Quotulatiousness

May 31, 2019

Addressing the Canadian Forces’ shortfall in recruiting

Filed under: Cancon, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

The Canadian Armed Forces have an authorized strength of more than 60,000, but have not been close to that level for several years: as of 2016 there were barely more than 56,000. Recruiting has not kept pace with the demand:

Canada’s armed forces have struggled for years to attract and retain talent. The latest reports only highlight the growing gulf between the number of members required for a fully staffed service, and the lack of actual personnel.

On May 7, Procurement Canada published an expression of interest notice asking the film and television industry to help boost the military’s brand among millennials and young Canadians.

The document ascribes young people’s apparent lack of interest in joining the military to a shift in generational attitudes.

“Millennials rank inward-focused values – happiness, discovery, etc. – higher than collective-focused values – justice, duty, etc.,” the report says.

“Characteristically, they want to contribute to society in a way that is meaningful as viewed in their own standards.”

Membership in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) fell from 58,000 to 56,300 between 2011 and 2016, while the forces’ staffing requirements actually grew.

The shortfall in personnel by the end of 2016 measured 4,200 jobs – nearly twice the vacancy gap of four years prior – with no evidence of a reversal of fortunes since.

A fascinating statistic popped up in the coverage that I hadn’t seen before:

The callout also targets celebrity personalities, influencers, podcasts and video games as potential vehicles for pro-military narratives, and stresses the importance of attracting visible minorities “as they account for 51 per cent of all science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) degrees and account for 50 per cent of the doctorate holders in Canada.”

According to the 2016 Census (summarized by Wikipedia), the national average of visible minorities is 22%, so that 22% is disproportionally represented in the graduating classes in STEM programs.

H/T to my friend William for the link.

March 11, 2019

Recruiting and retention in the Canadian Forces

Filed under: Cancon, Military — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Ted Campbell briefly discusses a “new” plan to recruit (some) soldiers for special forces units directly from civilian life:

Lee Berthiaume, writing in the Globe and Mail, says that “The Canadian Forces are considering whether to recruit elite special-forces soldiers straight off the street rather than forcing them to follow the traditional route of first spending several years in the military … [and] … The idea, which is still being debated, comes as Canada’s special forces – and the military as a whole – look at radical new ways to attract and retain people with the skills and experience needed to fight tomorrow’s wars … [some insiders suggest] … That includes not just computer experts, for example, but also those with different ethnic and cultural backgrounds and language skills, as the special forces aim to operate more effectively in different parts of the world.“

First, I agree that “tomorrow’s wars” will may require some more people with scarce or special skills than we are likely to need in conventional or traditional military operations, but, despite the fact that a) I have been retired for almost a generation’s worth of years, and b) I was never in special forces, I am confident in saying that a special forces soldier is, first an foremost, a soldier and then, after much training, a special soldier.

Second, there is nothing new about recruiting special forces soldiers, right off the street, because they possess some special skills …

… but the men in the picture underwent horrendously difficult military training before they were ‘streamed’ into the special forces (Force 136) and sent to South East Asia to fight.

I take MGen Peter Dawe, Commander of the Canadian Special Operations Forces Command [at] his word when he says that “This is not about achieving set quotas or anything else … [and] … From a hard-operational perspective, do we have the right mix of people with the right sort of background, education, language, ethnicity, gender … that will allow us to do what our government expects us to do and will expect us to do in the future?” I believe that any focus on gender is politically inspired rubbish; I know that many women can do everything that many men can do, sometimes better ~ their gender is totally and completely irrelevant.

I also know, from discussion with serving members, that the Canadian Forces have an across the board recruiting and retention problem. The solutions to the recruiting and retention (both matter, equally) problems include

  • Better pay and allowance ~ that’s always a pretty obvious solution to part of the problem;
  • Separate pay for leadership (rank) and for skill (trade) ~ it has been over 50 years since Paul Hellyer screwed up the rank/trade system (especially the junior leadership ranks) in a (very welcome by all who, like me, were serving then) attempt to solve a remuneration problem. It’s well past time to revisit the whole pay and allowances system;
  • Newer and better equipment ~ who can blame young, hotshot fighter pilots for not wanting to fly 30+ years old, hand-me-down from Australia, jets? Who can blame sailors for being tired of constant sea duty in old warships? Who can blame soldiers for showing disdain for an Army that cannot even issue them proper boots or replace a World War II vintage pistol? and
  • Fight! This may seem counter-intuitive, but history and experience and academic studies all say that the best recruiting sergeant, better even than a pay raise and shiny new equipment, is the voice of guns. Now, I know this is exactly 180º out of phase with the current government’s policies and also goes against what many (most, I suspect) Canadians think their military ought to be all about, but neither the government nor many people really know or care much about he health of the military.

February 17, 2019

When Trump gets serious with Canada about defence spending

Filed under: Cancon, History, Military, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Ted Campbell notes that, despite all the nay-saying, President Trump appears to be getting results with US allies on defence issues. That being the case, he’s wondering when Prime Minister Trudeau will get the message:

A right rear view of a Canadian army Cougar wheeled fire support vehicle being used as an observation post by soldiers standing watch during the combined U.S./Canadian NATO Exercise Rendezvous ’83. Location: Camp Wainright, AB

I was commenting on this before president Trump was elected; and shortly after his 2016 election victory I said that

    “Prime Minister Trudeau and most European presidents and prime ministers will have to face a newly elected US president who wants them to pay for a bigger and bigger slice of their own defence. Real leaders would do well to recognize that the Americans have a valid point … some, probably many of them, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, may try to pretend that it doesn’t matter; they will be wrong.”

I was impressed, then, with how deeply many, many Americans felt about Donald Trump’s campaign message which said that allies were “freeloading,” and taking unfair advantage of America’s innate generosity … I was very, very conscious of the fact that, when I was a young man, a junior officer in Canada’s tough, superbly disciplined, well trained, trained, nuclear armed “vest pocket army” (as more than one allied general called us) brigade group in Germany, Canada used to pay its full and fair share … but we stopped, in the late summer of 1969, when Pierre Trudeau tried to totally withdraw from NATO and, indeed, from the world.

