Quotulatiousness

March 31, 2022

Canada’s F-35 procurement process — “Dysfunctional, but, like, a masterpiece of dysfunction.”

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

In The Line, Matt Gurney reveals the embarrassing secret of his life: he has “a favourite Canadian military procurement fiasco”. He’s quite right that there’s a distressingly wide variety of procurement cock-ups to choose from since the 1960s, but in his opinion the F-35 saga is the best:

“F-35 Lightning II completes Edwards testing” by MultiplyLeadership is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Having a favourite Canadian military procurement fiasco feels perverse, in a way. It’s like having a favourite gruesome sports injury. Procurement fiascos are bad. We want fewer of them. There’s nothing to be celebrated when yet another one barfs all over the national rug. And yet I find myself indulging a bizarre fondness for a mostly overlooked low point in our long, embarrassing journey to this week’s re-decision to buy a fleet of F-35 fighter jets for the Royal Canadian Air Force. As bad as the low point was — and it was really bad — it also so perfectly summed up our utterly manifest dysfunction that I’ve come to almost admire it. It’s awful, but it’s a pure form of awful. Dysfunctional, but, like, a masterpiece of dysfunction. You couldn’t ask for a better example of what’s wrong with us.

[…]

That wasn’t the original plan; the Liberals first proposed buying 18 new F-18 SuperHornets, the more advanced American successor to the original F-18. That idea fell through due to a trade spat between Canadian darling Bombardier and Boeing, the SuperHornet manufacturer. This was the point of no return: the Boeing dispute was another opportunity for the Liberals to sigh, pop a few Tums and then just do the right thing and proceed with the full replacement as quickly as possible.

They did not. And this, dear readers, is where this embarrassing chapter of our already pathetic history of military procurement reached maximum absurdity.

With our CF-18 fleet at a state of exhaustion, and Boeing in Trudeau’s dog house, instead of actually replacing our old, exhausted jets with new jets, we just gave the air force enough old, exhausted Australian jets so that the RCAF could cobble enough workable jets and spare parts together to allow the Liberals to further delay any decision on a real replacement program.

When you write a lot about military procurement, as I certainly have, you can’t help but grow a bit (!) jaded and cynical. Even by the standards of my appallingly lowered expectations, though, this was an outrageous decision. As I said above, it’s so bad, so cynical, so crassly political, that it has perversely become something I almost admire, in a twisted way. It’s an almost too-brutal-to-be-believed example of politicians dodging accountability and leadership like Keanu bobbing and weaving out of the path of CGI bullets. Every dollar and hour of time we put into scooping up Australia’s leftover jets — they were unneeded because Australia was competent enough to procure more advanced SuperHornets and, ahem, F-35s — was money and time spent not to improve the readiness and capabilities of the Canadian Armed Forces, but to permit the Liberals to avoid acknowledging they’d made a dumb campaign promise.

Stephen Harper failed the Canadian Armed Forces and Canada generally by not getting the ball rolling on a replacement during his majority term. This was a major failure by the Conservatives that they get all awkward and squirmy about when you bring up, but we should bring it up. The CPC botched this, badly, and should feel shame. Justin Trudeau then repeated that failure, and then took it up a level. In this race to the bottom, where no one looks good, Trudeau “wins” by simple virtue of snapping up used jets — the last of which only arrived last spring! — to buy his government time to do absolutely nothing.

March 30, 2022

The RCAF’s long, sad F-35 story

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

In The Line, Mitch Heimpel tries (without either laughing or crying) to tell the story of how the Canadian government finally got around to admitting they should have bought the F-35 fourteen years ago (when the RCAF told them it was the best fit for our national requirements):

If you’re looking for a simple meta-explanation for all of us, it would be this: Canadian politicians refuse to tell the public one simple truth — military procurement is expensive. There isn’t an inexpensive version of this. That doesn’t mean we should accept any and all costs just because it’s going to be expensive. It does mean that politicians have to stop trying to sell us on there being an inexpensive, or perfect, version of this. There is no MacGyver version of military procurement. No amount of rubber bands and paper clips replaces jet engines and submarines, no matter how many times we pretend it will. Indeed, the longer you delay, the more it’ll cost — the weapons generally get more expensive, and you end up spending more money to wring every last bit of use out of what equipment you already have, instead of replacing it in an efficient, orderly way.

