Canada moves to 2% GDP end of FY25/26 - PMMC

[PuckChaser]

The politics tangent has been deleted.

- Milnet.ca Staff

 

[ytz]

Maybe. There is a long line of customers for their products. I have zero knowledge of their business plans or thoughts on this. I know several other Defense companies who view the CAF as a bad partner due to limited buying and various Canadianization policies. To the point one VP has said with CA GO’s around that the juice isn’t worth the squeeze with Canada.

You definitely haven't had that conversation recently. I have friends at LM over here. And they are looking at expanding in Canada. Particularly in domains where they perceive less competition domestically and high payoff. An LM space division in Canada would have a 50/50 chance on every contract against MDA. For example. The money that is coming in now, has substantially changed conversations. Unless you are actively working on Canadian projects, it's going to take time to see this. But the conversation has absolutely changed.

Honestly, I would be far more worried as a American defence contractor for loss of sales. It's not just Canada. The European and Asian markets will be lost or take large hits. And with that, will be dents to economies of scale that American OEMs usually take for granted. Sure the US is large. But if your total sales go from 3000 to 2000 on an airplane, that still hurts everything from upgrade development to unit sales costs, as the base over which you can amortize shrinks.

 

[ytz]

sounds about right as 1 RCHA will need to start conversion training, likely in the US, and 3 RCHA will need to be stood up to take the guns from 1

Will they all be based together. Or do they plan to put a battery of HIMARS in each region? Curious how this works with the recent reorg.

 

[MilEME09]

Will they all be based together. Or do they plan to put a battery of HIMARS in each region? Curious how this works with the recent reorg.

All in shilo is my understanding

 

[KevinB]

You definitely haven't had that conversation recently. I have friends at LM over here. And they are looking at expanding in Canada. Particularly in domains where they perceive less competition domestically and high payoff. An LM space division in Canada would have a 50/50 chance on every contract against MDA. For example. The money that is coming in now, has substantially changed conversations. Unless you are actively working on Canadian projects, it's going to take time to see this. But the conversation has absolutely changed.

I have zero insight into space.
It was Army green program related.

Honestly, I would be far more worried as a American defence contractor for loss of sales. It's not just Canada. The European and Asian markets will be lost or take large hits.

There is pretty much one reason for that. However it’s a political grenade at this point to place blame where it rightfully lies down here.

And with that, will be dents to economies of scale that American OEMs usually take for granted. Sure the US is large. But if your total sales go from 3000 to 2000 on an airplane, that still hurts everything from upgrade development to unit sales costs, as the base over which you can amortize shrinks.

Agreed 110%. POTUS and some other related people have caused more damage to the economy and specifically the Defense Industrial base in the last 11 months than one would ever think possible.

Programs are in utter upheaval weekly due to hare brained ideas being spewed. Which makes everyone jumpy, but some products are still without peer, and do offer some leverage.

 

[Kirkhill]

"the division’s new HIMARS rocket launchers shot down “enemy” drones."

How the Army’s most tech-forward units are practicing for war

A two-week exercise simulated island battles—and put some 75 new technologies to the test.

www.defenseone.com

Seeing as how HIMARS raised its head here ... my opening sentence in the attached article caught my eye. HIMARS as an Air Defense system.

I don't think they have got around to launching SAMs from HIMARS llaunchers yet.
But
The M30A1 rocket with Alternative Warhead disperses 182,000 tungsten steel balls at ranges of 15 to 92 km.
Might make an impact on a Swarm.
The multi-mode fuze does have a proximity airburst setting, apparently.

Come to that it might have an effect on helicopters and fast movers in flight.

 

[FJAG]

Will they all be based together. Or do they plan to put a battery of HIMARS in each region? Curious how this works with the recent reorg.

I might have a bit better understanding in a week's time as my information is about a year old before it was funded and people started looking at the issue as a supporting a division rather than just a single subunit. As far as I understand they'll both be in Shilo. The RegF artillery would be hard pressed to come up with the PYs for a rocket regiment - these are the folks who can only man 8 guns per regiment now and are looking at many more guns in the future.

There are options including more PYs or extensive use of reservists. Reservists man many of the HIMARS battalions in the US. It's not rocket science (pun intended) The 1st Battalion 147 Field Artillery out of Watertown South Dakota, the 1-121 out of Milwaukee are both ARNG battalions close at hand.

