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

[ArmyRick]

Its COA 4, right after the throw away COA

Your forgetting politicians have their election COA (which can be throw away COAs as well)

 

[PrairieFella]

1 Hussars? My grandfather was Regina Rifles and mentioned the great support the Hussars gave them on NAN GREEN.

FGH. They were on Nan Red.

 

[DBNSG]

We can't count on 5 years of intense full-time training for the "militia" to be prepared to fight the next war...

The troops that landed at Dieppe, Sicily, and Normandy were full-time professionals by the time their boots touched enemy soil. Even the troops sent to Hing Kong had been full-time training/working for at least a year before the battle.

That begs the question then of what the fuck have we done with the last four years.

 

[daftandbarmy]

That begs the question then of what the fuck have we done with the last four years.

 

[Rifleman62]

And CANLOAN allowed Canadian Army officers to serve temporarily with British units for experience.

A bit of confusion here. In late 1943, Canada had a surplus of Officers and the Brits where under strength. CANLOAN was a program to have Cdn Offrs volunteer with British Regiments for the duration.

Starting in Jan 1943, Cdn Offr and NCO's served for three months with the British Army in North Africa to gain battle experience.

Additional Offrs and NCO were attached from 3 Cdn Inf Div to the I Cdn Inf Div in Italy to get battle experience.

One of our Offr was sent to the PPCLI in Italy. On arrival the Adjt made him stip off and wear PPCLI accroments. Pissed him off. Never left the PPCLI until war end.

 

[mariomike]

We can't count on 5 years of intense full-time training for the "militia" to be prepared to fight the next war...

Read this about D-Day...

If there had been no bomber offensive from 1941 to 1944, while Germany was reduced by the terrible war of attrition in the east, would it have been possible for the Allies to justify the interminable delay before opening the Second Front in Europe?"

Churchill thwarted proposals for a D-Day in 1942, then for 1943. He was determined that when the Allies landed in France, it should be under conditions of overwhelming advantage. There must be no great campaign of attrition, such as would inevitable against an unbroken German army.
The bombers could enable the Western Allies to delay aggressively, while Russia fought the huge battles that broke the Wehrmacht , that caused Hitler by June 1944 to deploy 156 divisions in the East, against 50 in France and the Low Countries.
Neither the Russians or Americans could flatly be told that Churchill proposed no D-Day for years to come.
Bomber Command's 56,000 dead would represent, at the end, the lowest possible stake that Churchill could have been seen to throw on the tables of Europe, when the Russians were counting their dead in the millions.

 

[Brad Sallows]

The common foundation of all the kvetching is that Canada has allowed its forces to become too small to retain and perpetuate the formal and institutional knowledge required for formation warfare.

We can still have the kind of force that needs to tag along and be nurtured and protected by a larger ally for a couple of years before really getting stuck in, or we can grow a useful "army that you have", or we can just ignore everything on the list of crises that would require either solution.

 

[Quirky]

That begs the question then of what the fuck have we done with the last four years.

CAF is pretty good at flag raising and recognizing X appreciation day for special interest groups on social media platforms, because that's all it can do. It's a paper military with no real war-fighting capabilities. If China started something now, we'd be sending letters to the UN and holding press conferences on condemnation, that's pretty much the extent of our participation. This is not a serious country.....but it can be.

 

[ytz]

The wartime comparisons aren't really fair. They got a lot more recruits. A substantial portion of national GDP went to equip and train them. Britain lost its Empire paying for both wars. Let's not forget that.

And let's not forget the changing nature of warfare. We're not simply writing off pilots and aircraft daily. We're now slinging million dollar TLAMs that take months to make by industrial supply chains that nobody in WWII could have dreamed of.

Which raises an important point. We're more likely to run out of rare earths than people in a large war today. Think of China's massive battery production that will support their drone production. That can't be built overnight during war time. And we're not close to addressing this because it's not clear that the vast majority of the public and our political class understand the technological i and industrial mperatives.

 

[Cloud Cover]

Let’s be very aware the next big war could very well see 2 of the 3 super powers against us and 1 that plans to sit on the sidelines. The war will be short and tactically nuclear almost from day 1. It almost has to be for any side to gain any sort of early decisive advantage.
And it’s going to happen.

 

[Underway]

The common foundation of all the kvetching is that Canada has allowed its forces to become too small to retain and perpetuate the formal and institutional knowledge required for formation warfare.

We can still have the kind of force that needs to tag along and be nurtured and protected by a larger ally for a couple of years before really getting stuck in, or we can grow a useful "army that you have", or we can just ignore everything on the list of crises that would require either solution.