I wonder when President Trump will send someone like Timothy Betts, the Deputy Assistant Secretary and Senior Advisor for Security negotiations and Armaments in the US State Department, to Ottawa to demand that Canada should pay up after a half century of “freeloading” on the US taxpayers’ goodwill. That will come as a nasty shock to Team Trudeau and, indeed, to a majority of Canadians who have gotten used to the notion that the Americans will defend us out of the kindness of their hearts. I’m not sure that Canada is next in line, but I suspect we’re on his short list.

January 9, 2019

QotD: When the solution to one problem becomes a bigger problem

Filed under: Cancon, Military, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

A couple of weeks ago I posted an article about the important of “junior leadership” in the military, especially, but, by extension, in all enterprises. My point was that if one lays a good, firm, foundation of “junior leadership” (tank and rifle section and troop and platoon commanders in the Army) then everything else ~ senior leadership, management, operations and even strategy ~ will probably thrive, but, if the foundation is weak, poorly laid, then success is unlikely in anything, and, if it does occur, it will be by accident.

I am reminded that back in the 1960s one of the (many) problems than then Minister of National Defence Paul Hellyer wanted to solve was pay. The Navy, Army and Air Force were having some trouble recruiting in the late 1950s and early 1960s: the post war recessions were over, the economy was growing, the threat of war seemed to be receding and military pay was quite low … all those things made recruiting and retaining the right people more difficult ~ especially for a military that was changing, rapidly, into a technologically sophisticated organization. There had been several boards and panels, reporting to both Prime Ministers Diefenbaker and Pearson, recommending new, better, higher pay scales for the military but little action had been taken because there was no public appetite for military pay raises. Paul Hellyer decided to ‘work around’ the problem by changing the definitions of “junior leadership.” Whereas, prior to the mid 1960s, the tank or infantry section commander had been a corporal (a rank that one could, theoretically, achieve after only 18 months of training ~ and 20 or 21 year old corporals were not rare, I was one) and the platoon or troop commanders were lieutenants, Mr Hellyer changed the rank of tank and section commander to sergeant (a rank that, typically, takes 10 years to achieve) and made promotion to corporal automatic, subject only to passing a trade/speciality skill course, and he made troop and platoon commanders captains and lowered the time that had to be spent as a lieutenant.

The effect was to debase the rank of corporal ~ which still retained its status as a “non commissioned officer” rank in the National Defence Act and Queen’s Regulations ~ by making privates and corporals interchangeable as “workers,” and, equally, to debase the captain rank by making captains and lieutenants interchangeable as first level combat commanders. In effect, while trying to solve one problem, Mr Hellyer created another ~ which I believe might be more serious.

Ted Campbell, “The foundation (2)”, Ted Campbell’s Point of View, 2017-02-21.

November 11, 2018

QotD: “Chateau” generals and the modern Canadian Army

Filed under: Cancon, History, Military, Quotations, WW1 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

… the great British strategist, one of the “fathers” of modern armoured-mechanized-mobile warfare, Major General JFC “Boney” Fuller, wrote in the mid 1930s called Generalship: Its Diseases and Their Cure: A Study of the Personal Factor in Command. In it Fuller was harshly critical of what he saw as an old, fat (quite literally) and out of touch military command structure that was intent on fighting the last war, or even the one before that, and was unable to innovate or accept change. Too many generals, he suggested, were physically and mentally unfit for the stresses of modern war, they could not “rough it” with soldiers and actually needed to be in nice warm chateaux behind the lines while soldiers and colonels fought in the mud. This is related to something that the brilliant British soldier-scholar Field Marshal Lord Wavell said in his comments on “generalship:” commanders need to be “robust … able to withstand the shocks of war.” Fuller, especially, went to great lengths, and back two thousand plus years in history, to say that wars and military leadership require physical and mental vigour and that young people, often very young people can master both war and leadership. I suspect that both Fuller and Wavell would look at our modern Canadian Army, especially at our seasoned, experienced and relatively old sergeant section and tank commanders and so, “No, no, no! You’re wasting all that good training and experience at too low a level. Section commanders need only half that much training; those sergeants should be doing more and more important things.”

I believe that we, the Canadian public, need and deserve a more efficient and cost effective Army, and one way to make it so is to lower the ranks of junior leaders: tank and rifle section and tank troop and rifle platoon commanders. It should be harder but quicker for young soldiers to achieve the ranks of lance corporal, corporal and master corporal and command a tank or a rifle section ~ but the corporals and master corporals should be paid more. Junior officers should spend longer in the ranks of second lieutenant and lieutenant, and be paid more, while they are given the opportunities to master the basics of their profession. If you have first rate platoon commanders you’ll get good generals without too much trouble … if you don’t have a plentiful supply of really good tank troop and rifle platoon commanders then good generals will only appear now and again, by happy accident.

Ted Campbell, “The foundation (2)”, Ted Campbell’s Point of View, 2017-02-21.

September 16, 2018

A suggested re-organization for the Canadian Forces

Filed under: Cancon, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Ted Campbell continues his series on how to reform the Canadian Forces, this time looking at the overall command and control structure:

How the nation’s armed forces should be organized is a topic of nearly endless debate amongst military people. It is no secret, I think, that I favoured the joint force structure that former Defence Minister Paul Hellyer introduced in the 1960s. I was less enamoured with his idea of functional commands, but it was hard to strike a balance. I like the American model of joint, regional commands.

