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

[daftandbarmy]

This could be posted in the funny photo thread.View attachment 96730
Posted on social media:

The government has a plan to build a military out of these people.

Gwynne Dyer's a bit of a looney, but he wasn't wrong

The award-winning second episode of Gwynne Dyer's 1983 series "War," which focuses on the process by which civilians become soldiers, and the implications of this process for culture and civilization. For educational use only.

 

[KevinB]

Meanwhile Hegseth to industry.

Product over process. If you aren't perpared to invest in yourselves then we will work with those who will.

Unveiling acquisition overhaul, Hegseth tells industry to get with the program

One expert said the reforms would sweep away Cold War processes—and draw backlash from established primes.

www.defenseone.com

And the 85% solution today is better than perfection tomorrow.

Redirect Notice

An idiot who doesn’t understand why those processes were created.

The 85% solution is not the problem, it’s the 15% one that someone claims is 85%

 

[Kirkhill]

An idiot who doesn’t understand why those processes were created.

The 85% solution is not the problem, it’s the 15% one that someone claims is 85%

Its the commitee that clings to the 15% non-compliance as a means to defer a decision and return funds in exchange for promotions.

 

[lenaitch]

why would you need all the fancy stuff that military cart around? Contract with Veritas to mfg shovels and axes. Find a Canadian garment factory to re-open and mfg. coveralls, jeans, tee-shirts and get Kodiak to start producing boots in Canada again. The force that is being discussed would/should be suitable to fill sandbags and cut fire trenches and help out in other local emergencies but I cannot even begin to imagine them being drafted into a combat situation. For vehicles, a fleet of basic, no options, F150s or Silverados should do it or even charter school buses for the times they are actually called upon. But then again, does anyone really believe that your average 9 to 5 civil servant is going to volunteer his off-time on a regular basis? The Boy Scout network is screaming for male leadership and very little is forthcoming. The same can be said for most volunteer organizations. The only way most government workers will work on a weekend is if they are being paid double time at the least

Which would make more sense, if it had been floated by the Minister of Public Safety as opposed to the DND.

 

[The Bread Guy]

Which would make more sense, if it had been floated by the Minister of Public Safety as opposed to the DND.

Zackly. Just judging from the third-hand (memo drafters to memo to media) info out there, including weapon training means they'd be envisioned as more than just a civil defence/local emergency response force. That said, still looking for the full text of the directive to see any nuances worth noting.

 

[Kirkhill]

Peacetime and wartime activities in Sweden

Home Guard

The Home Guard is designed to operate across the entire conflict scale – from providing peacetime assistance to society in times of crisis, to armed struggle in wartime. The Home Guard is part of the Swedish Armed Forces and comprises nearly half of the..

www.forsvarsmakten.se

Home Guard (Sweden) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Russia turns Sweden’s Home Guard into a recruitment triumph

The country’s military reserve force is becoming a hot ticket for Swedes.

www.politico.eu

 

[KevinB]

Peacetime and wartime activities in Sweden

Home Guard

The Home Guard is designed to operate across the entire conflict scale – from providing peacetime assistance to society in times of crisis, to armed struggle in wartime. The Home Guard is part of the Swedish Armed Forces and comprises nearly half of the..

www.forsvarsmakten.se

Home Guard (Sweden) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Russia turns Sweden’s Home Guard into a recruitment triumph

The country’s military reserve force is becoming a hot ticket for Swedes.

www.politico.eu

Again the Europeans have a whole different last 200 year history.
Things that are done there are not necessarily compatible with the North American experience.

 

[Czech_pivo]

Again the Europeans have a whole different last 200 year history.
Things that are done there are not necessarily compatible with the North American experience.

True, they seem to have a long memory about who's conquered who over the centuries and tend not to forgive them.

 

[Kirkhill]

Again the Europeans have a whole different last 200 year history.
Things that are done there are not necessarily compatible with the North American experience.

You want to go revisit that clause about enemies foreign and domestic?

And why were your Southerners laughing at that Ontario police chief who told the locals just to hide and wait for the police to show up?