The easiest way to do this - and of course that negates the Cdn army doing it - is to stand 1 RCHA down from operational tours and leave those to 2 RCHA and 5 RALC. 1 RCHA would then split itself in two, get another LCol and RSM and a couple of IGs and AIGs and other folks posted in and start "train the trainers" training while the recruiting folks find several hundred new gunners and put them through basic training, and/or several reserve regiments (probably the Prairie ones) get selected to convert. Once the trainers are trained and the recruits run through basic the regiments get busy with system specific DP1 and 2 training across the board. All up and if well organized it can be done within about 12 - 18 months.

We did something similar to this in the mid 70s when we stood up the initial Blowpipe air defence batteries. 2 RCHA in Pet ran through several hundred newly recruited folks of TQ3 (basically the arty portion of DP1 at the time) and then a combination of the RCAS and trained unit trainers did the air defence specific TQ4 and above. In many cases the newly trained recruits went into the gun batteries and replaced more advanced, (drivers, communicators, JnrNCMs, etc) previously trained folks who went to the AD batteries.

 

[dapaterson]

The vital ground is the saluting HIMARS for 30 Fd.

 

[Kirkhill]

The vital ground is the saluting HIMARS for 30 Fd.

Think of the fireworks display!

 

[Czech_pivo]

Looking over the period from 2022-2025 its seems that we have approx 192,000 applications to the CAF which resulted in 15,000 recruits. This translates to be just under 8% of those showing enough interest to begin the process of starting an application to being accepted as a recruit.

Does anyone have a sense of how this 8% compares to the US/UK/France/German/Polish/etc numbers? Is 8% inline with the others? Is it higher? Is it lower? If lower, by how much?

A quick search for US numbers for 2025 shows the following:

Projected recruitment goals for 2025 include:

• Army aiming for 61,000 recruits. A goal it met in June 2025.
• Navy targeting 40,600 recruits. A goal it met in June 2025.
• Marine Corps is trying to enlist approximately 32,000 recruits.
• Air Force is focusing on enlisting 32,500 recruits.
• Space Force is trying to enlist 800 recruits.

If we ignore the 800 for the Space Force as we have nothing similar, and, we assume that the Marine Corps & Air Force were successful in meeting their numbers, we come to a grand total of 61+40.6+32+32.5 = 166,100 recruits. These are accepted recruits, I do not have access to how many applications it took to turn into 166,100 recruits.

If we attempt to take our numbers above, the 192,000 applications from 2022-2025, a 3yr period - 22-23, 23-24, 24-25 - and divide the 192,000 over 3 years, we get 64,000 applications a year, which divided against 15,000 recruits, equals 5,000 recruits. A number 32X smaller than the 166,100 recruits that the US took in.

If we apply our 8% success ratio of "application to new recruit" against the US new recruit number of 166,100 for 2025, it would mean that the US would have had an application number of 2,000,000 - I fully realise that a 1 to 1 comparison of what our process is against the US's maybe will not fully translate but it is worth noting the above I feel. I would love to see what the numbers for the UK/France/Poland/Germany/Italy are.

 

[dapaterson]

There are lies, damn lies and statistics, and what gets measured is what gets done.

What is the definition of an applicant? Is it "submitted all necessary information so the CAF could process their file"? Or is it a lesser standard of "Bob Jones said he might be interested".

Understanding the end to end system is critical to identifying where the gaps are, and where things are working as they ought.

 

[daftandbarmy]

Looking over the period from 2022-2025 its seems that we have approx 192,000 applications to the CAF which resulted in 15,000 recruits. This translates to be just under 8% of those showing enough interest to begin the process of starting an application to being accepted as a recruit.

Does anyone have a sense of how this 8% compares to the US/UK/France/German/Polish/etc numbers? Is 8% inline with the others? Is it higher? Is it lower? If lower, by how much?

A quick search for US numbers for 2025 shows the following:

Projected recruitment goals for 2025 include:

• Army aiming for 61,000 recruits. A goal it met in June 2025.
• Navy targeting 40,600 recruits. A goal it met in June 2025.
• Marine Corps is trying to enlist approximately 32,000 recruits.
• Air Force is focusing on enlisting 32,500 recruits.
• Space Force is trying to enlist 800 recruits.

If we ignore the 800 for the Space Force as we have nothing similar, and, we assume that the Marine Corps & Air Force were successful in meeting their numbers, we come to a grand total of 61+40.6+32+32.5 = 166,100 recruits. These are accepted recruits, I do not have access to how many applications it took to turn into 166,100 recruits.