There is, almost always, a need for a few, national, functional organizations ~ for special forces and, perhaps global, strategic command, control and communications (C³) ~ but, in general, I believe that one large, national, strategic/operational HQ can control a half dozen commands, say four or five regional and two or three functional, something like this:

In my model (which reflects my deeply personal and often idiosyncratic views) the three star* Chief of the Defence Staff, in Ottawa, would command, just for example, four two star regional joint commanders (rear admirals or major generals) who would, in their turn, command almost every formation, base, depot, dockyard, base, combat ship and combat brigade, unit or wing in their geographic area. There would be a few exceptions ~ the one star officer (commodore or brigadier general, perhaps only a Navy captain or Army/RCAF colonel is needed) commanding the Strategic Communications System would command the specialized units scattered across the country and, indeed, around the world, but those units would get their day-to-day administrative and logistical support from their regional commander. Ditto for the one star officer commanding the Special Operations Command … except that he might need to have a bit more administrative and logistical power because of the nature of his business. There might be a perceived need for a separate Joint Operations (Overseas) Command but I doubt it is really necessary. The national Joint Staff (headed by a two star officer) in Ottawa can plan and direct the mounting of operations and each regional command should have a one star deputy commander who has a deployable HQ than can go, by sea and or air, to any trouble-spot in the world on fairly short notice.

In my model it seems obvious that Pacific and Atlantic Commands are going to be, primarily joint Navy/Air commands, likely, usually, commanded by a Navy rear admiral or an RCAF major general while Western and Eastern Commands will be, mainly, joint Army/Air commands, usually commanded by Army or RCAF major generals, but, if (s)he is the best person available there is no reason why an Army major general could not command Pacific Command and no reason why a Navy rear admiral could not command Western Command, for example. The commanders will have real commands, full of fighting and support forces … things like the current Canadian Forces Intelligence Command, will revert to being staff branches in the national HQ and the units will be part of the joint commands. Similarly, the Chiefs of the Naval, General and Air Staffs will be the professional heads of their services, responsible for things like doctrine, individual training standards and equipment requirements, but they will not be commanders.

[…]

* One of my critics has chided me for using the term “stars” when we, Canadians, don’t put stars on admirals’ and generals’ shoulders, rather they have maple leaves to indicate the level of their rank … fair enough, except that he is, as we used to say, “picking the fly sh!t out of the pepper” because I’m not using “slang”, as he suggests, but rather, I am using that was, when I served, and I understand is, still, common parlance in Canada and amongst our allies, including in the UK and Australia, too.

September 13, 2018

The Canadian Forces are suffering from obesity … in leadership and staff

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Ted Campbell responds to requests to explain what he feels the Canadian Forces should do about our far-too-large military headquarters buttprint:

… let’s consider the command and control (C²) superstructure. I’m going to continue to argue that it is beyond “fat,” it is, now, morbidly obese and that condition actually poses a danger to our national defence. Too many cooks do spoil the broth and Canada has too many admirals and generals […] without enough real ‘work’ to keep them all productively busy; so they send each other e-mails and fabricate crises for their own HQ to solve and, generally, just make a nuisance of themselves. Fewer admiral and generals (and Navy captains and Army and RCAF colonels) will be busier and more productive and less dangerous.

I have a couple of concrete suggestions:

Start by reducing the rank of the Chief of the Defence Staff from four stars (admiral or general) to three stars, vice admiral or lieutenant general. We only have something like 65,000 regular force military members and 25,000 reserve force members. In about 1960 the Canadian Army, alone, had nearly 50,000 regular force members and something like 30,000 in the militia (reserve army) and it was commanded by one lieutenant general. Now, some will argue that times have changed and increased complexity means that higher ranks are needed. I call bullsh!t! The Israeli Defence Forces, today, has over 175,000 full time members and over 400,000 in reserve. Gadi Eizenkot, the Chief of Staff of the IDF holds the rank of Rav Aluf ~ lieutenant general, and he is the only Israeli officer to hold that high a rank. Now, let’s play a little mind game … suppose you are (four star) General Joseph Dunford of the United States Marine Corps, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the most senior officer in the world’s most powerful military; now suppose, also, that your phone is ringing off the hook for some reason and your aide calls in on the intercom and says, “I have (four star) General Vance of Canada on line 1 and (three star) Rav Aluf Eizenkotof Israel on line 2, sir.” Which line does General Dunford pick up? Of course he isn’t impressed by Canadian General Jonathan Vance’s four stars; but he is mightily impressed by the size and power of the force that answers to three star Lieutenant General Eizenkot.

The argument that we need a four star CDS just because everyone else has one is specious … it’s rubbish. The Americans have several four star admirals and generals, they also have over 1¼ million active duty military personnel and 10 aircraft carriers and over 4,000 nuclear weapons. India has has a few four star officers, the Indian Army, with over 1 million regular, professional troops and with almost 1 million reserve soldiers, has one, only one, four star general. Canada does not need any four star officers on a regular basis … our lieutenant generals, vice admirals, rear admirals and so on, including Navy captains and Army colonels may all need generous pay raises but they do not need more gold on their shoulders and sleeves. Canada got its first four star officer back during World War II, when we had over 1 million men and women under arms. The rank returned in 1951, after our main allies, America (in 1947) and Britain (in 1939) established unified Chiefs of Staff committees to coordinate joint operations, when General Charles Foulkes was appointed to the post, which he would hold for almost a decade. Lowering the rank to three stars (vice admiral or lieutenant general) and raising the pay, would set a good example for the rest of the military and, indeed for all of government, in setting senior executive compensation, including perquisites, and status at reasonable levels.

Another thing, which I have mentioned before, is that back in the 1960s, when Defence Minister Paul Hellyer was upsetting every apple cart he and his team decided that the best way to set ranks and pay was to “benchmark” some military jobs with civil service equivalents. Now, in the civil service the appointment of “director” is, usually, the lowest level of executive ~ it is the point where technical expertise meets up with broader government wide responsibility and accountability, ‘ranks’ below that are specialists, ranks above it are, increasingly generalists. Now, anyone who knows much of anything about the military will agree that the first executive level in the Canadian Armed Forces is the captain of a major warship (a frigate, say) or the commanding officer of an Army regiment or battalion or of an Air Force squadron. Those ships and units are commanded by officers in the rank of commander or lieutenant colonel but for some reason, in the mid 1960s, the Hellyer team decided, probably just an error made in haste, that Navy captain and Army colonel and RCAF group captain were the appropriate ranks for directors and some very serious rank inflation was embedded inside the Canadian Armed Forces’ command and control (C²) superstructure … it’s an easy enough problem to fix although it will cause some short term disruption, and it means that the officers’ pay scales probably need to be reformed all the way down to the very bottom.

