The stated foreign policy of Canada seems to disagree with you lol. You happen to see no value in European involvement haha. Ships and planes cant hold ground, no matter how many times we try to rehash that fallacy.
So the Canadian Marine Regiment then? copied off the Dutch Marines perhaps?
And if you cannot control the sea lines of communication then your army languishes without supplies.
110%. Almost like all three services complement each other
It isn't an either/or debate. The last time Canada considered seaborne operations was the CAST combat group and that basically soured DND on the concept. Afghanistan was supplied by an air bridge and IMHO you can't rely on that for MCO in Europe. So yeah. You need sea lanes and a system to make use of them. Canada doesn't have a system because logistics is left as an afterthought until the point where it becomes a problem. Neither the army nor the navy is putting any effort into developing a seal lane logistics system.
Re: Astan, I`d like to see how much of the air supplied logistics were prepositioned to a middle east port?It isn't an either/or debate. The last time Canada considered seaborne operations was the CAST combat group and that basically soured DND on the concept. Afghanistan was supplied by an air bridge and IMHO you can't rely on that for MCO in Europe. So yeah. You need sea lanes and a system to make use of them. Canada doesn't have a system because logistics is left as an afterthought until the point where it becomes a problem. Neither the army nor the navy is putting any effort into developing a seal lane logistics system.
I'm not so sure that was a lesson for those three. It was an issue to an extent but the real lessons were all land and air related.
Gen Rouleau put it best in committee back in late Oct - 75% of all future capital spending into the 2030s is earmarked for the Navy and that that 25% for the Army and Air Force combined is completely unsustainable and will not enable a balanced force.
The "corvette" will take longer, unless we build offshore and minimize Canadiizing it.
But do we need a balanced force? This is not a bullshit question either.
That is something neither of us are qualified to answer. Id suggest yes, you seem to suggest no. All I know is you still need armies to win wars and that our foreign policy is to be able to defend our NATO allies. At the end of the day, that means dudes killing people. We'll see what comes out in the next defence policy. Maybe that changes.
Chatter of a 'GPF' sounds alot like prepping the table for a reduction in the # of Rivers the RCN will get.
And yet, going back to since the creation of the office in 1964, navy officers have held the post of CDS only 3 times for a total of less than 5 years (not counting VAdm Murray's acting role). That's against a total of 10 army (including 5 of 8 this century) and 7 air force officers.
It's an interesting issue. I won't try to pretend. I lived through unification and it was a dog's breakfast; I'll never miss an opportunity to slag it. Reading John Conrad's recent book I came across this statement vis-a-vis the effects of unification on the army's logistics system.
IMHO, rather than merging three services into one, unification created one service with the requisite three "sub-services" but also created one overarching fourth sub-service which was the purple corporate structure. Not only does this corporate structure waste precious resources which ought to go to the field, but it consumes precious time by way of calcified bureaucratic processes. It would have been far better to leave the three services each with their own budget and left to their own devices to manage it within the directions given to each by the government. As it is, major capital decisions are retained by cabinet anyway. All the CAF manages are how to shuffle PYs around. Jointness in force employment existed long before unification/integration. IMHO, unification did not increase operational capabilities; it just added distant bureaucratic layers - and as Selkirk said - strategically devolved the purple trades to the lowest common denominator.
Yet most of the RCAF will be ReCapitilaized after 2034-35 so the RCN/CCG will drip, drip drip.
