Just me talking here ---- I believe what is keeping this shell game going is the same thing that I posted on the Janis Stein / Eugene Lang book in PATH TO WAR last week - Bone headed ignorance of defence and strategic issues by our political leadership. Its easier to tax and spend internal to Canada than it is to get a feel for the world.
Cdn
politicians are behind the rest of NATO in how to deploy a force - witness repeated "We were never told this or that statements from ex - cabinet ministers" ref the Cdn deployments - That CDS sure is a shyster - early in early out - Wooo! Afghanistan is getting Iraquized (Bill Graham on the use of IEDs)
If the policy makers - i.e. Government are out in left field looking for a game they can play (liberals on Defence) then who's to say the incoming team has any better idea - true there are some major big ticket items in the purchasing pipeline - but all the stuff - can’t deploy without a human filled team across the entire defence spectrum
Now we see "We need help in Khandahar" True or not - it is what we hear from all levels. You might say just mobilise the reserves - an example at the link
http://www.coxwashington.com/hp/content/reporters/stories/2008/02/01/GUARD_GA01_COX.html suggests that’s easier done than said - i.e. - a US Reserve force designed for the Cold War to MAYBE deploy and then be continually deployed leads to a non realisation of Strategic goals - i.e.: what if we deploy and deploy and deploy and its still not enough?
So we have a reserve augmented force deployed - that needs down time - but the large majority of the reserves don’t seem to be under any orders to do anything -----------> This is a mismatch of ends and means ------ if you can’t tap them why do you have them? Same goes for all the regulars who are not in battle group or combatant trades. Then you have a case of a demographic imbalance in the reg forces where 65% are over 35 and 35% are under 35 – old forces don’t fight forever. (This percentage was in the CF pers newsletter about 3-4 years back).
At the same time, the regular forces can deploy so many times on the 6 months overseas cycle before the in service troops say screw this - I am gone.
That is because it’s not a War accompanied by wartime rules such as holding onto people in deployment critical skills until NATO or whatever higher level political organisation figures out what to do where we are deployed.
So - the decades long political wisdom to under fund the forces (not the under recruiting) has come back to hit the government - the fixed ceiling reg force isn’t big enough to handle a Khandahar Mission alone - the reserves can augment it for a while - but sooner or later the bottom is reached (NATO has to help with troops)
Grenades with Pins in will be accepted - flamethrowers will get Strategic UAV generated metallic email.