It has always seemed to me that the hallmark of a great army, of a great defence staff, especially, is a culture of excellence. The ranks of the staff don’t matter much, the staff act of behalf and in the name of the commander they serve. In fact, in a really good staff system the chain of command is always crystal clear because the senior staff are always, without fail, lower in rank (occasionally equal to) than the subordinate commanders. Thus, in an army corps (three or four divisions, perhaps 100,000 soldiers) the corps commander is a lieutenant general (three stars) and the subordinate commanders of divisions and of the corps artillery, are major generals (two star officers); in a proper corps the chiefs of staff of the operations and logistics branches, who control operations on behalf of the corps commander, are one star officers ~ brigadier generals. Ditto in the division (20,000+ soldiers) where the major general is the division commander and brigadier generals are the brigade commanders, the two chiefs of staff (operations, which includes intelligence, and logistics, which includes administration and personnel) are colonels … in each case the subordinate commanders outrank the senior staff officers. But the senior staff are listened to with great regard because they are excellent at their job and because they speak for the superior commander.

August 27, 2018

Upgrading Canada’s LAV III armoured fighting vehicles

Filed under: Cancon, Military, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

From the LAV III Wikipedia page:

Canadian Army LAV III convoy near Khadan, Afghanistan – 2010-01-25
Photo by Staff Sgt. Christine Jones via Wikimedia Commons

The LAV III, originally named the Kodiak by the Canadian Army, is the third generation of the Light Armoured Vehicle (LAV) family of Infantry fighting vehicle built by General Dynamics Land Systems first entering service in 1999. It was developed in Canada and is the primary mechanized infantry vehicle of the Canadian Army and the New Zealand Army. It also forms the basis of the Stryker vehicle used by the US Army and other operators.

[…]

In July 2009, the Canadian Department of National Defence announced that $5 billion would be spent to enhance, replace and repair the army’s armoured vehicles. Part of the spending would be used to replace and repair damaged LAV III’s due to wear and tear from operations in Afghanistan. As much as 33 percent of the army’s light armoured vehicles were out of service. Furthermore, the LAV III’s will be upgraded with improved protection and automotive components. The Canadian Armed Forces has lost over 34 vehicles and 359 were damaged during the mission in Afghanistan. The Canadian army has lost 13 LAV’s and more than 159 were damaged by roadside bombs or enemy fire. Of the $5 billion announced, approximately 20% of it will be used to upgrade LAV III models. The upgrade will extend the LAV III life span to 2035. The remaining $4 billion is to be spent on a “new family of land combat vehicles”. The Department of National Defence considered the purchase of vehicles meant to accompany the Leopard 2 and to sustain the LAV III into combat. […]

On October 21, 2011 the Canadian government announced a $1.1 billion contract to General Dynamics Land Systems to upgrade 550 LAV III combat vehicles. The government said the upgrade is needed to improve protection against mines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which have been the cause of a number of Canadian deaths in Afghanistan. The improvements will also extend the service of the vehicles up to 2035 and will boost troop mobility. The upgrades include a new and more powerful engine, increased armour protection, steering and brake systems. The turret hatches on the LAV III would be made larger and improved fire control, thermal, day and low-light sights, and data displays. The weight of the vehicle would increase from 38,000 pounds (17,000 kg) to 55,000 pounds (25,000 kg). The first of 66 upgraded LAV IIIs was delivered on February 1, 2013. The success of the upgrade program and budget pressures led to the cancellation of the Close Combat Vehicle replacement program later that year.

In September 2012 the original contract valued to at $1.064 billion to upgrade the 550 LAV III’s variants, an infantry section carrier, a command post, an observation post and an engineer vehicle to the LAV 6.0 configuration, was modified. This included an additional $151 million to upgrade 66 LAV III’s to the LAV 6.0 reconnaissance variant or ‘recce’.

On February 10, 2017 General Dynamics Land Systems – Canada of London, Ont. was awarded a $404 million order to work on 141 LAV Operational Requirement Integration Task (LORIT) vehicles. This contract will upgrade the remaining LAV III fleet in the Canadian Army to the LAV 6.0 configuration. This brings the Canadian Army’s Light Armoured Vehicle III Upgrade (LAVUP) program to a total cost of $1.8 billion.

Final completion and delivery of the Canadian Army’s Light Armoured Vehicle III Upgrade (LAVUP) to upgrade the LAV III to the LAV 6.0 is expected to be completed by December 2019.

Canadian combat engineers in light armoured vehicules cross the river on a German floating bridge in Tancos, Portugal, during JOINTEX 15 as part of NATO’s exercise TRIDENT JUNCTURE 15 on November 2, 2015.
Photo by Sgt Sebastien Frechette via Wikimedia Commons

Ken Pole has more on the program at Canadian Army Today:

The LAV UP, also known as LAV 6.0, project is expected to push their operational life to 2035.

That effectively was set in motion in November 2008 when the Department of National Defence (DND) confirmed that it wanted to combine three programs into one general set of upgrades to all armoured vehicles. That led to a $1.064-billion contract award to GDLSC in October 2011 to modernize 550 LAV IIIs to enhance not only their survivability, but also their mobility and lethality.

Under the contract, 409 vehicles were to receive turret and chassis upgrades while 141 LAV Operational Requirement Integration Task (LORIT) variants were scheduled to receive only the turret upgrade. A contract amendment in February 2017 added $404 million to upgrade the LORIT chassis as well.

Now the focus within the Directorate of Land Requirements (DLR) is on the Light Armoured Vehicle Specialist Variant Enhancements (LAV SVE). Major Philippe Masse, the project director, brings operational chops from Afghanistan, although he’s quick to say that he’s had a lot to learn about the vehicles since he was assigned. He’s taken a clean-sheet approach, conducting extensive discussions with combat engineers, artillery officers, and gunners.