So, let’s recap: We are, in fact, so bad at procurement that we ran a process for years, and then cancelled it. And then pledged not to buy the jets we’d originally pleged to buy. We then bought seven old Australian F-18s so we could keep our elderly and dwindling CF-18 fleet from experiencing a “capability gap” caused mostly by not just buying the F-35 in the first place. Then, almost 12 years after announcing we were going to buy the F-35, after all the drama above, we’ve announced we’ll buy the F-35, after all. Eighty eight of them, in fact. So there’s that, I guess.

In so many ways, the F-35 saga is another symbol of seven years of Trudeau governance. In 2015, the Liberals could not have been more clear in their campaign platform, which included a whole section titled “We will not buy the F-35 stealth bomber-fighter.”

What were Ministers Anand and Tassi out saying when the F-35 announcement was made this week? “Best plane” and “best price.” Which was true in 2008 when we were first told it was the only fighter that met our needs. It was still true when the Harper government blinked in 2012, and still true when Justin Trudeau was accusing the government of “whipping out” our CF-18s while on the opposition benches in 2014. Remained true in 2015 when the Liberals campaigned against it, too, and every year since.

We have no reason to believe that what is supposed to be a $19-billion announcement for 88 planes to begin delivery in 2025 will actually end up being any of those things. Don’t be surprised if we spend more money to get fewer jets at a later date. But we are now well past the point of being able to blame anyone other than ourselves for cost overruns or late deliveries. The Canadian government failed the Royal Canadian Air Force in this procurement. That is beyond dispute. These guys need the planes. They have for years.

Let’s hope we’ve at least been sufficiently embarrassed by this experience to be more serious when we have to talk about submarines, which is now, come to think of it.

But I doubt it.

March 25, 2022

Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow; Footage from its first flight

Filed under: Cancon, History, Military, Technology, Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Polyus Studios
Published 7 Jul 2020

Full documentary is still in development, enjoy the teaser!
(more…)

February 27, 2022

Canada couldn’t intervene in a modern war even if we wanted to

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

In The Line, Matt Gurney considers the state of the Canadian Armed Forces, which have been systematically starved of resources since, oh, 1968 (we started cashing in the “peace dividend” long before there was one):

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

We assumed that we’d never need the heavy, nasty stuff — history had ended. We cut our budgets and our force levels again and again, until many of our critical capabilities really exist on paper only. Canada’s fighter jet fleet of alarmingly elderly CF-18s is large enough to technically meet the requirements of keeping a few jets on alert for NORAD missions, intercepting the odd plane near our airspace, and showing the flag on NATO missions. We can even hurl some bombs on enemy groups that are annoying us, as we did with the Islamic State, because, well, they can’t shoot back. Our navy is much the same: we have a fleet large and capable enough to more-or-less patrol parts of our own coast and contribute to the odd international patrol mission abroad, because doing so buys us some diplomatic credibility — it is table stakes for being a sorta-paid-up member of the Western alliance. Our army has enough men and equipment to help out with domestic missions at home or to contribute in small missions to broader coalition efforts, though it’s a struggle to do both at the same time. That’s basically all we assumed we’d need, and we “rationalized” our budget and capabilities accordingly.

Again, yes, this made sense for a time. But it was obvious a decade or so ago — around when Obama was mocking Romney — that China was a power on the rise. Russia invaded Ukraine the first time in 2014. That was another wakeup call we ignored. For the last decade, certainly for the last five years, we’ve indulged in a kind of make-believe defence policy planning, where we were enthralled to an increasingly obsolete and dangerous post-Cold War mindset that was as narrow and misguided as the “Cold War thinking” the soft-power advocates of the post-1991 era disdained among the old guard.

We defence hawk weirdos who sweated blood with each abandoned capability were right, though. History wasn’t over. We hadn’t seen the end of great power war, or at least the real danger of it. The world is a dangerous place. This might be a surprise in the corridors of power in Ottawa, but it’s not like they weren’t warned. I’ve got 15 years of National Post bylines to prove it.