If we attempt to take our numbers above, the 192,000 applications from 2022-2025, a 3yr period - 22-23, 23-24, 24-25 - and divide the 192,000 over 3 years, we get 64,000 applications a year, which divided against 15,000 recruits, equals 5,000 recruits. A number 32X smaller than the 166,100 recruits that the US took in.

If we apply our 8% success ratio of "application to new recruit" against the US new recruit number of 166,100 for 2025, it would mean that the US would have had an application number of 2,000,000 - I fully realise that a 1 to 1 comparison of what our process is against the US's maybe will not fully translate but it is worth noting the above I feel. I would love to see what the numbers for the UK/France/Poland/Germany/Italy are.

I wonder what the cost per recruit really is?

My guess is it's astronomically outside the reasonable cost envelope for a fairly small national organization like the CAF.

60,000 employees is a rounding error for alot of big businesses.

 

[Czech_pivo]

There are lies, damn lies and statistics, and what gets measured is what gets done.

What is the definition of an applicant? Is it "submitted all necessary information so the CAF could process their file"? Or is it a lesser standard of "Bob Jones said he might be interested".

Understanding the end to end system is critical to identifying where the gaps are, and where things are working as they ought.

Agree
But if the CAF themselves are the ones tracking or defining an 'Application' as anyone will starts the process, hits 'save' on the application and then never goes back to complete the application, then they themselves are guilty of over inflating their own numbers.

Without knowing the definition of 'application' we can only go off the information provided/available.

 

[MilEME09]

Media reporting what any of us could of told them, Housing and families is what forcing people out, and we need to fix it and fast. Day care wait is almost an entire posting cycle, that should be unacceptable to anyone in leadership.

Canadian soldiers leaving military due to bad housing and health care

There’s no life like it as long as you don’t care about a decent roof over your head or waiting in line to get a doctor. Read on.

torontosun.com

 

[Kirkhill]

There are lies, damn lies and statistics, and what gets measured is what gets done.

What is the definition of an applicant? Is it "submitted all necessary information so the CAF could process their file"? Or is it a lesser standard of "Bob Jones said he might be interested".

Understanding the end to end system is critical to identifying where the gaps are, and where things are working as they ought.

We do polls to determine support of the forces and willingness to serve.
We bemoan the lack of support when those numbers are low.

Shouldn't we be encouraging those willing to support and to serve rather than casting them off by telling them they are not good enough?

Or can we find ways to make use of their enthusiasms and whatever capabilities they have?

We need more Canadians to be involved in Canada so that they feel as if they are part of the effort. That will mean spending money on them to support and direct their enthusiasms and, yes, that money will be drawn from the same purse that supports the professionals.

But creating a caste separate from society at large won't serve the needs of the society or the caste. Or Canada.

Everybody should be given an opportunity to pay some portion of their taxes in kind with sweat equity.

 

[dapaterson]

Lack of health care and child care is a Canadian issue, not a CAF issue. Just made worse by the posting cycle.

 

[Eaglelord17]

Lack of health care and child care is a Canadian issue, not a CAF issue. Just made worse by the posting cycle.

However seeing as the CAF is federal not provincial (which health care and child care are) the CAF should be provided those services by the government much like the Reserves (indigenous).

 

[MilEME09]

However seeing as the CAF is federal not provincial (which health care and child care are) the CAF should be provided those services by the government much like the Reserves (indigenous).

Youd think having enough child care space would be a requirement when the CAF requires us to have a family care plan. Like hey sorry your normal baby sitter cant work but here's a place we got for your kid

 

[daftandbarmy]

Shouldn't we be encouraging those willing to support and to serve rather than casting them off by telling them they are not good enough?

 

[CBH99]

Media reporting what any of us could of told them, Housing and families is what forcing people out, and we need to fix it and fast. Day care wait is almost an entire posting cycle, that should be unacceptable to anyone in leadership.

Canadian soldiers leaving military due to bad housing and health care

There’s no life like it as long as you don’t care about a decent roof over your head or waiting in line to get a doctor. Read on.

torontosun.com

It surprises me these issues are even issues at this point.

I mean the base locations aren't new, and how many personnel are assigned to units at that base is pretty well known. The 'base resident' population tends to be pretty stable, regardless of any units/aircraft passing thru.

Example - CFB Edmonton has approximately X number of people posted to it so it requires Y number of confirmed daycare slots.


You'd think someone, somewhere along the way would be enterpreneurial enough to set up a daycare or a series of daycares close to the base, or the government could have somehow arranged for the opening of nearby daycares...



The requirement for child care services on or nearby any Canadian military base is pretty stable.

How insufficient capacity exists in this regard is just baffling, tbh