Recent content by Ostrozac

Door gunners are Flight Crew, not Aircrew. The Army DEU Aircrew are certain Loadmasters — Loadmasters being a mix of Army and Air Force DEU. And in theory certain Astronauts, I suppose. Marc Garneau was a naval officer when he first went on the space shuttle.

General Nick Carter seems to have had a conventional infantry background in the Royal Green Jackets. He doesn’t wear SAS wings and appears to have never served in a UKSOF unit or staff.

Given the environmental state of Suffield, we probably can’t ever divest it. This could be a historic opportunity to reorient the army towards heavy metal manoeuvre warfare. Or it could be an expensive millstone that finally takes us all down. How’s the cost of housing in Medicine Hat? Have we...

Well, with Leslie agreeing to testify in the Mark Norman case, and not on the side of his PM, if he wasn’t on the “outs” before that, he certainly was after. A charitable interpretation would be that he was unable to balance loyalty between a respected colleague and loyalty to his party. A more...

Heaven doesn’t forbid it. The Canadian International Trade Tribunal Act does. DND had three options: 1. Obey the law. 2. Convince Parliament that the law needs to be amended for operational reasons. 3. Break the law and hope no one notices. Our preferred option has been number 3, which doesn’t...

To sum things up, the Department tried to do an illegal sole-source buy of the Sig P320, got called out for it by the distributor for Glock and CZ, and now DND has to go completely back to the drawing board in addition to paying all legal costs for the challenge. Do I have that about right?

People overcome deep impulses every day. People patrol at night, leave their families for months at a time, sail underwater, jump out of airplanes and even (worst of all!) get up before dawn. And all of those wholly unnatural skills are acquired through training and structure. The whole...

If the US can get Japan and South Korea to actually cooperate, that would be a hell of an achievement. Their relationship is… strained, to say the least.

15,000 is just slightly bigger than the Irish Defence Forces, but their defence priorities are different than ours. They are focused on being distinct and apart from their larger neighbour (the UK), in our case, in our relationship with the US, we are focused on integration and access. So the...

Not just a country; on any given day we have thousands of military personnel spread over the world. The logistics, and cost, of sending civilian investigators around the planet has to be considered. The NIS has maintained detachments overseas and is ready to send investigators anywhere they are...

Treat it like heraldry, maybe, and put it with the GG? That transfers it out of the authority of the PM and the Minsiter of Canadian Heritage.

That literally is exactly what they are. Hence their prominent display in the original badges of the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals, before that Corps found religion (and Anglophilia) in the form of the Roman God Mercury. Currently, half masting is within the PMs authority. And it Is his...

I forgot about RNTP! The Reserve Non-Commissioned Officer Training Program, just add water, instant Infantry Section Commander. Instant NCOs are a staple of some conscript armies — I forgot about our brief flirtation with the concept.

The Canadian Army doesn‘t even believe in teaching tactical skills to its own support trades anymore, so giving every sailor and airman a basic ground combat capability is pretty clearly not on the table. And given my understanding of our current CAF personnel situation, both current and...

The future of messes is a separate issue from the future of armouries, but it does share a common thread in our collective inability to manage infrastructure. And neither issue shows many signs of progress — I was on a mess committee over 10 years ago when I saw documents being staffed around...