Masse’s career includes nine months as commander of a light infantry platoon tasked with force protection of the Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team and later as second-in-command of the Royal 22nd Regiment battlegroup’s parachute company for its final combat rotation on Operation Athena.

The LAV III infantry carrier and command post variants are the two largest elements of the fleet and are often tasked additional roles. However, the two specialist variants, the Engineer and the Observation Post Vehicle, used by Artillery’s forward detachments, will be “enhanced” under this project.

[…]

There is extra pressure on the LAV SVE package because it was specifically identified in the Strong, Secure, Engaged policy document. “We’re on track; the options are getting a lot of priority,” Masse said. “We’re already engaged with General Dynamics Land Systems because they basically own the intellectual property of the fleet…. When you want to integrate new stuff, they’re among the first phone calls you have to make.”

While integration of a complex system is always a challenge, one of the team’s considerations will also be ease of maintenance, especially for soldiers in the field. “We’re looking to align that, if possible, with existing in-service support contracts that we already [have],” he said. “The bottom line for us is reliability.”

May 28, 2018

Leopard tanks in Afghanistan – “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend”

Filed under: Cancon, History, Middle East, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

There’s a story that’s been told for more than a decade and — given the Canadian government’s legendary unwillingness to spend money on the military — widely believed. David Pugliese does his best to debunk it here:

Canadian Leopard 1A3 (Leopard C1) at the Bovington Tank Museum.
Photo by Chris Parfeniuk, via Flickr.

As stories go it’s a pretty good one.

The Canadian Army was up against a tough enemy – the Taliban – in Afghanistan. Commanders called for Leopard tanks to join the battle but those armored vehicles had been mothballed and made into monuments.

So the ever resourceful Canadian Army crews jumped in the Leopard tanks mounted on concrete pads outside bases as monuments and drove them off those platforms, making sure they were shipped to their comrades in Afghanistan.

This myth has been around since 2007 and has once again resurfaced in a new book by retired Maj.-Gen. David Fraser about Operation Medusa.

Fraser also repeated the story in a recent CBC interview with Anna-Maria Tremonti, noting that he knew of at least one Leopard tank pulled off its concrete pad and brought back to serviceability and then shipped to Afghanistan.

In the 2008 book Kandahar Tour by Lee Windsor, David Charters and Brent Wilson the story gets even better. The tanks were driven off the concrete pads and then sent to Afghanistan, according to those authors.

A similar claim is made at the museum devoted to telling the story of the “Essex Regiment (Tank).” On its website the museum claims multiple numbers of Canadian Leopard tanks were taken from monuments (“A mad scramble to retrieve tanks from monuments and prepare them for war,” it claims).

Again, a great story.

But the Canadian Army says it never happened.

The Army points out that Leopard tanks, positioned on the concrete pads as monuments, had already been demilitarized so no one was driving them anywhere.

So what did happen?

May 19, 2018

QotD: Operation “keeping up appearances”

Filed under: Cancon, History, Military, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

It’s hard to blame the Army, and even if it wasn’t not all of even most of the blame can be laid at the Army’s doorstep.

Government, both Conservative and Liberal kept repeating Pierre Trudeau’s lie that “we’re here and we’re doing our full, fair and agreed upon share.” Kudos to Prime Minister Mulroney who, when faced with irrefutable and embarrassingly public evidence that we simply could not deploy and sustain two small brigades in war, cancelled the North Norway brigade commitment and pulled the Germany-based brigade back to Canada.

canadian-defence-spending-ted-campbell

This graph, which is only rough, being drawn from three different sources and “rounded” for ease of plotting, shows, essentially, what happened between 1964 (Prime Minister Pearson) and 2014 Prime Minister Harper). As you can see defence spending as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product ~ a fair measure of our national, political commitment to our defence of Canada and of our allies and neighbours, has declined steadily even though, generally, with one “blip” in the Chrétien era, when he was trying to wrestle with the deficit, the actual dollars spent on defence have grown in number. What it really shows is that our GDP grew a lot in the past 50 years ~ it’s now almost $2.5 Trillion (that’s $2,500,000,000,000.00) ~ but our political willingness (or appreciation of the necessity) to spend 2% of GDP, as we did in about 1970s and as we have, sort of, agreed (in NATO) do aspire to do again, has not kept pace with our increasing prosperity. In fact, while the dollars spend on defence have doubled, in 50 years, the % of GDP spent of defence has fallen to ⅓ of its 1964 level. But ministers’ desires to “talk good fight” remain at historically high levels and even as resources shrink admirals and generals are told to “keep up appearances”. That, keeping up appearances, was what the admirals and generals wanted to do … no one really wanted to go into various international military fora and say “as our resources decline we’re going to have to do less,” instead they went out and said “we’re learning new ways to do more with less,” which is, of course, utter nonsense. Meanwhile more and more quite senior officers came back from tours of duty in the USA and brought with them some very American ideas about organization and management. Now American organizational models might work very well for armies with 1,000,000+ soldiers, or even for those with 495,000, like South Korea’s perhaps, even for those with 100,000+ like the French army, but they are not always or even often suitable for an army with 20,000± regulars and 25,000± reservists. The new organizations might make us look bigger, on paper, but they hide the fact the army has been hollowed out since 1970.

The Army of 1964, the one that consumed its fair share of the 3% of GDP that Canada spent on defence had four brigades, the largest had about 6,500 soldiers in it, the smaller ones had about 5,000 each. That was more men and women in combat units than we have in the entire, top heavy, Canadian Army today in total. But we still have three of the four brigades, we have nine instead of 13 battalions of infantry and three instead of four regiments of artillery … but how? Simple: it’s the Potemkin village, again, battalions that should have 950 soldiers have 500 … if their lucky. In fact there are no combat ready infantry battalions. Any battalion being readied for operations must be reinforced from other infantry battalions … we have nine battalion commanders and nine regimental sergeants major and so on but we only have enough soldiers in rifle platoons to staff five battalions … maybe only four if the battalions are properly equipped with mortars and heavy assault weapons. Why? Because no one, not ministers, not senior civil servants and not the generals want to “cut his coat according to his cloth.”