We are missing critical capabilities that our troops would need — need — in order to not get wiped out in a conflict with a relatively modern opponent. The Canadian Army has very good armoured vehicles for infantry. That’s good! Our LAVs are genuinely excellent. But we don’t have self-propelled artillery. We have only a few dozen tanks, and very little anti-tank missile capability (anti-tank missiles can be fired by infantry on foot or from vehicles; we don’t have a ton of missiles to go around in any case). Recruitment has lagged, and we are notoriously slow at actually processing an applicant into service. Perhaps most alarmingly in the current context, the Canadian military has basically zero air defence capability. If under air attack by helicopters, attack aircraft or, increasingly, drones, our guys could fire wildly into the air and hope to get lucky. That’s about it.

It’s a classic Canadian procurement story, of course, and perfectly emblematic of the bigger problem. We used to have mobile air defence. We didn’t have a ton, but we had 36 M113 armoured vehicles — an older vehicle, but a proven workhorse — that came armed with eight missiles that could be used against attacking air threats or tanks (given our paltry anti-tank capability, that’s two birds with one stone!). We procured the “ADATS” vehicles right at the end of the Cold War, never ended up needing them on any of our missions during the 1990s and early 2000s, and scrapped them without replacement in 2012, because Stephen Harper had a budget to balance and didn’t want to spend a bunch of bucks either modernizing the system or buying something new. We realized by 2019 that that was a bad idea, and began a procurement process to replace them, and the earliest we could expect delivery is … the end of this decade.

So for now, we try to buddy up with allies that have anti-air defences, or expect our troops in the field to put their faith in the Lord and mediocre Russian targeting systems. But even if we rush a procurement of some air-defence systems, that would just plug one gap among many. Why the hell haven’t we picked a fighter jet by now? Oh, yeah: Because no leader wants to spend the money and assumed we’d never need them, anyway. Oops! Why haven’t we gotten the new navy ships under construction, or begun work on the next-generation submarines? Huh, that’s weird — it’s the same reason: we’re cheap and assumed we wouldn’t need them, so flaking out wasn’t risky. Why aren’t we pushing ahead with NORAD radar modernization? Why was buying trucks such an ordeal? Why are we still incapable of buying a new 9mm pistol? Same, same and same.

For the politicians, military spending is a boring and distracting waste of money they’d rather spend on something they think voters would like. This is a mindset that is deeply set in among Canadian politicians, and it applies basically evenly across Liberals and Conservatives alike (the others are even worse). There has been a massive failure of imagination across not just our political class, but our society more generally. We have dropped the ball, and are now at the mercy of events.

February 4, 2022

Proposed Advanced Variants of the Avro Canada CF-100 Canuck

Filed under: Cancon, History, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Polyus Studios
Published 20 Nov 2018

Don’t forget to like the video and subscribe to my channel!
Support me on Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/polyusstudios

This video covers some of the advanced variants that were proposed for to enhance the capabilities of the CF-100 Canuck. It covers both weapon systems and a few airframe redesigns.

0:00 Introduction
0:55 Velvet Glove and Sparrow 2 missiles
1:36 Falcon and Sidewinder missiles
2:22 Eagle missile
2:53 Genie nuclear rocket
3:18 Engine testing
3:50 Canuck Mk10
4:40 VTOL Canuck
6:03 Conclusion

Music:
Denmark – Portland Cello Project

#CF100 #CanadianAerospace #PolyusStudios

October 7, 2021

Understatement alert – “… many Canadians are less than confident in our prime minister’s ability to defend Canadian interests when up against Xi Jinping”

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

In The Line, Jaclyn Victor discusses Canada’s longstanding military freeloading habits and how Chinese interest in the Arctic are only the latest concerns pushing the government to start taking national sovereignty seriously:

Arctic Offshore Patrol Ship HMCS Harry DeWolf shortly after launch in 2018. The ship was commissioned into the Royal Canadian Navy in June, 2021.

If the West has learned anything about China in recent years, it’s that its leaders will stop at nothing to advance their interests, and will often do so in unpredictable ways. For Canada, the most obvious lesson here was the brazen hostage diplomacy that saw “the two Michaels”, Kovrig and Spavor, imprisoned for nearly three years in retaliation for Canada’s detention of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou. But there’s another area in which China is flexing its muscles that is much closer to home: the Arctic.