These days it is hard to figure out if it is Poles or criminals attacking your radio station.

The Swedes take the explicit position that their Homeguard is to engage first because it will take a bit to get the professionals into the fight.

Would the Squamish Five be successful again today?

 

[Brad Sallows]

An idiot who doesn’t understand why those processes were created.

The 85% solution is not the problem, it’s the 15% one that someone claims is 85%

Taking emotion and partisanship out of the question, it's likely that in the event of "big war" there will be a lot of streamlining - more so if things start out poorly, less so if we seem to be winning from the flag drop.

 

[Brad Sallows]

Again the Europeans have a whole different last 200 year history.
Things that are done there are not necessarily compatible with the North American experience.

North Americans have plenty of experience with war, much of different than anything experienced by Europeans, who never had anything resembling a frontier during that time. North Americans knew what it meant to defend themselves, much of it spontaneously, against aggressors for a long count of years. It's just that 1930s socialism/fascism didn't find fertile ground here and no fighting of consequence took place here during the two big ones. The idea of "home defence" has a long history here.

 

[Navy_Pete]

North Americans have plenty of experience with war, much of different than anything experienced by Europeans, who never had anything resembling a frontier during that time. North Americans knew what it meant to defend themselves, much of it spontaneously, against aggressors for a long count of years. It's just that 1930s socialism/fascism didn't find fertile ground here and no fighting of consequence took place here during the two big ones. The idea of "home defence" has a long history here.

That's a fair bit ancient history; frontier defence was generations ago and has been irrelevant for 100 years, and there was plenty of Nazi and Communist support in Canada and the US (and UK and other European countries). For most Canadians that threat dissapeared in the mid 1800s, and wars are something that happen to other countries overseas.

There have been wars and conflicts somewhere in Europe pretty much every generation, and Sweden, Poland and other countries have been having low level incursions and border tests from Russia continuously since the Cold War started.

We've had soldiers forward deployed for NATO on and off for a long time, but then they came back to Canada and had an ocean between them. For a lot of Europe it's not a hypothetical threat when they share borders or can see them across the horizon. That's only ramped up since the invasion of Crimea and the war in Ukraine, but is why Sweden has such a serious home guard and mass mobilization capability that is intended to stop the Russian in their tracks, not just slow them down. Afaik Sweden and Norway both have a standing policy to attack any unidentified subs in their territorial waters, and why Sweden was able to basically seize that grounded Russian sub with a very rapid mobilization years ago.

 

[Czech_pivo]

That's a fair bit ancient history; frontier defence was generations ago and has been irrelevant for 100 years, and there was plenty of Nazi and Communist support in Canada and the US (and UK and other European countries). For most Canadians that threat dissapeared in the mid 1800s, and wars are something that happen to other countries overseas.

There have been wars and conflicts somewhere in Europe pretty much every generation, and Sweden, Poland and other countries have been having low level incursions and border tests from Russia continuously since the Cold War started.

We've had soldiers forward deployed for NATO on and off for a long time, but then they came back to Canada and had an ocean between them. For a lot of Europe it's not a hypothetical threat when they share borders or can see them across the horizon. That's only ramped up since the invasion of Crimea and the war in Ukraine, but is why Sweden has such a serious home guard and mass mobilization capability that is intended to stop the Russian in their tracks, not just slow them down. Afaik Sweden and Norway both have a standing policy to attack any unidentified subs in their territorial waters, and why Sweden was able to basically seize that grounded Russian sub with a very rapid mobilization years ago.

There’s a reason why Sweden and Finland decided at breakneck speed to join NATO and it wasn’t for the Christmas dinner.

 

[Navy_Pete]

There’s a reason why Sweden and Finland decided at breakneck speed to join NATO and it wasn’t for the Christmas dinner.

Sure, but Sweden and Finland have been working very closely with NATO, even leading working groups that feed into doctrine, system designs and tactics for decades. This was less about them wanting to join, and NATO stopping to pretend that keeping a neutral ring of unaligned countries on the Russian border was effective after Putin tried to annex all of Ukraine and get back the parts of the Soviet Union that actually invented and built things.

 

[Kirkhill]

That's a fair bit ancient history; frontier defence was generations ago and has been irrelevant for 100 years, and there was plenty of Nazi and Communist support in Canada and the US (and UK and other European countries). For most Canadians that threat dissapeared in the mid 1800s, and wars are something that happen to other countries overseas.

There have been wars and conflicts somewhere in Europe pretty much every generation, and Sweden, Poland and other countries have been having low level incursions and border tests from Russia continuously since the Cold War started.

We've had soldiers forward deployed for NATO on and off for a long time, but then they came back to Canada and had an ocean between them. For a lot of Europe it's not a hypothetical threat when they share borders or can see them across the horizon. That's only ramped up since the invasion of Crimea and the war in Ukraine, but is why Sweden has such a serious home guard and mass mobilization capability that is intended to stop the Russian in their tracks, not just slow them down. Afaik Sweden and Norway both have a standing policy to attack any unidentified subs in their territorial waters, and why Sweden was able to basically seize that grounded Russian sub with a very rapid mobilization years ago.

Perhaps we have to keep reminding Canadians that we do have real, actual enemies that act against our interests and have access to our waters, skies, shores and cities.

 

[Navy_Pete]

Perhaps we have to keep reminding Canadians that we do have real, actual enemies that act against our interests and have access to our waters, skies, shores and cities.

Perhaps, but it's a lot more real when you can literally see them. If we had Russia instead of US on our southern border, we would likely all have rifle lockups and well equipped armouries in near proximity, as well as a CAF very focused on defending territory on home soil vice deploying overseas. The Navy and RCAF would likely look massively different, and I think the Army would similarly be much more heavily equipped with a lot of equipment, and all ready to go. Pretty embarassing when a single, relatively small deployment to Latvia and our maritime commitments to Op Reassurance essentially eats up a huge portion of our sustainable capability and results in a lot of rubber banding on duct tape to maintain that. We can barely keep up with just the admin to pay people deployed benefits when they are living on the economy FFS.

 

[Kirkhill]

Perhaps, but it's a lot more real when you can literally see them. If we had Russia instead of US on our southern border, we would likely all have rifle lockups and well equipped armouries in near proximity, as well as a CAF very focused on defending territory on home soil vice deploying overseas. The Navy and RCAF would likely look massively different, and I think the Army would similarly be much more heavily equipped with a lot of equipment, and all ready to go. Pretty embarassing when a single, relatively small deployment to Latvia and our maritime commitments to Op Reassurance essentially eats up a huge portion of our sustainable capability and results in a lot of rubber banding on duct tape to maintain that. We can barely keep up with just the admin to pay people deployed benefits when they are living on the economy FFS.

Not wrong. But Toronto can't see Peterborough.

 

[Brad Sallows]

That's a fair bit ancient history; frontier defence was generations ago and has been irrelevant for 100 years,

Sure, but he was referring to the past 200 years. If we move the window to, say, 1914 then, yes, there are fewer conflicts in North America.

and there was plenty of Nazi and Communist support in Canada and the US (and UK and other European countries).

Quantify "plenty" (again, I'm focused on North America, not Europe). What percentage of adults? How many stood for election? How many votes did they garner?

There have been wars and conflicts somewhere in Europe pretty much every generation, and Sweden, Poland and other countries have been having low level incursions and border tests from Russia continuously since the Cold War started.

Mexico has been an ongoing security shit-show, and several countries in the Caribbean have been in conflict, but I doubt it has shaped our psyche any more than, say, a Scandinavian is shaped by what happens in the Balkans. As for the Cold War, we were certainly aware of it. The greatest threat was nuclear war, and the risk to us wasn't less than it was for Europeans.

Europeans took advantage of the "peace dividends" as much as we did.

I will continue to contend that Europeans' mind-set is not as different as some people would like to think it must be. I can get one impression from looking at the Finns, and another from looking at the Belgians. It doesn't take an ocean.