Government hints at boosting Canada’s military spending

I have long said that you could fund the CAF to 4 percent of GDP, but we would still lag behind in NATO and be much the same where we are.

It's never the money, it's politics. It's procedures. It's the pork-barreling in our defence spending that makes us a paper tiger in NATO.

My only hope in all of this for the CAF and the GoC, whatever the political stripe that may be, is that it will rouse them out of the "Peace Dividend" slumber. The world has been unstable since 1945. We have used geography, proximity, and association as a Defence Policy ever since. ICBMs don't care how close to the U.S. or how far from Russia/China we are.

Don't give us a dime more, but let us spend money on defence like it matters. The fact we follow the same rules for purchasing a fighter aircraft as we do for buying office furniture for a Service Canada office is disgraceful. Don't treat defense procurement as a stimulus package for Canadian Industry. There I said it.

We spend so much money, time, and effort trying to get that money to stay in Canada; be it by awarding contracts to companies with no capability to produce items without first "retooling" and"developing the production lines", or by hamstringing perfectly competent and competitive bidders by forcing the project to be made in St. Margaret de Poutain de Champignon, QC because the ruling government either lost the seat in the election, or won it with promises.

We spend so much money and staff hours jumping through TBS regulations that are great for other departments, but are terrible for defence procurement. Some items you have to sole source, because there are technologies and capabilities no one else makes. By doing the bid process, you get companies clamoring for a project they can't deliver on, but because they tick the bright boxes on the score sheet....

I truly and honestly belief we need to split from PSPC and legislate that its not beholden to TBS, only to the PBO/PCO. The guiding principles of this new Defence Procurement department should be "Off the shelf, from somewhere else" if there isn't an industry in Canada.

BOOTFORGEN has demonstrated how well we do when we are able to actually get what we need, instead of lining the pockets of a Canadian company that got lucky.

That, but with tanks, fighters, ships, weapons systems....

 

[Rifleman62]

How many sentences in the 16 Apr Budget document will mention DND?

Would not be surprised if the DND budget holds the line or gets another cut.

27 Feb 24:

Trudeau says Canada pledges to ‘do more’ on NATO spending | Power Play with Vassy Kapelos​

 

[Weinie]

I had a Monza…

I had a 79 Lada, complete with crank.

 

[Remius]

Mixed, maybe, but surely not all. The US seems to profit by putting good NCOs in recruiting.

And I didn’t say recruiters or MCC. Just the back office admin. You could maybe have one CAF clerk at most and fill it with CR4s.

NCOs should remain as recruiters as should officers in MCC roles. Or just go back to MCCRs.

Again, just a an example provided as asked for.

 

[Kirkhill]

Norway to double military spending under 'historic' long-term defense plan - Breaking Defense

With emphasis on frigates and subs, the plan "represents a historic boost in defence spending, and involves a significant strengthening of all branches of the Armed Forces," said Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre.

breakingdefense.com

BELFAST — Norway will double its military budget over the next 12 years by increasing spending by 600 billion NOK ($56 billion), part of a “historic” new defense plan announced today by Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre that prioritises heavy investment in new frigates and submarines to push back against Russian maritime influence in the High North and Atlantic Ocean.

at least five new frigates, accompanied by anti-submarine helicopters. Norway’s subsurface fleet will also be boosted by procurement of five new submarines, at a minimum.

In practice, this would mean acquisition of another Type 212CD vessel, with four of the German-designed subs already on order. The fleet are part of a joint German-Norwegian program, in partnership with shipbuilder ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems. A first Norwegian sub underwent construction at the company’s Kiel yard in September last year.

In both cases relating to frigates and submarines, the proposed hull count of five sits below the six recommended by Norway’s Chief of Defence, Gen. Eirik Kristoffersen, in a “Military Advice” report published last year. The plan still strongly aligns with his support for the elimination of structural armed force weaknesses, maritime surface improvements, an uplift in air defense capabilities and long range precision fires.

So stop me if we have heard this one.

Northern nation seeks ice capable ships for Coast Guard, frigates, submarines, GBAD and Long Range Precision Fires.

 

[Kirkhill]

Radical New Stealth Submarine, Type-212CD, Will Be Much Larger - Naval News

Submarines rely on stealth to maintain the element of surprise and escape threats. For decades this has focused on reducing the noise emitted by the submarine. A resurgence of using active sonar to locate submarines now means that new stealth measures may be required. German submarine builder...

www.navalnews.com

Class overview
General characteristics
Builders	ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS)
Operators	Royal Norwegian Navy German Navy
Preceded by	Ula class (Norway) Type 212A (Germany)
Planned	6 (4 for Norway, 2 for Germany)
On order	6
Building	1
Type	Submarine
Displacement	2,500 t (2,500 long tons) surfaced
Length	73 m (239 ft 6 in)
Beam	10 m (32 ft 10 in)
Draught	7 m (23 ft 0 in)
Propulsion	Air-independent propulsion, two MTU diesel engines[1]
Speed	more than 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph)
Complement	?
Sensors and processing systems	Optical sensors: OMS 150 and 300 optronics masts i360°OS panoramic surveillance system Sonar: SA9510S MkII for mine avoidance and navigation EM2040 Mil and EA640 echosounders for sea bed navigation.[2]
Armament	4 × 533 mm (21.0 in) torpedo tubes, DM2A4 IDAS

 

[Kirkhill]

Further to the value of pumping oil and gas....

More supply yields lower prices, lower prices yield lower inflation.

The Fed, like the Bank of England, has a target of 2pc for inflation. Yet US inflation has not been below 2pc since February 2021. As of February 2024, inflation stands at 3.2pc, higher than it was in June 2023 when it bottomed out at 3pc.

So-called “sticky price” inflation less food and energy – a key metric the Fed has been watching to make sure the inflationary vampire will stay in the grave – was at 4.4pc in February 2024. Back in February 2021, this measure was at 1.4pc.

This has been a dangerous game for the Fed. After all, its credibility is currently at an all-time low after it missed the inflation to begin with, and even once the threat was apparent members thought it was “transitory”. With the Fed signalling rate cuts for four months while the actual data continued to show inflation above target, the central bank was betting the farm that it would fall.

Now, however, it appears that the Fed will have to throw in the towel. Oil prices are rising sharply. Brent oil currently stands at over $90 a barrel, up from just over $73 a barrel in mid-December around the time the Fed started priming the market for rate cuts.

The US Fed may kill the Biden presidency

A credibility crisis is building at the central bank as politics trumps policy

www.telegraph.co.uk

A recent paper led by former treasury of the secretary Larry Summers has helped clear up the discrepancy. Summers and his co-authors show that if we adjust American inflation data to consider changes in methodology that have taken place over the past few decades, we see inflation not peaking at 9pc, as the official data indicates, but rather at 18pc. The paper also suggests that inflation measured in line with historical norms would have been 8pc at the end of 2023, not the 3pc shown in the official statistics.

This explains why the average American voter is angry at Biden about the economy: prices are still rising at a rapid clip and living standards have been substantially eroded under his administration.

We all live in America's world. And the Americans are experiencing inflation twice that reported and 4 to 9 times the Upper Control Limit of the target range.

 

[daftandbarmy]

Meanwhile, in Norway

Norway plans $56 billion defence boost to counter Russia​

Norway plans to raise its military spending by an accumulated 600 billion crowns ($56 billion) through 2036 to bolster its defence against Russia and other security challenges, the NATO member country's government said on Friday.

Overall military spending for the next 12 years is expected to amount to 1.62 trillion crowns, it said.

"This plan represents a historic boost in defence spending, and involves a significant strengthening of all branches of the armed forces," Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere told a press conference.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/norway-plans-56-billion-boost-defence-spending-over-12-years-2024-04-05/#:~:text=OSLO%2C%20April%205%20(Reuters),country's%20government%20said%20on%20Friday.

 

[rmc_wannabe]

Meanwhile, in Norway

Norway, like most of the European countries that were invaded during the Second World War, have a long memory and took great lengths to remind their children of the plight they experienced under occupation. Its also why they are very quick to open the coffers to rearm and get ready to fight, because the alternative is much worse.

Canada hasn't had to learn that lesson, and thus here we are cutting defence spending while the world rearms and gets more dangerous.

 

[OldSolduer]

Norway, like most of the European countries that were invaded during the Second World War, have a long memory and took great lengths to remind their children of the plight they experienced under occupation. Its also why they are very quick to open the coffers to rearm and get ready to fight, because the alternative is much worse.

Canada hasn't had to learn that lesson, and thus here we are cutting defence spending while the world rearms and gets more dangerous.

You sir speak wisely.

A wise Jedi you are. (Yoda said this, not me)

In 1996 I had the good fortune to down several beers with a German captain who said "Russia is too close".

 

[Halifax Tar]

Then why put soldiers and sailors in what are essentially civilian functions?

Because sailors and soldiers need positions to establish a work life balance, and those same folks need to develop trades skills that can only be attained at a level behind the Bn OR, QM ect.