Which is kinda the point of the "Drive to Divisional" (c) model. Looks like the plan is to put our big kid pants on finally.

 

[ytz]

Let’s be very aware the next big war could very well see 2 of the 3 super powers against us and 1 that plans to sit on the sidelines. The war will be short and tactically nuclear almost from day 1. It almost has to be for any side to gain any sort of early decisive advantage.
And it’s going to happen.

What's the scenario where Canada is involved a nuclear war with Russia and China where the US is just sitting on the sideline.

 

[Brad Sallows]

As with the last big war, there would be two distinct wars - one in eastern Europe, and one in eastern and southeastern Asia. If the "1" were to sit out as feared, Canada and Europe would not really need to worry about being involved in two (what would be the point without massive naval and air projection capabilities?), and Europe is sufficient to deal with eastern Europe without the assistance of Canada or the US.

There are other powerful regional players who won't simply stand by if someone in their region is trying to rearrange the chairs. China does not actually have a lot of strongly committed friends.

The inability of Russia to steamroll Ukraine should have all but dispelled fears that Russia will cross a red line which invites a NATO Article 5 party.

 

[Brad Sallows]

Which is kinda the point of the "Drive to Divisional" (c) model. Looks like the plan is to put our big kid pants on finally.

That's going from diapers to shorts. "Field army" is long pants. And the same is needed for air and naval capabilities.

 

[Kirkhill]

Read this about D-Day...

Churchill spent treasure and employed technology rather than spending blood.
He saved lives but broke the bank and the Empire.

We should try to emulate part of that - the technology bit. But keep it within our means. Fortunately we have resources as treasure.

Edit: I see @ytz beat me to the punch.

 

[mariomike]

Churchill spent treasure and employed technology rather than spending blood.
He saved lives but broke the bank and the Empire.

A profit vs loss calculation,

It will be seen that the enemy has irretrievably lost 1,000,000 man years. This represents no less than 36 per cent of the industrial effort that would have been put out by these towns if they had remained unmolested. ... Expressing these losses in another way, 2,400,000,000 man-hours have been lost for an expenditure of 116,500 tons of bombs claimed dropped, and this amounts to an average return for every ton of bombs dropped of 20,500 lost man-hours, or rather more than one quarter of the time spent in building a Lancaster. ... This being so, a Lancaster has only to go to a German city once to wipe off its own capital cost, and the results of all subsequent sorties will be clear profit."

Air Staff Intelligence Report, February 19, 1944

 

[Kirkhill]

A profit vs loss calculation,



Air Staff Intelligence Report, February 19, 1944

Bomber Command lost 56,000 men
The US 8th Air Force lost another 26,000.
Total of 82,000 men - permanently

Germany was denied 1,000,000 man years over 4 years.

Each dead allied airman denied Germany 12 man years of labour - not necessarily 12 dead workers. Just 12 workers that were out of work for one year, or 3 workers that were out of work for 4 years.

 

[mariomike]

Bomber Command lost 56,000 men
The US 8th Air Force lost another 26,000.
Total of 82,000 men - permanently

Germany was denied 1,000,000 man years over 4 years.

Each dead allied airman denied Germany 12 man years of labour - not necessarily 12 dead workers. Just 12 workers that were out of work for one year, or 3 workers that were out of work for 4 years.

You destroy a factory, and they rebuild it. In six weeks they are in operation again. I kill all their workmen, it takes 21 years to provide new ones."

Air Marshal Harris RAF to General Ira Eaker USAAF.
Ref: "Fortress Without a Roof" by Wilbur H Morrison. 1982.

The Air dropped propaganda leaflets put it this way,

I will speak frankly about whether we bomb single military targets or whole cities. Obviously we prefer to hit factories, shipyards, and railways. It damages Hitler's war machine most. But those people who work in these plants live close to them. Therefore, we hit your houses and you. We regret the necessity for this.

 

[ytz]

This fixation on WWII has to stop. We have entire domains of warfare that didn't exist in the 1940s. It's fine to draw some lessons. But treating WWII like gospel is literally the meme of generals fighting the last war.

It's amazing in all these discussions all of you talk about the number of troops and pilots. But not one mention of hackers. Yet a couple of well timed and executed cyber attacks can cripple a country. Or try fighting in a fully GPS denied environment with no space based ISR. It'll be back to the era of disco.

 

[ytz]

By the way, everything from traffic lights to the electric grid to ATM machine and banking networks are synchronized on GPS timing. Y'all worry about nukes. Every person who gets a high level space briefing can't sleep for several nights after. A literal point made by our 3 CSD commander after he got his read in.