memos to Cabinet that highlighted why certain decisions should not be taken.”

This government has really surpassed the Harper government in terms of secrecy and hiding the truth.


Our esteemed defense minister should have been sacked when he lied about his role in Afghanistan, instead they kept him on board because he's weak and does nothing at all.


I wrote on this board about diminished capability of the Canadian Forces to execute its mission. I wrote about the impending rust out of the Forces overall.


Now we're seeing reports of terrible moral, skilled officers and men leaving. Pilot shortages and experienced officer shortages.


The Liberal defense plan that promised so much has accomplished very little. The CAF is rapidly heading into the can that its not likely to recover from.

[btimbit]

I've said enough on the subject, posting about it much more will just make me angry.

But there's are literally zero legitimate reasons or excuses for the way the Government has handled this. Just brutal mismanagement at its finest

[CaptainCrunch]

The report itself


http://macdonaldlaurier.ca/files/pdf...mooka_FWeb.pdf

The scale of production has enabled the per-unit cost of F-35s to be less than its less technologically advanced, lower production competitors.”

[CaptainCrunch]

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/u-s-...ents-1.4410121


Even more about the US's disgust with Canada over this file as they might pull the F-35 from the competition, following the desision by Dassault's desision to pull out.



This would leave the eurofighter Typhoon and the Griphen G-39 as the remaining competitors The Typhoon would be more expensive then the F-35 and less capable and the Griphen is a nice little fighter but not as capable as the F-35.

U.S. officials have threatened to pull the F-35 out of the competition to replace the Royal Canadian Air Force's aging CF-18 fighters over the Liberal government's plan to ask bidders to re-invest some of the giant purchase contract in Canadian industry.

This is extremely arrogant considering that Canada's aero industry has already benefited from the JSF program

While the re-investment requirement is standard for most Canadian military procurements, the U.S. officials note Canada agreed not to include it when it signed on as one of nine F-35 partner countries in 2006.


Companies in those countries must instead compete for work associated with the plane -- only companies from those countries are eligible, but they're supposed to compete on equal footing. The U.S. officials say conditions on bidders that would privilege Canadian companies will mean the F-35 won't be entered in the race.

This government is pretty much intentionally poisoning the Fighter Jet Replacement Program and it will result in a smaller seat at the table in terms of Norad and decisions around North American Defense.

[btimbit]

All we can do is cross our fingers that the US at least waits to see how the election turns out before kicking Canada out of the program entirely

[CaptainCrunch]

The damage to our relationship with the US in terms of Norad and Nato is already done.


The announcement of the Canadian Fighter Jet competition is supposed to come out I think at the end of the month, so I would assume that the US decision will come down in a matter of weeks.



If the American's withdraw the F-35 it will be accompanied by a kick out of the F-35 program and a lot of harm to Canadian Companies that were participating, especially since the roll out of the F-35 to the American and other Militarizes is really ramping up.

[btimbit]

####ing embarrassing

[peter12]

Profoundly embarassing. We are nowhere near our capabilities even 15 years ago.

[peter12]

As for complete rust-out, I believe we are there already. The fleet, at this point, would hardly make Indonesia jealous, the Army is missing key systems that really undermine its total warfighting abilities, and we aren't anywhere close to finding a decent fighter jet platform.

I think the CAF can recover, but it will take at least a couple decades to turn things around. That, or a major crisis.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by peter12

As for complete rust-out, I believe we are there already. The fleet, at this point, would hardly make Indonesia jealous, the Army is missing key systems that really undermine its total warfighting abilities, and we aren't anywhere close to finding a decent fighter jet platform.

I think the CAF can recover, but it will take at least a couple decades to turn things around. That, or a major crisis.

The problem with rust out is that you have to spend massive amounts of money in a short period of time to fix it.



The Canadian Forces budget has really been a maintenance budget and because of that we keep falling further and further behind.


The new ship building program is a gong show and pretty much rife with corruption over the ship selection, as is the fighter jet replacement program. The land forces is pretty much sucking hind tit, one of the key cruicial things for any ground force is anti-air protection, we have zero ground force capability there.


Moral is through the floor, we don't have enough pilots. We have a shortfall in the navy even when the new ships come on line. We're even having difficulty filling slots on the ground as more experienced officers and NCO's walk away.