Despite being nearly 1,500 kms from the Arctic Circle, China claims to be a “near-Arctic” state. This alone might not be concerning if it weren’t also for China’s efforts to increase its Arctic presence while simultaneously undermining that of legitimate Arctic states. Although Canada staunchly claims to have sovereignty over the Northwest Passage, China hasn’t accepted this, yet has (concerningly) demonstrated an increased interest in the Arctic. Canada’s periodic military exercises and lack of assertion in the North are clearly not effective in dissuading Chinese interest in the region. As the world recognizes the importance of the Arctic we must do more if we want to maintain our influence.

From claims that Trudeau has personal ties to the Chinese Communist Party to the general belief that he has no backbone in Chinese foreign policy matters, it is clear that many Canadians are less than confident in our prime minister’s ability to defend Canadian interests when up against Xi Jinping. Perhaps the most relevant example of this is the release of the Two Michaels after nearly three years in Chinese captivity — a momentous occasion that filled many Canadians with a renewed hope — but only happened thanks to support from President Biden. And what about China’s alleged election interference, which was aimed at supporting the Trudeau Liberals at the expense of the more hawkish Erin O’Toole? Simply put, China wouldn’t want Trudeau in power if they thought he’d put a damper on their interests.

Our allies, unfortunately, also recognize that our inaction is no match for China’s “coercive diplomacy” and military preparedness. Canada could have contributed to, and hugely benefited from, the recently signed AUKUS pact. The agreement was largely intended to provide Australia with nuclear submarines to fend off Chinese aggression, but it also committed the partners to collaborate on AI and other technologies. Canada seems to have been deliberately excluded. We’re skilled in many of the information-sharing focus areas specified in the agreement, and we clearly need increased submarine capabilities in order to help maintain the Arctic sovereignty we claim to have. On top of this, many of our closest allies have outright denied Canadian claims to the NWP, leaving us with limited defence partnerships as they relate to the Arctic.

In the meantime, China has been establishing itself in the Arctic in an effort to get a foothold. In 2018, China’s Arctic Policy was published — the first of its kind for an Asian state. The policy, which discusses Chinese interest in Arctic resource extraction, brings light to Chinese efforts to develop industry in the region. China currently controls about 90 per cent of the global trade of rare minerals, and they want to maintain this dominance. As Arctic ice melts and additional resources become accessible, one can bet that China will want a piece of the pie. China already has a robust starting point for strategic investments, with US $19 billion invested in Canadian Arctic mining projects. Until the NWP (or “golden waterway” as it’s been called) becomes ice-free in the summers, China will likely continue seeking additional investment opportunities to increase its hold and resulting influence. Once the strait inevitably becomes easy to transit, China will already have a legitimate reason to do so.

August 6, 2021

Avro Canada CF-100 Canuck: Canada’s only domestically produced all-weather interceptor

Filed under: Cancon, Europe, History, Military, Technology, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Polyus Studios
Published 3 Oct 2017

Support me on Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/polyusstudios​

**I realize a few of you are having trouble with the way I talk and how I’ve done the sound mixing. Please note that this was my first video and I tried to get everything right as I learned to do it. That said, I obviously made some mistakes. I am just one guy making these things and I’m learning as I go. Feel free to check out my more recent videos where I have tried to correct the sound issues.**

The CF-100 is Canada’s only domestically designed jet fighter to reach service and to be built directly to RCAF specifications. In its day it was a competitive all-weather interceptor. The Canuck protected Canadian airspace from the threat of nuclear armed Soviet bombers for over a decade. This is the story of its development and deployment.

Aircraft mentioned:
Vampire F.3
CL-13 Sabre
CF-100 Canuck
CF-101 Voodoo
CF-105 Arrow

Research sources:
http://www.cmp-cpm.forces.gc.ca/dhh-d…​
https://www.bombercommandmuseum.ca/aircraft/cf-100/
http://www.canadianflight.org/content/avro-canada-cf-100-canuck
http://www.avroland.ca/al-cf100.html​
http://www.aviastar.org/air/canada/canada_canuck.php
http://www.rwrwalker.ca/caf_canucks.html​
http://image-bank.techno-science.ca/d…​
NORAD and the Soviet Nuclear Threat: Canada’s Secret Electronic Air War By Gordon A.A. Wilson

