Defending Canadian Arctic Sovereignty

[Ex-Dragoon]

Being on the HMCS Terra Nova when the Estai was arrested I dispute that Canada did nothing...it was the 90s BTW.

 

[Jungle]

No, I‘m talking about the first one, in ‘85... I remember Mulroney was in Vancouver and asked, in a press conference "What do you expect me to do, go to war against Spain ? We have no Navy to send to war..."
Then there was talk about the fact that Spain had an aircraft carrier and other stuff we didn‘t... That was the driving factor behind the Defence white paper of 1987.

 

[Bill Smy]

Early news reports stated that the ground troops to be committed to this exercise were to come from 2 RCR, but the grapevine states that the call has gone out to the militia for augmentation as 2 RCR cannot meet the requirement.

Is it not time to demand some truth from DND? If this exercise is to be manned by the militia, why not say so?

Colonel Pettis states that, "This is a first". Perhaps in composition of the deployment, but I recall that sovereignty exercises in the Arctic were called New Viking, and were primarily militia, and we were proud of it.

 

[Stakhanov]

Was looking up a few articles on this dispute, and found this one. This seems to illustrate best the problems Canada could face if we just backed down over this "useless rock".
http://www.naval.ca/article/Heubert/The_Return_of_the_Vikings.html

 

[Slim]

So now, after years of neglect, the government has Canadian sovreighty challengedand has little to answer the call with...Disgusting!

 

[elscotto937]

Bill,
SOVOPs in the Arctic have been conducted for years by regular force units augmented by the reserve force in some situations. Having the 2RCR augmented by the militia is not surprising but the exercise and op cannot be organized by the militia, the do not have the staff to put together a large scale exercise. SOVOPs were on a Coy level or smaller and practiced skills require to operate in extreme cold arctic conditions. It is a first, if it is a joint exercise and they are praticing war fighting skill. I think the clue that this maybe the objective, is the season that this is to be conducted - summer.

 

[Jungle]

Originally posted by Scott937:
[qb] SOVOPs were on a Coy level or smaller and practiced skills require to operate in extreme cold arctic conditions. It is a first, if it is a joint exercise and they are praticing war fighting skill. I think the clue that this maybe the objective, is the season that this is to be conducted - summer. [/qb]

The CAR conducted a number of Defence Of Canada scenarios. These ex‘s were CDO-group to Battle-group level, and practiced warfighting skills. I was in one on eastern Baffin Island (facing Greenland), at a place called Cape Dyer, in Feb 87. We jumped into a valley, then attacked and secured a radar station on a mountain top.

 

[elscotto937]

Jungle, I stand corrected, excellent info. That must have been a cold jump, was it the entire Battle Group...

 

[Jungle]

That particular one was a Battle-group ex. It involved 3 CDO, Recce PL and other elements of the CAR in Cape Dyer. The Airborne Armour element and other elements from the Airborne Battle-Group were deployed in Frobisher Bay (now Iqaluit) and other locations.
The jump in Cape Dyer occurred at first light, following a 6-hour flight from Trenton. The last 2 hours of that flight were dedicated to in-flight dressing, which was a nightmare... gotta love that !!!
The temp was around -60c, but the winds were low.

 

[xenomfba]

Uh. A naval war with Denmark would be absurd. Their Navy is better equipped than ours? Where is this guy getting his facts? They have four frigates that have no torpedos, no anti-aircraft capability, no anti-ship missiles and a complement of only 60 sailors. Compare that with our 12 frigates, each equipped with 4 torpedo tubes, 16 seasparrow anti-aircraft missile tubes, 8 harpoon anti-ship missile tubes, 20mm Phalanx CIWS and a complement of 225 sailors. I‘m sure the Danish Navy‘s ability to break through ice is really impressive when we‘re raining harpoon missiles on them from 125 km away.

Uh-oh, they‘re sending their 70 F-16s after us? Good thing our 4 air-defence destroyers are there, firing missiles at the approaching aircraft while they‘re still over 150 km away. Oh no, they invaded Canada with their 51 Leopard II tanks? Good thing we mothballed all our Leopard C2s -- with no tanks to shoot at, the Danish tanks are sitting ducks for aircraft and infantry carried anti-tank systems.

We don‘t spend a lot on our military, but the Danes spend even less -- about 30% of what we spend. Your money is on them? Yeah. OK. They need it.

 

[Ex-Dragoon]

Ummmm xenomfba I think you also need to get your facts straight as well before you get critical:

The Royal Danish Navy has 4 SSK(1 of which is aip equipped), 7 frigates (3 of which have Harpoons and Seasparrow--4 are ice capable), 27 patrol craft of various types including 14 that can be equipped with up to 8 harpoons, 4 minewarfare units, and 9 auxillaries of various sorts. If they deployed their entire navy at us thats over 152 harpoon SSMs that could be fired at us compared to our 96. Hmmmm not good odds. Also a point for you to consider we now have 3 air defence destroyers as HMCS Huron will not be coming back in service. Also we have one CPF (HMCS Toronto) in the Gulf. On the east coast we have 2 280s, 7 Halifax class frigates and 2 unready submarines. On the west coast we have 1 280 ,5 CPFs and one submarine. The east coast AOR is in refit. Getting the picture yet?

 

[Garry]

S_Baker,

Re: standing by. Yes, I believe you would. This reminds me a lot of the Falkland campaign, and the US was a very loyal ally of Britain. Tough to say, but this would be one to stay away from... for all of us!

 

[hugh19]

I have bad news for ya ex dragoon. All those danish patrol boats are designed for the nice calm baltic. They are design for very short amounts of time at sea and would not survive the atlantic.

Plus some of there ships will be in refit as will ours at any one time.

Also don‘t forget we would have freindly air cover and they wouldn‘t. Sorry the Danish fleet would sink.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

They wouldn‘t even have to invade, just bloody our nose. Likely event would be the Danes claiming the Island and announcing they are sending a team to build a base there and fanfare of sending one ship on the TV. Canada responds by sending one ship up there, (if the Danes are smart they send their ice-strenghtened ships, and do this when the ice is still around) The one Canadian ship is surprised by 3-4 Danish ships who paint the Canadian ship with their radars, the Canadian captain, tries to use bluff, but quickly backs down when the Danes fire either a warning missile or a few rounds over the bow. Canada has no ability to reinforce the one ship, most of our CF-18 are being serviced or their isn‘t any air to ground missiles around and the losses by trying to use dumb bombs would be to high. the Canadian ship retreats, the Danes setup camp and await the bluster in the UN. Canada is seen as impotent and incapable of protecting the North. Soon China decides that the NW passage is critical to its economy and begins to send ships through to Europe, any attempt by Canada to stop them is countered by threats to boycott Canadian trade....rather bleak eh?

 

[Ex-Dragoon]

And I have news for you sledge those Danish patrol boats have exercised with us in the middle of the North Atlantic on numerous exercises, might not be a comfortable trip but they can do it. I can‘t comment on which of their ships are in refit as I did not have their Ops Schedule available at the time I posted.

 

[hugh19]

yes but are we talking FPB‘s or patrol ships? different animal.

 

[Ex-Dragoon]

Also talking ideal circumstances in deployment as well.

 

[Ex-Dragoon]

You would not use FPBs in the worse weather but with a tender they can be easily deployed....look at the MTBs during WW2 for an example and it would not like be the Danes would be in open they would no doubt establish a sheltered base in Greenland.

 

[hugh19]

Oh and Colin no such thing as a warning missile. If your gonna use a finite resource you shoot to kill.

 

[Ex-Dragoon]

Colin the Thetis class frigates only have guns as well.