Anything and everything to make the CF better/bigger...

[Biggoals2bdone]

OKAY I WANT EVERYONE TO THROW OUT THEIR IDEAS ON WHAT THE FORCES NEEDS OR SHOULD DO TO MAKE IT BETTER AND TO HAVE A GREATER PRESENCE IN THE WORLD


this is taken from a post of mine in another thread...like i say its merely an idea...

On a side note i find that with our military the way it is (aka not enough funds...BIG TIME, and undermanned) i would say we need to get back up to 80 000 minimum for  combined services, and we need to do this As Quickly As Possible, but i dont foresee it happening soon enough the man-power or the huge increase in budget that we need...that we're almost better off forming a partnership of some sorts with the americans or the brits or aussies or something and form a kind of coalition, where we would all be united under 1 banner or something of the sort, not necessarily being amalgamated with the other force to the degree of losing our own identity but lets say for example: we would call it the Commonwealth Defence Forces, which could include the aussies, new zealanders and possibly the brits themselves, as well as us.

we would keep the Army, Navy, Air Force and throw in the Marines from the brits, where we would have a standardized training for the whole entire force throughout all the nations, and service to any country or any force would be offered.  As in a canadian could be part of the Commonwealth Marine Corps just like a brit or an aussie etc..., and bases would be distributed fairly so that you could serve in any branch on any of the nations.  Obviously we would keep members on their respective nations unless they requested to serve elsewhere.

so under the Umbrella of Commonwealth Defence Forces we would have:
The Commonwealth army
The Commonwealth Navy
The Commonwealth Air Force
The Commonwealth Marine Corps

Obviously any special forces like CANSOFCOM, JTF2, SAS, and etc, would be modified somewhat or we would need a totally new branch added Commonwealth Special Forces Branch, where all of these units would be under.

where we would most like keep regimental names for the army and etc.

Like i said its an idea, one which i find would probably be difficult to put into action but could be very useful, because as individuals for armed forces Canada, UK, New Zealand and Aussie for example are not huge, Canada has 65 000 reg force member (59th worldwide), UK has 195 000 (ranked 28th worldwide), Aussie has 51 000 (ranked 68th world wide), New Zealand 9 000 (ranked 129th worldwide).  Put that together with combined spending and training and what not and you would have a kick *** force that could really throw some weight around and do a lot of good in this world.  I picked these other countries, because a) we're all in the Commonwealth b) we all have a unified service design for our militaries and c) we all bring something special to the table, in terms of perspective, tradition, settings/environment for training, specialties, etc.

Obviously we could also phase into the US military being that their borders touch ours, but they are all individual services, and i doubt they would likely want to accomodate our traditions and what not, rather we would be thrown in the mix and expected to de-canadian-nize ourselves and become more american...and besides they have a huge military organisation as it is

Like i said its a thought

 

[geo]

Uhhh.... your Commonwealth.....

NATO
NORAD

 

[PO2FinClk]

And how exactly this assist in each country promoting their Foreign Policies???

Sorry, can't have one without the other, thus such an institution in the way you mention it could not subsist. The only means under which anything of the sort could exist already dopes as geo points out: NATO & NORAD.

 

[Biggoals2bdone]

you guys are missing the point...im not saying preoccupy yourselves with ramming down other ideas...and yes i do admit my idea is flawed...and i admitted that in the original post....the point of this thread is to get everyones opinion on WHAT THE CANADIAN FORCES CAN DO TO MAKE THEMSELVES A GREATER PRESENCE AND HAVE ACCESS TO MORE TECH AND MATERIAL AND EQUIPMENT AS WELL AS PERSONNEL

 

[Michael OLeary]

you guys are missing the point...im not saying preoccupy yourselves with ramming down other ideas...and yes i do admit my idea is flawed...and i admitted that in the original post....the point of this thread is to get everyones opinion on WHAT THE CANADIAN FORCES CAN DO TO MAKE THEMSELVES A GREATER PRESENCE AND HAVE ACCESS TO MORE TECH AND MATERIAL AND EQUIPMENT AS WELL AS PERSONNEL

If the point is the development of a fantastical theory which sets aside realities of domestic Canadian politics and inter-govermental and inter-military cooperation, then by all means set those rules and have at it (and the thread will likely end up in the Mess).  However, if you expect a realistic examination of the proposal, than many aspects of the real world will have to be considered and some of them willl be fundamental stumbling blocks.  Either way, YELLING won't help.

 

[Rowshambow]

I am sure I have heard of this before...oh yes a few years ago they were throwing around the idea of a UN peacekeeping force. it might work as a peacekeeping type force, but as others pointed out it wouldn't work as a defence force! Think of this, look how Canadians already view the deaths in Afghanistan, under the Canadian forces. How would those mothers, fathers, brothers ,and sisters feel about thier kin dying for Aussie values, or even American. We would have to contribute to things like the Iraq war and others that might pop up!  As we have seen in the past, i.e WW1, with a brit or other commander they might not feel the same towards Canadains as they do thier own troops and send us or others into unfavorable battles.
Unfortunatly we do need a larger defence force, but until there is another WW, the general public will not stand for it. History always has a way of repeating itself, and if you check you will see we are doing just that!

 

[Cote]

Money and people

 

[bbereziuk]

How do we make the CF bigger and better?

1. First, understand that a military can be a monumentally expensive service, and if proper planning is not well conducted by a nation's government... it can very quickly start to impact on the economy writ large. The basic term for the theory on this is the 'guns and butter' concept of national defence. This theory suggests that the ideal situation for a nation is to produce only 'butter' (social services, education, research and development, etc.) to advance technology to an extent that will allow our 'guns' to be the biggest, most deadly, and easy to produce during times of war. The theory suggests that if we are producing plenty of 'butter' during peace times, we will have the best 'guns' during war.

2. Of course, the theory doesn't coincide with the real-world. The cold war demonstrated that we needed to constantly maintain expenditure on 'guns' as our enemies were virtually twenty minutes away (the time an ICMB could fly over the arctic). Because our enemies were more or less constantly at our doorstep, we needed to maintain a more significant standing military. But here's the thing about standing militaries - they don't produce a lot of developmental value for a nation unless you're using it. Standing militaries that are in garrison conduct training, some tactics and operations research, and some technology research and development... so there is SOME value.. but militaries don't build roads, cure the sick, or produce wealth - militaries are designed to attack or defend from another country

3. So.. how can it become bigger? Pick a fight. If the members of a nation feel threatened by an enemy, or are benefiting by conquering another, resources will be contributed to the military because it is producing a tangible result. Take a look at the Royal Navy during the 18th and 19th century - it was huge because it was producing expansive business opportunities for the Brits via colonization. The current effort in Iraq has a large part to do with maintaining control of oil reserves.. and even our Canadian Forces in Afghanistan produces value for Canadians by maintaining relations with other allied countries via our UN commitments. Generally however, a nation that increases the size and power of its military needs to have a use for it... or it will just sit around, suck up money, and gain the resent of the population. The CF would be a much larger entity if there were clear evidence of a real threat to either Canada directly or our significant allies. Either that.. or our civilian population would have actually want colonialism or aggressive expansion... or something like that - which is very very unlikely to happen.

4. How could we make Canada a stronger nation in general? I'd say the last thing we need to be doing is picking a fight (though I totally support maintaining our alliances... and being in Afghanistan - which is and has been an excellent way to strengthen our army) with a powerful enemy. We should however, be expanding Canadian interests in the North. There is so much money to be made up there it isn't funny.  .. and the sharks are starting to circle.  I hope Canadians realize that other countries are all too interested in the resource potential (and transportation potential) of the far north... and our biggest fight might be yet to come in this region. If Russia can industrialize their north.. so can we.... If we successfully expand our business interests up there... our international prestige, wealth, and military power will follow.

 

[Biggoals2bdone]

O'Leary true, but what i meant was dont limit yourself to my one idea....bring forth your own...