Ted Campbell, “A Canadian Potemkin Village”, Ted Campbell’s Point of View, 2016-09-15.

April 15, 2018

Canada’s military – the difference between fighting wars in the 20th Century and fighting wars today

Filed under: Cancon, History, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In a post from earlier this week about defence spending priorities for the Canadian military, Ted Campbell looks at how wars changed between the first half of the 20th century and the post-Cold War situation we face today:

Is the 2% goal wrong?

No … it’s a pretty sensible level of defence spending for countries that really want to maintain a world at peace, as opposed to those, like Canada and many of its allies, that just want to hope for peace. But 2% is not a magic bullet … 1.5% of GDP, spent carefully, will do more than 2% spent as a job creation slush fund. But spending too little, cutting defence spending again and again and again just because it is unpopular can leave a country with what I have described as a Potemkin Village, a military that is more show than force.

The advent of a nuclear face-off circa 1950 changed the strategic calculus for the rest of the 20th century. We suddenly had the “come as you are war” which meant having regular, professional forces in being and not being able to rely upon time and space to give us time, as we had in past wars, to mobilize our reserves. We would do well, 101 years after the battle of Vimy Ridge, to recall that it, in April 1917, was the first time since war was declared (in the summer of 1914) that the full Canadian Corps, of four infantry divisions, was in battle as a corps ~ it took us over 30 months to get from a tiny standing army backed by small but eager reserves to a full corps composed of about 100,000 of the Canadians who served overseas during that war. We went to war again in the late summer of 1939 and it was not until the summer of 1943, over 40 months later, that we had a small corps, of only two divisions and an independent armoured brigade, in battle, in Italy. It takes a long time to mobilize and equip and train an army. The operational doctrine of the long and expensive cold war said that we could no longer have that time.

It is not clear that we must or even should still have small reserves and a relatively larger permanent force. Perhaps the time has come to re-examine the assumptions that underlie our force structure ideas. Maybe we need 150,000 uniformed people but, maybe, the split should be 50/50 or 75,000 full time and 75,000 part time sailors, soldiers and air force members. Maybe a country like Canada, with a population that will, in 2050, approach 40 million, should have a larger force: say 75,000 full time and even 150,000 part time military members … maybe our reserve force “regiments’ should have 500 or 750 soldiers and be required to “generate” a trained company (125 soldiers) rather than having only 150 soldiers and being hard pressed to “generate” a platoon of only 30 soldiers. I have my own ideas, but someone who has the necessary information at their disposal needs to look ahead at our strategic situation and develop a force model and a sane budget for 2050. That should be a job for skilled civil servants in the defence policy staff.

Our strategic priorities for the next 30 years or more need to be:

  1. Containing and reducing threats to global peace and security by helping to maintain alliances like NATO and groupings like AUSCANNZUKUS and supporting global peacemaking and peacekeeping efforts, even the generally worthless United Nations efforts;
  2. Confronting current threats to peace ~ like Russia ~ and deterring (by matching the growth in military power of) potential future threats ~ like China;
  3. Cooperating with the USA in the protection of North America; and
  4. Securing the land we claim as our own, the waters contiguous to it and the airspace over both.

When we work out the costs, of people, above all, but also of ships, tanks, guns and aircraft, and of ammunition, food and fuel and everything else, of doing those four things ~ and of doing them well enough ~ then we will know what what sort of forces we need and how much we must budget to build and maintain them. But no matter what the size and what the cost, I guarantee that people will still be the biggest single expense if we keep our priorities straight: and the overarching priority is that people cost more than machines because they matter more than machines.

February 8, 2018

Canada wants to sell Leopard 1 Tanks!

Filed under: Cancon, Military, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Matsimus
Published on 5 Feb 2018

Captain Scott Franklin, with the office of the Director Land Requirements, pointed out in a Jan. 23 article on the Army’s website that with the delivery of the new Leopard 2 Tank Mobility Implements in the fall of 2017, the last of the Army’s Leopard 1 tanks have been parked for good.

So what happens with those tanks?

Department of National Defence spokesman Daniel Le Bouthillier explained to what might happen with the surplus Leopard 1s:

“The Department of National Defence has a formal process for disposing of surplus Canadian Armed Forces equipment. Once DND and the CAF has declared equipment surplus, a disposal plan is written that describes the preparatory steps that are to be performed, and describes the strategies for its removal from the DND system of record. The disposal plan assesses options, including retention, for alternate use within DND and the CAF (e.g. for training or display purposes), transfer to another Federal Government organization, sale, donation, or conversion to waste.

In the case of the Leopard 1 family of vehicles, there are 52 remaining Leopard 1C2 Main Battle Tanks, and 5 Leopard 1 Armoured Engineering Vehicles remaining. They will remain in place until a disposal mechanism is selected. They are currently distributed in Edmonton, Alberta; Montreal, Quebec; and Gagetown, New Brunswick. The first option would be to sell the tanks. Any revenue generating option for the government is encouraged. The tanks were listed for sale since 31 Aug 2015. While there is some interest currently, there are no firm buyers. The sale is open to approved foreign nations or approved Canadian industry. The second option is to use the tanks for alternative use (hard targets, monuments/artefacts). If tanks cannot be sold, alternative applications will be sought that may bring value to the government.

The last option would be to destroy the tanks. NO!

November 29, 2017

Something rotten at the Royal Military College of Canada

Filed under: Cancon, Education, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Ted Campbell discusses the concerns about the Royal Military College (RMC) in the latest Auditor General’s report:

Aerial view of the main RMC campus in Kingston, Ontario.
Photo from Ted Campbell’s Point of View

As you can well imagine, despite the almost zero interest in government and the media ~ reflecting the fact that taxpayers neither know much nor care even a tiny bit about the military, unless there’s a scandal with sexual overtones ~ this is a hot topic amongst many of my friends. Reactions range from:

  • Hey, RMC is doing just fine, it is meeting its assigned mission ~ “The mission of the Royal Military College of Canada (RMC) is to produce officers with the mental, physical and linguistic capabilities and the ethical foundation required to lead with distinction in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF)” ~ and who cares if it costs a bit more than, say, getting a tainted BA from Laurier?

