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I'd definitely welcome a reference for that. Certain specialty ammunition I could definitely see, but routine spares are typically part of any procurement project's lifecycle cost (obviously spares beyond the projected lifecycle would be the exception here). In any case, I think we can agree...

Not to get drawn into an old thread again, but defence inflation is only properly applied to large capital procurements (and in this it runs to closer to 7%). Since we procured virtually nothing of significance between 1993 and 2006, the effect on the budgetary bottom line in that period is...

On that subject - the latest CANFORGEN contains command appointments (CO and XO) for the first of the AOPS ships (HMCS Harry DeWolf) that will roll off the line in 2016. Guess it stands to reason that they would post crew to the ship in APS 2015 to do the initial cadre training with the yard and...

Actually we've been there for about a year and a half now. But instead of being up-front about what we're doing (denying people a TB-mandated entitlement, i.e.), we're actually in the, "Want a job reserve guy? Well, sign this false declaration stating that you already live in the local area of...

It's just window dressing; virtually no one was drinking at sea to begin with, except at banyans already approved by the COs. Certainly none of the incidents cited as prompting this review had anything to do with drinking at sea (WHITEHORSE or any of the many more egregious cases). The real...

Do you want to know so as to be able to pick ships to avoid, or do you want to pick a ship going into refit to avoid sailing? In Halifax, there are two (of seven) currently fully completed their refits: Halifax and Fredericton. If you want sailing time to consolidate your trade skills, ask for...

A symptom of what you could call "small ship blindness" of the sort alluded to by Edward. Is the best way to operate six UAVs in a CARIBBE-style operation from a single platform with a crew of 220 and a unit cost of $1B, or from six ships with crews of 36 that cost $50M apiece that can be spread...

Absolutely - that's why I used inflation-adjusted numbers above. Even after inflation, we're about a third ahead of '98. Look - I'm not the "everything is awesome" guy. For sure, DND has had to take its share (or slightly less than that) of the post-financial crisis budget cutting. What's been...

As luck would have it, I consulted the Bank of Canada's inflation calculator before I made my last post. And as I'm sure you noticed, the BoC inflation calculator for $9.8B from 1998 equals $13.8B in 2014 dollars. In other words, the $18.9B budget we enjoy today is 37% higher in real terms than...

Nah, no connection. Political staffers tend to move out in the year leading up to an election as more stable job prospects present themselves.

Dirty secret: money not spent by the department in a given year does not get lost under the new accrual accounting system that replaced the old cash accounting system. Cash accounting is what's used for unit-level budgets: if you don't spend it by 31 March, it "disappears"; not so at the...

No it did not. While much of the future money allocated in escalation has not been attributed in the in-year budgets, the baseline has continued to be escalated. For instance, the $2.7B cut for 2015 translates into a defence budget of $18.9B against $20B in 2013. The cut announced in dollar...

Here's the other way of looking at it: prior to the recession, this gov't instituted an automatic escalator in defence funding of 2% per year. Since the recession, this gov't has been announcing the reductions in defence spending required to reach a zero-deficit position against this escalated...

I'd be surprised if the port visit was arranged for "shirtfronting" purposes alone. But it's true: for a country two-thirds our size but otherwise much the same, Australia spends more in dollars terms on defence than we do. But the big difference is that, unlike Canada, Australia didn't incur a...

You assume that we don't? Weird.

RMS Clerks can have degrees, like anyone, but don't require them. Specific employment can vary like any other job; the 80% use case is that they work office hours doing administrative clerical tasks: processing payroll, approving claims, distributing and filing correspondence, and pushing along...

And yet, surprisingly good at shooting things. Clearly their priorities aren't in the right place.

Professional assessment: 1 - Tortured; 2 - Exploited for propaganda purposes; and then 3 - Beheaded, if they don't give their captors a reason to keep them alive.

In the 70s we had a total force that was 50% bigger and we enjoyed a slight economy of scale. I'm fairly certain that point has been thrashed to death ad nauseam elsewhere on this site.

Am I right in thinking that the judge's emphasis on "not looking behind the face of the submissions" is a bit of a signal that in fact he felt that there was something quite flawed with the joint submission? On the face of it, it looks to me like the prosecutor copped a plea deal with the...