For CSS folks an understanding of lines behind 1st and how they work is intimately important.

 

[dimsum]

Mixed, maybe, but surely not all. The US seems to profit by putting good NCOs in recruiting.

I think each service does it differently (surprise surprise) but I’ve talked to a USMC assistant recruiter (they have folks who help out sometimes) and the main recruiters have a minimum quota.

That gives them a huge incentive to get people in the door, but also has negative effects.

 

[daftandbarmy]

I think each service does it differently (surprise surprise) but I’ve talked to a USMC assistant recruiter (they have folks who help out sometimes) and the main recruiters have a minimum quota.

That gives them a huge incentive to get people in the door, but also has negative effects.

The elephant has entered the room

Understanding the steady and troubling decline in the average intelligence of Marine Corps officers​

Understanding the steady and troubling decline in the average intelligence of Marine Corps officers | Brookings

After analyzing test scores of 46,000 officers who took the Marine Corps’ required General Classification Test (GCT), Michael Klein and Matthew Cancian find that the quality of officers in the Marines, as measured by those test scores, has steadily and significantly declined since 1980.

www.brookings.edu

 

[Quirky]

Trudeau says Canada pledges to ‘do more’ on NATO spending | Power Play with Vassy Kapelos​

Do more doesn't mean increase.

 

[Brad Sallows]

Do more doesn't mean increase.

"Do more" is the chorus in the song sung by these people; "do more" is code for "table the motion".

 

[GK .Dundas]

Translation; We intend to kick this down the road......again.

 

[Navy_Pete]

Considering how long it takes to build ships, that almost sounds like an idea for having a navy that can expand rapidly in emergencies - provided the ships are run often enough.

If the ships are run and maintained; for context in the last year we've had two ships flood alongside with no crew onboard after they were mothballed due to lack of people. When pipes fail outside of machinery spaces there is no detection fitted to pick that up, and a few tonnes of water up high enough is really bad. People are aware of that but nothing has actually been done to address it, and now they want to have more ships with no duty watch onboard.

Our ships that are run have a lot of single digit percentage maintenance completion rates (because it takes people and time to maintain things), which is down to in a lot of cases maintenance not being done for long enough that when they go to to preventative maintenance there is a lot of corrective maintenance instead.

We don't even meet our own low standards for 'safe at sea' equipment and maintenance for ships that get deployed to HR deployments, and that's with robbing the standard and low readiness ships to try and get them out the door.

The TLR version is we are spread way to thin, with things too broken to keep doing everything, even with more money. It's past the point of bandaid though, and with the impact of the budget cuts if we don't start divesting ships early and reducing the actual size of the fleet we'll just keep death spiralling.

Best case a few ships 'self retire' without hurting or killing people, because the institution is too stupid to call uncle. That's basically what happened with the 280s and tankers (althought there were few career ending injuries prior to the final straws, along with a lot of people with issues from the mold).

For all the stories that do make the news, the reality is worse, and frankly the ships are probably a liability on real operations as the RCN's 'risk based approach' is just to bet the house that nothing actually happens. If we applied the lower commercial safety standards, most of the fleet wouldn't be allowed to leave the walls under TC rules, and that's with the extra combatant capabilities built into the design. They don't matter if they don't work and the people don't mitigate it if we're in skeleton crews..

 

[Brad Sallows]

If the ships are run and maintained

Yes.

 

[dapaterson]

Best case a few ships 'self retire' without hurting or killing people, because the institution is too stupid to call uncle. That's basically what happened with the 280s and tankers (althought there were few career ending injuries prior to the final straws, along with a lot of people with issues from the mold).

So, you're saying it's time to ATI the Protecteur BOI?

 

[QV]

Because sailors and soldiers need positions to establish a work life balance, and those same folks need to develop trades skills that can only be attained at a level behind the Bn OR, QM ect.

For CSS folks an understanding of lines behind 1st and how they work is intimately important.

Work life balance is achieved through a proper ops tempo cycles, not shoving soldiers sailors into critical and understaffed support positions that now lack continuity becUse of regular posting cycles. They should be in rest/refit mode rather than a “shore posting”. What i suggest is no doubt radical and would lead to more troop downtime and a larger force requirement but Canada could actually make a real contribution and scale up for those critical times.

 

[Kirkhill]

The company we keep....

The welfare-addicted West is too decadent to rearm itself, let alone Ukraine​

While Russia’s might grows, Western Europe can find only pennies to spend on defence
LEWIS PAGE 5 April 2024 • 10:00am


Ukraine’s shortage of artillery shells is in the news again. A senior Ukrainian officer has pointed out the blunt truth: that the imminent arrival of F-16 fighter jets from the West will be “irrelevant” if his nation is overrun because its guns have fallen silent.
Many people will be wondering how this can possibly be. Artillery shells are not expensive things. Ukraine only needs 10,000 or so shells a day to hold the invaders back.
In the case of shells, the problem isn’t money, it’s lack of production capacity. Even the mighty USA, owner of the largest military-industrial complex in the world, can only produce 28,000 rounds of 155mm per month – less than 10pc of what Ukraine needs – and this with its factories on 24-hour operation.
The millions of shells Ukraine has already fired have mostly come from existing stockpiles, not from new production. These have not only been American stockpiles: nations all around the world – often preferring not to have their names mentioned, but happy to take Western money – have shipped their stocks of 155mm to Ukraine.
At some point, however, the cupboards will finally be bare.

Why, then, aren’t new factories being built? The short answer is that they are. This situation was understood back in 2022. The US has been building new factories since then, and they are expected to come on line later this year. Soon the US will be producing 70,000-80,000 shells per month. Other nations are ramping up too, though they did not move as quickly as the US and their production will not come as soon.
But it may not make that much sense for the West to establish a massive shell production industry able to keep Ukraine’s guns firing forever. Nothing else appearing, Ukraine will run out of men in the fairly near term. Then, regrettably, our focus would have to turn to our own defence.
Yet as the head of the RAF has lately said: “We do not want to fight this type of war.” And indeed – at least when we fight alongside the US – we don’t fight like that. Saddam Hussein’s large Soviet-equipped tank army was destroyed for almost no British losses in 2003. Our artillery fired just 9,000 155mm shells in the entire campaign.
One way or another, fairly soon after the fighting stops in Ukraine, the Russian army – even crippled – will recover and rearm itself. It will be much bigger than it was in 2022, backed by Vladimir Putin’s new Russian war economy, and battle-hardened.
On the face of it, Putin would still be mad to attack Nato. Even assuming the US withdraws from the alliance, the Russian economy is still smaller than that of Italy alone. Russia should never be able to match the military potential of the non-US Nato nations.

The rise of Russian defence spending is far outpacing that of Western democracies CREDIT: REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov
But Russian military spending is rising to 6pc of GDP. Italy’s is just 1.7pc. Russia is already approximately three times as powerful as Italy.
Then, as Napoleon put it while conquering Europe, “the moral is to the physical as three to one”. Grit is even more important than numbers. The West could easily have supplied Ukraine with the weapons to drive the Russians out of Crimea: but we have not, because we lack grit.
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Will Putin really believe he would face serious resistance should he strike into the Suwalki Gap and cut off the Baltics for re-conquest?
There is much talk here in the UK of the need to raise defence spending, perhaps to 2.5 or even 3pc of GDP. But during the Cold War it was 4 to 5pc. The debate should actually be in those terms, and not only here either but all across Europe. Even in Estonia, on the very lip of the bear, defence spending will only hit 3pc this year.
In the democracies of Western Europe we are – to put it bluntly – so addicted to our bloated welfare states that we can find only pennies for defence. The Office for Budget Responsibility says that in 2023-24, Britain will spend just £32bn on defence (other figures are out there, but the UK is well known for creative accounting on its defence spending claims). In total the Government will spend an almost unbelievable £1,189bn.

Nobody dares to suggest a modest 3pc haircut for the other departments so that we can double our defence budget. Yet surely anyone can see that it would be better for all the pensioners, disabled, jobless and sick people to have 97pc of what they have now, given to them by their own government, than ruin and destruction and nothing at all as a newly conquered citizen of a hostile power.
If you’re thinking “that might happen in Estonia, but not here”, think again. When the dictators have conquered continental Europe, they always start looking at us.
Even if we somehow come to our senses and double our defence budget, our welfare mindset and stagnant economy would still cripple us.
Rather than just buying ships, we would keep attempting to revive long-dead British shipyards as social regeneration projects (Harland & Wolff). Rather than just buying fighters and missiles, we’d pour money into foredoomed job-creation schemes intended to copy US technology (GCAP). Rather than just buying drones and armoured vehicles, we’d insist on well-paid jobs for ourselves and in the process completely ruin successful designs (Watchkeeper, Ajax).
As the 155mm shell situation shows us, it’s too late to start getting ready once the war has begun. We need to develop some grit and stop assuming that it’s the Government’s job to give us welfare and nice well-paid jobs.
It’s the Government’s job, first and foremost, to see to the nation’s defences.