I mean i could have easily just said well we need to be at 80-90 000 strength for reg force total in tri-service, therefore we need another 20-25 000 members, on top of that we should also have 10 000 more reservists spread out throughout the 3 branches.

We also need to re-evaluate our navy, and should possibly look at doing like the Brits where they do not necessarily field the biggest fleet, but they do field one of the top quality fleets. As of Nov 06 they had almost 38 000 personnel in the RN, and they field 91 ships.  

Considering that Canada has a military of about 64 000 reg force troops, i would venture to say we probably dont have more then 20 000 naval personnel...in fact my guess is that the majority of the forces is in the army. According to Wikipedia we have 41 ships and from what i heard not all of them are sea worthy or out to sea right now.  So considering that the RN is more then half the size of the CF, we know we shouldnt field as many ships as them and most likely not even half as many ships as them.

- the CPFs or Halifax class frigates have a complement of 225 members each and we have 12...so 2700 total personnel for CPF
- 4 Iroquois class Destroyers aka 280's with a complement of 280 member each...1120 total personnel for 280s
- 12 MCDVs with a complement of 31 members each...372 total personnel for MCDVs
- the NEW Orca Class training vessels, 8 planned to be in service with 1 currently in service and 3 in construction with a complement of 4 crew, 16 trainees these are replacing the YAG... 32 crew and 128 trainees total for the Orca's
- 2 Provider class AORs with a complement of 365 personnel...720 total personnel for AORs
- 4 Victoria Class submarines, with only 3 in active duty with a complement of 47 each....141 total personnel for the subs

so total ships complement around 5000-5100

So ok, we know the AOR's are done, and the 280s well they should be or will be sh!t canned soon, so thats 6 vessels less right there. freeing up 1840 crew members
i say we scrap those ships we could take the armaments and use them on our other ships, but in getting rid of those we then need to get 2 small Air craft carriers, or 1 small air craft carrier and a JSS ship...so that we would have 1 ship to carry out each function to its fullest, and be able to deploy men and equipment and what not by ourselves without having to rely on americans.

Also running something in conjunction with the Navy such as the Royal Auxiliary Fleet would be a good idea in my opinion and if that were the case we could forego the JSS ship and just get 2 small air craft carriers, such as the Amphib carrier USS Tarawa or a light carrier such ass the USS independence would serve our purposes.


Then maybe get 1-2 destroyers to escort each carrier plus a frigate plus the above mentioned Auxiliary fleet for re-supplying.

In my opinion that would take care of the navy...next i would look at the airforce...and i agree with someone that mentioned this in another post in that our tri-service is somewhat like the USMC...so now i need to think about what else i would suggest. till later

 

[geo]

Biggoals2bdone,

I presume that you are a taxpayer and that you are already coughing up 30-40% of your paycheck year in and year out.... maintaining what we already have - let alone going out and buy/build a fleet of aircraftcarriers & DEs, etc.....

If you had gone to the trouble of reading some of the threads already running, you will find that there are several that discuss the navy's revamping (BTW one of our 280s is supposed to be sunk by cannon, torpedo, missile fire in the coming months).

Identifying long term goals and starting to build on a regular basis makes much more sense than the feast / famine method the navy has followed over the last umpteen years....

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

...and this thread is useless without the funding structure that would accompany the models presented.

 

[observor 69]

Biggoals2bdone,


Identifying long term goals and starting to build on a regular basis makes much more sense than the feast / famine method the navy has followed over the last umpteen years....

[Sarcasm on] Ah yes a politician who can look at Canada's military and plan out long term goals, ie beyond the next four year election [sarcasm off]

I am afraid during my time in all I ever saw was the use of the military to make political points,
base closure or not    politics
purchase of military equipment  politics
and defence policy, not based on anything but a pragmatic objective analysis.

 

[geo]

(cynical aren't we this morning )

 

[observor 69]

I remember being in Summerside in the  1960- 70's.  Big wigs fly in announce base closure, another plane flies back to Ottawa with MPP's and MP's.

Base announcement: Summerside is not closing.

Overseas 1960, 104 reroled to ground support courtesy Trudeau. Delivering pizza in a Ferrari anyone?

Oh and flying a 104 low and fast, now that made for some spectular accidents.

Ah, I could tell you stories, but I'll be kind and spare ya.  ;D

 

[hugh19]

I love how his totals don't include  a sea shore ratio or a manning pool to fill in for the sick lame lazy and pregnant.

 

[NCS_Eng]

O'Leary true, but what i meant was dont limit yourself to my one idea....bring forth your own...

I mean i could have easily just said well we need to be at 80-90 000 strength for reg force total in tri-service, therefore we need another 20-25 000 members, on top of that we should also have 10 000 more reservists spread out throughout the 3 branches.

We also need to re-evaluate our navy, and should possibly look at doing like the Brits where they do not necessarily field the biggest fleet, but they do field one of the top quality fleets. As of Nov 06 they had almost 38 000 personnel in the RN, and they field 91 ships.  

Considering that Canada has a military of about 64 000 reg force troops, i would venture to say we probably dont have more then 20 000 naval personnel...in fact my guess is that the majority of the forces is in the army. According to Wikipedia we have 41 ships and from what i heard not all of them are sea worthy or out to sea right now.  So considering that the RN is more then half the size of the CF, we know we shouldnt field as many ships as them and most likely not even half as many ships as them.

- the CPFs or Halifax class frigates have a complement of 225 members each and we have 12...so 2700 total personnel for CPF
- 4 Iroquois class Destroyers aka 280's with a complement of 280 member each...1120 total personnel for 280s
- 12 MCDVs with a complement of 31 members each...372 total personnel for MCDVs
- the NEW Orca Class training vessels, 8 planned to be in service with 1 currently in service and 3 in construction with a complement of 4 crew, 16 trainees these are replacing the YAG... 32 crew and 128 trainees total for the Orca's
- 2 Provider class AORs with a complement of 365 personnel...720 total personnel for AORs
- 4 Victoria Class submarines, with only 3 in active duty with a complement of 47 each....141 total personnel for the subs

so total ships complement around 5000-5100

So ok, we know the AOR's are done, and the 280s well they should be or will be sh!t canned soon, so thats 6 vessels less right there. freeing up 1840 crew members
i say we scrap those ships we could take the armaments and use them on our other ships, but in getting rid of those we then need to get 2 small Air craft carriers, or 1 small air craft carrier and a JSS ship...so that we would have 1 ship to carry out each function to its fullest, and be able to deploy men and equipment and what not by ourselves without having to rely on americans.

Also running something in conjunction with the Navy such as the Royal Auxiliary Fleet would be a good idea in my opinion and if that were the case we could forego the JSS ship and just get 2 small air craft carriers, such as the Amphib carrier USS Tarawa or a light carrier such *** the USS independence would serve our purposes.


Then maybe get 1-2 destroyers to escort each carrier plus a frigate plus the above mentioned Auxiliary fleet for re-supplying.

In my opinion that would take care of the navy...next i would look at the airforce...and i agree with someone that mentioned this in another post in that our tri-service is somewhat like the USMC...so now i need to think about what else i would suggest. till later

There is so much wrong with this plan I don't even know where to begin. I'm not trying to crap all over your ideas but they are about as realistic as if you'd said that what Canada should acquire is some good Naval Dragons.

Your manning numbers represent "on-paper" levels and aren't even close to the reality of the situation. Simply counting hull numbers ignores the very real differences between the ships and you can't boil it down to "they have 90 ships and we only have 40"

Your ignorance of the logistical needs of the Navy downplay the real importance of the JSS. Furthermore your insistence on "Small Aircraft Carriers" completely ignores any justification on why Canada needs them and the incredible cost both in equipment, training and manpower such an undertaking would require. Its not as simply as cancelling the 280's and moving the crews over. Significant retraining would have to be done.

Take the weapons systems off of our current ships? So you are introducing obsolescence into our "next gen" ships?