    • … through to …

  • Burn. It. To. The. Ground.

Most of my military friends and acquaintances agree, broadly, with the Auditor General:

  • The Royal Military College is a pretty good university that produces well educated men and women, most of whom are, perhaps, somewhat less than adequately prepared for further military training; but

    • The Royal Military College is notably weaker than in years (decades) past and weaker than it should be, today, at producing young men and women who are physically fit, even tough, who have high ethical standards and who display an acceptable level of leadership skill and ability.

So, why, one might ask, is The Royal Military College an academically fine college but not so good at the military stuff?

Friends and acquaintances who are reasonable closely connected to RMC (current and former academic and military staff and/or officers in the parts of the HQ that have responsibility for RMC) suggest that the academic staff (currently led by the College Principal, Dr. H.J. (Harry) Kowal, CD, rmc, BEng, MSAe, MA(SS), MDS, PhD, PEng, BGen (Ret’d)) has a better focus on what it is doing and why it is doing it than does the military staff (currently led by the Commandant, Brigadier General Sébastien Bouchard, an Army officer from one of the engineering branches). Should BrigadierGeneral Bouchard be fired and replaced with someone better? No, the problem is not his leadership ability, it is that Dr. Kowal’s mission is clearer, simpler and easier to accomplish than is General Bouchard’s. In theory the reverse ought to be true, but …

Most of my friends and acquaintances who are “in the know” agree that RMC’s biggest problem is that the military, proper, has far, far too little say in who gets in and once in students are not allowed to fail out for fitness (athletic), ethical or leadership deficiencies.

A while ago a friend related a story (it’s actually three or four stories, all put together) about one of the courses at the College ~ it was about a mid-term exam: one student was caught cheating, one simply failed to even write the exam and a third had to be given a second chance because (s)he had a learning disability. “Wait!” I exclaimed, “How in hell did someone with a learning disability get into RMC in the first place? How in hell will someone with a learning disability ever stand watch on the bridge of a ship, command a troop of tanks in battle or fly an airplane?” “Not to worry,” my friend said, “(s)he will never get that far … but (s)he will graduate.” He went on to explain that no one in “official Ottawa” is wiling to enforce standards any more. No one believes that a person with a learning disability severe enough to require special attention like an exam re-write can ever do any useful job as an officer in the CF, but no one has the courage to say, up front, “sorry, Margaret or Mike, but you are not qualified to study at RMC because we, the military, have our own, valid, operationally required standards and you don’t meet them.” In the 21st century we all know that every snowflake is special and every special snowflake will go to some human rights tribunal if the military ties to enforce reasonable, legitimate standards, and the admirals and generals and bureaucrats and politicians are far more afraid of a human rights story in the media than they are of North Korean missiles.

“But,” I said, “what about the one who cheated and the one who just ditched the exam?” They, I suggested, must, surely, have been given the old “heave-ho.” “Nope,” my friend answered, “the exam was just declared optional ~ it will count as, say, 15% of the final course mark so the young person who ditched it will still, most likely, graduate and the cadet who cheated was given a bureaucratic rap on the knuckles because no one in the military chain had the balls to fail him/her.” Failing someone, he said, is very, very difficult because even the military has adapted to a social system in which everyone must pass everything … only, he said, in a few (hard science and engineering) departments is there some doubt about everyone passing everything.

November 28, 2017

The Canadian Army’s Leopard tanks

Filed under: Cancon, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

In a discussion on Facebook the other day, I’d mistakenly stated that the Canadian Army had initially sent the “new” Leopard 2 tanks leased from Germany (20 refurbished Leopard 2A6Ms) to Afghanistan to support the Kandahar mission. In fact, as a lengthy article linked by John Donovan pointed out, our poor zipperheads had been operating non-air-conditioned Leopard 1 tanks until the government made arrangements with some of our NATO allies to get modern MBTs into the combat zone. I suspect the reason for my confusion was that the old Leopard 1 tanks were designated as “C2” by the army and I’d confused that with the more general “Leopard 2” name for the modern tank. This article in Defence Industry Daily sets out the details:

Leopard 2A6M in Afghanistan

A number of options for renewing Canada’s tank capability were considered, ranging from refurbishment, to surplus, to new. Delivery time was of the essence, and DND’s examination determined that the cost of any new vehicles involved paying up to 3 times as much as buying the same basic tank models on the surplus heavy tank market. New medium tank options like the 32-tonne CV90-120 light tank also offered full tracked mobility and similar firepower at less cost, but Canada had learned that heavier weight was often a tactical plus in theater, and decided that they needed vehicles sooner rather than later.

Accordingly, the Canadian government approached 6 allied nations regarding surplus main battle tank sales, and received proposals from 3 of them. It then went ahead and made 2 purchases, plus another 2 follow-on buys.

Their tank choice is a modern mainstay for many countries. Thanks in part to the great DeutschePanzerSchlussverkauf (German Panzer fire sale), the Leopard 2 and its variants external link have now been bought by Germany, Austria, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Finland, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Singapore, Switzerland, Sweden, and Turkey.

Canada’s 1st step was a lease, in order to get modern, air-conditioned tanks to the front lines immediately. Germany won that order, and 20 German Leopard 2A6M mine-protected tanks were delivered by the summer of 2007 to replace existing Leopard 1A5/C2 tanks in Afghanistan. The new tanks’ electric turret systems produce less heat than the C2s did, and air conditioning was added to the new German tanks in theater. This was a relief to Canadian tank crews, who had needed protective suites in the 140F/ 60C interiors of their Leopard 1A5 tanks.