0:00​ Introduction
1:08​ Initial Development
2:38​ CF-100 Mk 1 and Mk 2
4:26​ CF-100 Mk 3
6:51​ CF-103 and Transonic Speeds
7:36​ CF-100 Mk 4
11:33​ CF-100 Mk 5
13:14​ Velvet Glove and Future Proposals
14:28​ Operational History
20:02​ Conclusion

#CF100​ #CanadianAerospace​ #PolyusStudios

December 28, 2020

Another aircraft that’s about to become a political football in Canada

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

Ted Campbell discusses the need to replace the Royal Canadian Air Force long-haul VIP transport aircraft (the current CC-150 Polaris planes were built and first operated by Wardair in 1987 and obtained by the government in 1993). It’s traditional for the government to be assailed by the opposition and the media (at least when it’s a Conservative government in office) for wanting to spend far too many dollars for unnecessarily luxurious planes (Jean Chretien in opposition called the Polaris a “flying Taj Mahal”)*. The Polaris and its eventual replacement do a lot more than just fly junketing politicians around:

RCAF CC-150 Polaris at Zurich, Switzerland on 25 January, 2012.
Photo by Kambui via Wikimedia Commons

… let’s all remember please that the primary roles of this fleet of aircraft are to transport Canadian troops to wherever in the world they might need to go, for operations, and to refuel our jet fighters when they are deployed overseas, and to carry cargo, but smaller loads that do not require a big CC-130 Hercules or the mighty CC-177 Globemaster III. The Royal Canadian Air Force needs a fleet of specially modified aircraft for those roles. There are several more modern “tankers” available including the Boeing KC-46 which is used by the USA and Israel and the Airbus A330 Multi Role Tanker Transport (MRTT) which is used by several nations including Australia and the United Kingdom. […] Some commercial aircraft can be converted, easily and quickly, from carrying passengers in seats to carrying cargo in containers to carrying aircraft fuel in giant bladders with refuelling hoses attached. They are true multi-role aircraft. They can also be converted to VIP aircraft with special suites for sleeping, with showers, work spaces, secure telecommunications and regular conventional passenger seats for support staff and journalists.

The key bit of a real VIP aircraft is a secure (high-grade encryption) communications and information suite. The prime minister, ministers and senior officials, when en route to a meeting in a foreign capital may need to have discussions that are SECRET-CANADIAN EYES ONLY with senior staff back in Ottawa and they may then need to have a video conference call with, say, the Prime Ministers of e.g. Australia and the United Kingdom using a different security system that allows them to discuss SECRET-FIVE EYES ONLY materiel. You’re talking a reliable satellite communications system (with a back-up, too) and various cryptographic terminals and the people to operate and maintain them. The comm/IT suite is complex and expensive. Everything else is optional and, even in the case of a VIP shower stall, pretty cheap, too.

OK, I can already hear the objections, many from Conservatives: “Why doesn’t he fly commercial? He can even fly First Class,” some will say. Aside from some very real security concerns, suppose he has to attend a G-20 meeting in Brazil. There are no flights from Ottawa, there are no direct flights from Toronto. Even if there were he would need an entourage of security and telecommunications/cryptography specialists. I know the Pope charters an Alitalia jet when he travels but I’m afraid that even Air Canada, which has 400± aircraft and carries over 50,000,000 passengers a year, might find it too difficult to keep an aircraft on something close to “hot-standby,” as the RCAF does, for the prime minister. This problem was examined many times over the years and the range of factors ~ security, communications, availability ~ dictate that a dedicated VIP squadron in the Air Force is the best choice … maybe the only sensible choice.

* I rarely say much in favour of former PM Jean Chrétien, but in this particular case he was consistent in his opposition even after being elected: he refused to use the VIP transport during his time in office and attempted to find a buyer for that particular aircraft. Successor Paul Martin had no such aversion and used the aircraft during his premiership.

November 26, 2019

The Avro Arrow

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

The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered
Published 25 Nov 2019

In the 1950s, Canada had one of the world’s most advanced aerospace industries. But the cancellation of the Avro CF-105 “Arrow” changed everything. The History Guy remembers the Avro Arrow and forgotten aviation history. It deserves to be remembered.
(more…)

July 11, 2019

Unofficial High Speed Tour of Borden Base Military Museum

Filed under: Cancon, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The_Chieftain
Published on 8 Jun 2019

Canadian Forces Base Borden is located about an hour’s drive North of Toronto. The base is open access, so anyone can go to the museum.