What about support? Who will work on these ships? Where will those specialized skills come from? What sort of op cycle will we be looking at with only two carriers? Will FMF support be available? Do you know what the logistical back end of a Carrier force is like?

What about timeframe? Political support? Where is this money coming from? Do you think the Canadian public would support a massive purchase of American military goods?

How do you know Tarawa's would meet our needs? What needs are those? Have you ever been on a Tarawa? Do you know the manning levels required? What about the cost to Canadianize? What about the suitability of the ships for use with a smaller navy? What about DC considerations?

I like how you threw in at the end, almost as an afterthought, that we should "get" a few destroyers (like we can just go down to the destroyer store and make an order) for escort.

Threads like these could be very useful with some great ideas from people that are educated on the day-to-day workings of the armed forces. No offense but you strike me as someone who read a Janes Fighting Ships once and said "Hey these would be cool to have!"

 

[vonGarvin]

Overseas 1960, 104 reroled to ground support courtesy Trudeau. Delivering pizza in a Ferrari anyone?
Oh and flying a 104 low and fast, now that made for some spectular accidents.
Ah, I could tell you stories, but I'll be kind and spare ya.  ;D

As I recall, the 104 going to low-level ground attack was not just a Trudeau-esque decision.  The employment of the low-level strike for the Starfighter was made in order to deliver nuclear weapons in an environment where there was a massive threat to planes flying much higher than double the height of a tree.  So, fly very low, very fast.  Drop said bomb on armoured mass below, and then keep flying!

Of course, once we didn't have nukes anymore, using the 104 for dropping bombs was, well, useless!

 

[observor 69]

As I recall, the 104 going to low-level ground attack was not just a Trudeau-esque decision.  The employment of the low-level strike for the Starfighter was made in order to deliver nuclear weapons in an environment where there was a massive threat to planes flying much higher than double the height of a tree.  So, fly very low, very fast.  Drop said bomb on armoured mass below, and then keep flying!

Of course, once we didn't have nukes anymore, using the 104 for dropping bombs was, well, useless!

OK how about this, we're both right. Up until 1968-69 the 104 was used for nuclear strike, as you say low-level into Warsaw Pact country. Don't know about the "armed mass " part. Further comment on targets makes me uncomfortable.

In spite of Trudeau's best effort to get us out of NATO, 1968-69, he had to grudingly leave 1 Air Div in Europe but without nukes, reroled to ground support.

"In 1968-69, Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau even toyed with the idea of pulling out of NATO entirely. Cabinet opposition stayed his hand, but Trudeau's conviction that NATO had grown too important in Canadian policymaking was difficult to refute at a time when nearly all of Canada's military personnel trained mainly for a future war against the Warsaw Pact. Trudeau halved the army's commitment to Europe, eliminated the nuclear strike role, and downplayed suggestions that Canada's actions would limit its political influence with NATO members."
http://www.civilization.ca/cwm/disp/dis009_e.html


Reroled to dropping bombs and "stuff" was the part I was referring to, and the stories of us hitting interesting things.  Steel cables and a Cessna 172 come to mind,while flying low level in the ground support role.

 

[Bobby Rico]

The answer to the original question seems pretty obvious to me- dump more funding in the Forces, nuff said.  More money equals more and better equipment, means greater spending on recruitment and so forth.  I think the idea of having a 'combined' armed forces with other countries defeats the purpose of having a sovereign military.  We're part of alliances like NATO and so-forth, which is good in an operational sense, but to have a unified military structure that includes other nations is impractical, as others have already stated.  The only way to make our military betteris the all mighty dollar.  Simple as that.

 

[geo]

Bobby.... smarter spending of our hard earned $$$ is another issue.
do you build a new warship every 2 years, and refit in the other year - ensuring ongoing naval engineering skills are developed and maintained - OR order out (off the shelf from another country) OR like we have been doing for the last 60 years... feast & famine: mass build 5, 10 or 15 warships in one building frenzy folowed by.... nothing.

do you order a couple of 100 LAVs and then.... nothing