The 2A6M is the most modern serving Leopard variant, though KMW had proposed a “Leopard 2 Peace Support Operations” variant with improved protection, and integrated combat engineering capabilities. By the time modifications were finished, the Leopard 2A6 CAN turned out to fall somewhere between the conventional 2A6M and the PSO. Canada actually ended up keeping the leased and modified German tanks, and sending 20 Leopard 2A6Ms from its follow-on purchases back to Germany.

The follow-on purchases of 127 tanks were won by 3 countries. The biggest order for 100 tanks went to the Dutch, who are serving under NATO ISAF beside Canadian forces in southern Afghanistan. Training for 5 years and initial spares will also be provided. Cooperation between these nations is not new. Dutch PzH-2000 mobile howitzers have already proven very helpful during Operation Medusa external link, and so had their CH-47 Chinook medium-heavy helicopters – some of which were bought as surplus from the Canadians in the 1980s. The cycle continues. And so it goes.

In the aftermath of their sales to Norway, Denmark, and now Canada, The Dutch were left with 110 Leopard 2A6-NL tanks in their arsenal. Other sales dropped that total further, and on On April 8/11, the Dutch Ministry of Defense announced that the last tank unit was to be dissolved and all remaining Leopard tanks sold.

The additional Leopard 2 buys totaled 27 tanks/ hulls. First, another 15 Leopard 2A4s were bought from Germany, to be used for spare parts. This hadn’t been contemplated in the initial plan, but it was necessary. The initial set of 20 leased German Leopard 2A6Ms were experiencing readiness problems, as tanks were cannibalized in order to keep others running. A 2010 buy from Switzerland added 12 stripped Pz 87s (Leopard 2A4 variants) for conversion to specialty vehicles, under Canada’s Force Mobility Enhancement (FME) program.

The earlier Leopard 1 tanks had been purchased in the late 1970s (very much against the preferences of the government of the day) to replace the late 1940s vintage Centurion tanks the Canadian Army had been operating:

Canadian Leopard 1A3 (Leopard C1) at the Bovington Tank Museum.
Photo by Chris Parfeniuk, via Flickr.

When 4 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group was moved from Westphalia to Lahr on the Rhine frontier with France, some policy-makers apparently sought to do away with Canada’s tanks entirely.

For some years, the brigade continued to use their Centurion tanks, an excellent tank in its day but one that could not be used on long road moves. In 1975, the Canadian Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau, visited Germany to ask the Chancellor for his support for getting Canada special trade status with the European Common Market. He was told to come back to discuss the matter once Canada had replaced its antiquated tanks.

The contract for the Leopard tank acquisition followed quickly. Consideration had been given to totally rebuilding the Centurions with new power pack as the Israeli army has done with their Centurions. Before the order could be delivered Canada negotiated a deal with the German Government to lease 35 Leopard 1A2’s to train their crews on the new tanks.

The upgrade from the initial Leopard C1 to the C2 model began in 1996:

Late in 1996 it was announced that the Canadian Forces were to carry out a major update on their fleet of Leopard C1 tanks (The C1 was the equivalent of the Leopard 1A3), which involved the replacement of the existing turret with the complete turret of the German Leopard 1A5. The Leopard 1A5 turret features the STN ATLAS Elektronik EMES-18 computerized fire-control system which incorporates a Carl Zeiss thermal imager.

The 105mm L7 rifled guns in the Leopard 1A5 turrets were not retained but were replaced with Canadian Leopard C1 original 105mm guns, the L7A1. The ballistic computers were reprogrammed to match 105 mm Canadian ammunition.

The turret rebuild was carried out in Germany and commenced in June 1997 with the first turret being shipped to Canada in December 1997. GLS refurbished the turret, removed the 105 mm gun, modified the turret where required, including the installation of the new radios ordered under the Tactical Command, Control and Communications System project.

The turrets were shipped to Canada where a subcontractor installed the 105 mm L7A1 barrel and mounted the turret on the existing chassis for final delivery to the Canadian Forces. It was expected that about six turrets a month would be upgraded with each turret taking six months to upgrade. The program was completed by late 2001.

November 22, 2017

The Canadian version of the Sterling submachine gun

Filed under: Cancon, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The Canadian army kept the Sten as their standard SMG for several years after the war, but eventually had to come up with a replacement weapon. The selection committee eventually settled on Sterling SMG, which the British army had been using, with a few modifications. Historical Firearms has the details:

…in November 1956, the first Anglo-Canadian Submachine Gun Steering Committee meeting was held. The Canadians liked the Sterling and requested a manufacturing license. They did, however, wish to make some changes to the weapon before they adopted it.
These changes included a small bayonet boss and redesigned lug reinforcement for the L1A1 rifle bayonet, a simpler trigger mechanism designed by Sterling engineer Les Ruffell, a height adjustable front sight taken from the L1A1, an adjustable rear sight with wider sight protectors. In early 1957, these changes were encapsulated in a sample model assembled from Fazakerly-made L2A3s, these were re-designated the L2A4. Later changes were also made to simplify the Canadian Sterling’s end cap and a squarer brass deflector and hand stop.

The primary internal departures from Patchett’s original design were the decision to have a single rather than double return spring and to use a non-helically grooved bolt. Instead using an improved Sten breech block, this had a number of advantages including being able to use existing tooling, avoiding paying royalties for Patchett’s bolt and simplifying production. Compared to the Sterling-made guns the C1 was certainly simpler using stampings and spot-welding.

However, the C1 retained a surprising level of parts commonality with many parts interchangeable between both Canadian and British weapons. This commonality included magazines, however, the Canadians also simplified the magazine’s design. They dispensed with Patchett’s roller system and designed their own magazine which held 30, rather than 34 rounds, but could be used in all Sterling-pattern guns.

Two experimental suppressed C1s were made by Long Branch to replace the Sten MkII(s) and the MkVI, but the Sterling-Patchett L34A1/Mk5 was adopted instead. Canada purchased at least 5 L34A1s.

The Long Branch Arsenal was just west of Toronto along Lakeshore Road in what is now Mississauga (my cadet hall was adjacent to the former factory site):

I didn’t realize the site had been active that late … I’d assumed it was demolished shortly after the Korean War.

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