In addition to the vehicles at the museum, there are others scattered as monuments around the base. I encountered a T-72 and T-55 on my way out the gate.

November 6, 2018

Fly the “Party Flight” with Canadian (Forces) Airways!

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

In the Ottawa Citizen, David Pugliese reminds us that not all is right with the higher-ups of the Canadian military, based on what was allowed to occur — and at least partly covered-up — on a VIP flight last year:

The December 2017 “Team Canada” tour – now more popularly known in some quarters in the military as “the party flight” – has without a doubt been a major public relations black eye for the Canadian Forces.

The tour, with VIPs who were supposed to boost the morale of military personnel deployed overseas, turned into a fiasco. Some VIPs on the RCAF flight to Greece and Latvia were drunk and abusive to the crew, in particular the military flight attendants. The VIP civilian passengers, including former NHL player Dave “Tiger” Williams were exempt from security screening before the flight, and some — already drunk — walked on to the Canadian Forces aircraft with open alcoholic drinks in their hands.

Two individuals were so drunk they were reported to have urinated themselves. Video taken aboard the plane showed people — including a staff member from Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jon Vance’s office — dancing in the aisles of the aircraft with their drinks as a rock band played at the back of the plane. Others chewed tobacco, in violation of Canadian Forces rules, spitting the slimy juice into cups for flight attendants to clean up.

The military flight crew was prohibited from approaching the VIPs except to provide them with service. The crew felt they couldn’t do anything to put a halt to the antics as these very important people were Vance’s guests.

Williams has been charged with sex assault and assault. He denies the charges.

The $337,000 taxpayer-funded trip was planned by Vance’s office. Vance okayed the booze on the RCAF aircraft.

We know all of this now.

But almost right from the beginning, the Canadian Forces/Department of National Defence Staff Public Affairs branch appeared to try its best to mislead journalists – and ultimately the public – on what actually took place on that flight.

September 22, 2018

The Distant Early Warning Line

Filed under: Cancon, History, Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered
Published on 23 Apr 2018

The History Guy examines how the Cold War transformed Canada with the establishment of the U.S. Air Force’s distant early warning or dew line.

The History Guy uses images that are in the Public Domain. As photographs of actual events are often not available, I will sometimes use photographs of similar events or objects for illustration.

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TheHistoryGuy

The History Guy: Five Minutes of History is the place to find short snippets of forgotten history from five to fifteen minutes long. If you like history too, this is the channel for you.

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 23, 2018

Lost model of the Avro Arrow found off Prince Edward County

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

Call me a cynic, but this is likely to kick off yet another round of myth-making about the Avro Arrow:

An iconic piece of Canada’s aviation history has been pulled out of the depths of Lake Ontario and the recovery team is hoping to find more beneath the waves.

Divers brought what is believed to be a model of the Avro Arrow to the surface last week off Prince Edward County and brought it to the Canada Aviation and Space Museum on Tuesday.

Since last September, a series of models have been found at the bottom of Lake Ontario.

The model is about three metres long — a 1/8 scale of the actual plane, according to Erin Gregory, assistant curator at the museum.

“It looks like a rocket with large triangular wings,” she said.

1/8 scale model of the Avro Arrow recovered from Lake Ontario off the shores of Prince Edward County
Photo by OEX Recovery Group, via CBC.

The Canadian Conservation Institute and the aviation museum, will oversee the conservation and restoration of the test models.

What they found last week, is not the full replica of the Arrow, the search group was hoping to find. Instead they believe it is a smaller model, meant to test the delta wing design — the triangular shape the plane was known for.

“The delta wing was a relatively new concept at that point, so it required a lot of testing to determine whether or not it would perform well, particularly at supersonic speeds,” said Gregory.

The Avro Arrow holds a special place in the hearts of Canadian conspiracy theorists – it’s “artisanal Canadian myth-making, hand-woven, fair-trade, and 100% organic”. As I said back in 2004, this is the only truly Canadian conspiracy theory (Colby Cosh calls it our “Napoleon-hat” complex).

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress