You know...I‘ve been on the forum for about a month now and keep hearing the same things from all of the regualor contributers over and over again. I have come to understand that the position that the CF is in right now is DIRE!
If, after a month of reading and replying to you all, I understand the serious nature of the situation I‘m sure the government recognizes it too. After all they‘ve only been hearing it for about 40 Years!
The sad fact is they DON‘T CARE...make no mistake. We get the minimum (or less)to do the job and thats it! The politicians stand in front of their supporters and talk about how much of this and that the CF has, and how much of this and that they‘re doing.The supporters would cheer for these monkey‘s even if they reduced our forces to horses and rowboats!
To be an effective armed force we need
-The ability to field an effectively large fighting force to be able to meet our commitments overseas and provide home defence. Call it maybe three more reg force infantry regiments (nine battalions-roughly 1000 men per battalion. Infantry guys correct me if I‘m mistaken on the numbers please).
-We need an Airforce that can do heavy lift from smooth or rough surface fields.
Helicopters-Heavy lift, combat cargo and ground support, and lots of them. ( nothing wrong with the Blackhawk, the A10 thunderbolt or the Cobra!)
-if we can‘t defend our coasts we should at least be able to patrol them with aircraft enough to monitor what goes on up there. ( anyone remember the Russian bombers that flew over Canadian soil unopposed a year or two back?!)
-The navy needs to be doing Navy stuff-in the water. How many reserve units across Canada could be actively patrolling with armed vessels, looking for druggies or whatever. In the U.S the Coast Guard Reserve does it! And well from What I hear!
-We should have a man management system that gets people in the door and trained quickly...and also realizes talent from other countries and brings them on board ( I have a friend that was in the U.S. Armys special operations command, rank of Colonel-The CF brought him on as a junior LT...which he would have done except his job wouldn‘t give him the time off for BMQ!).
-Also more training of reserve by reg would be beneficial. Don‘t take their summers away like they do now. A full time training unit could be established to train..and travel to different units to fulfill training requirements maybe!?
If we went to the U.S. and said " we need some stuff" they would probably line up such an ‘arms bazarre‘ for us that we would get everything we need...Nothing wrong with buying from them...The Brits have the Apache after all
Just some food for thought...
when I mentioned the Huron and the subs. I wasn‘t certain which ships they were taking parts for. I‘ve heard a few things, but I haven‘t looked into it closely, so I should ease off on that. The primary point is, a destroyer is out of service and it shouldn‘t be.
