Defining Foreign and Defence Policy (and hence our Military Force)

[Colin Parkinson]

What gets me is actually most of this stuff is already having project offices and such, GBAD? 2019 is suppose to be RFP, replacing support vehicles I read as replace the LSVW and HL, well thats in the 2019-2021 time frame if funding allows. it's all already in the books, and if they wanted to, they could allocate the funds and get these projects going now, and we'd be signing contracts in time for 2019.

Classic Liberal stuff (well the CPC is guilty to, but the Liberals are experts at it)

 

[MilEME09]

No.  Not contractors.  Public Servants.  There is a difference.

We need them to staff the procurement project teams to start buying equipment ... and maybe displace a few military PYs for reinvestment into operational roles.

They also could make a good workforce for cyber if much of that capability becomes static, permanently conducting operations from a hub in Canada.

Well considering I've heard on here that the procurement office got effectively gutted in the 90's, more people there makes sense. I'll be impressed though if we can get contracts signed in under 5 years.

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

I can't understand why we need a "Cyber Command"? 

We've got CSEC, which is already administered by DND.  Expand its scope and resource envelope. 

 

[jmt18325]

I can't understand why we need a "Cyber Command"? 

We've got CSEC, which is already administered by DND.  Expand its scope and resource envelope.

Isn't that completely different?

 

[Kat Stevens]

Maybe there are a couple spare generals and colonels who need jobs?

 

[Lightguns]

I can't understand why we need a "Cyber Command"? 

We've got CSEC, which is already administered by DND.  Expand its scope and resource envelope.

Likely so the Yank General can have a golf partner of suitable status......

 

[The Bread Guy]

I can't understand why we need a "Cyber Command"? 

We've got CSEC, which is already administered by DND.  Expand its scope and resource envelope.

My limited understanding is that CSEC is focused on the detection/protection stuff (all open source, that), so to me, it makes sense that if an offensive capability is ramped up, some military know-how would be useful to mix into the technical expertise already there, no?

Sounds a bit like this is part of the larger "do we train SME's to be  troops too, or get soldiers to learn enough to guide the SME's?" debate.

 

[GnyHwy]

Sounds a bit like this is part of the larger "do we train SME's to be  troops too, or get soldiers to learn enough to guide the SME's?" debate.

I don't think I can be done effectively. This would apply to any capability.  The civs have the knowledge, but have no idea how the military works or what they need. The military folks know how the military works, but won't get the expertise, either because they will move on before getting it or have other/multiple priorities.

It needs to be both, with the military person in charge having enough knowledge of the military and the tech, to direct and guide the civilians. We essentially do this already.

 

[McG]

This table from an appendix (pg 106 here) caught my eye ...

... This policy ensures the Canadian Armed Forces will be prepared to simultaneously:

• Defend Canada, including responding concurrently to multiple domestic emergencies in support of civilian authorities;

• Meet its NORAD obligations, with new capacity in some areas;

• Meet commitments to NATO Allies under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty; and

• Contribute to international peace and stability through:

-- Two sustained deployments of ~500-1500 personnel, including one as a lead nation;
-- One time-limited deployment of ~500-1500 personnel (6-9 months duration);
-- Two sustained deployments of ~100-500 personnel and;
-- Two time-limited deployments (6-9 months) of ~100-500 personnel;
-- One Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) deployment, with scaleable additional support;
-- One Non-Combatant Evacuation Operation, with scaleable additional support ...

So, doable?

So basically two afghanistan sized amounts of personal deployed almost all the time, I feel like an extra 3000 reg force ain't going to cover it.

We have close to enough people now - we just employ them incorrectly, in places like ASGs or whatever they are called now, and CDA, and CADTC, and in post-office box HQs etc etc

Keep in mind that these personnel commitments do not tie themselves to a particular environment.  So, it could be two ATHENA type missions in parallel, or maybe it is one ATHENA in parallel to one IMPACT.  Arguably, the sustained and time-limited deployments of 100-500 could reflect a ship or two in some distant sea.  As far as a metric toward which to do force design, some assumptions will have to be made about missions & force packages. (What I see, from four sustained missions and three time-limited missions, is that we probably need the ability to launch four theater activation teams annually with sufficient logistic and engineering capacity to set the conditions for mission success, and also four theater close-out teams annually with the same engineering and logistic capacity built-in).

But even accepting that some of those missions will be primarily not in the land environment, the Army will still need better management of how PYs are employed.  I have already heard comment of how the 3,500 new PY will solve the hollowing of the brigades.  I don't expect as much.  605 PYs are already allocated for CANSOF.  More will be needed to expand the fighter force and grow the cyber and space capabilities.  We also already know that insufficient PYs are allocated to the BTL to sustain the force size we already have, so more of those 3,500 will have to go there.  So, if we want the field force that many here would think we need (and maybe imagine that those two sustained and one time-limited 1500 person missions happen to overlap geographically as a deployed brigade group with RCAF & CANSOF integrated), then the institution needs to set its priorities that way.  ... or, we can have two full & larger military colleges for the glory of the military colleges themselves.

 

[McG]

Some commentary:

Liberal defence plan puts national interest ahead of its own partisan concerns, for now
John Ivison
National Post
07 Jun 2017 (Updated: 08 Jun  7:31 AM ET)

OTTAWA — Now we know why Chrystia Freeland went to such lengths to sell the idea of “hard power” in her speech Monday – it was an effort to soften up Liberal voters to the idea of billions being spent on swords, not ploughshares.

The Strong Secure Engaged policy unveiled by Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan is a defence plan you might expect from a Conservative government. Indeed it is difficult to see how the Tories will be able to criticize it, beyond the plan making it even harder for new leader Andrew Scheer to balance the books within two years of taking power. Already bulging deficits are set to distend further still.

It is not a document that will appeal to the herbivore wing of the Liberal party.

But the government appears to have been so spooked at the prospect of becoming, in Freeland’s words, “a client state” of Trump’s America, that a declaration of independence was deemed necessary.

The president will probably consider that mission accomplished.

The plan is to spend an extra $6.6 billion in the next five years and $62.3 billion over the next 20 years. This will pay for increasing the size of the regular force by 3,500 troops, to 71,500.

Spending increases will follow in each year until, by 2027-8, defence expenditure reaches $33.4 billion a year, from $18.9 billion this year.

Capital spending will get a major $47.2 billion boost over the 20 years covered — taking the total for planned projects and new investments to $164 billion, on a cash basis.

Spending increases will follow in each year until, by 2027-8, defence expenditure reaches $33.4 billion a year, from $18.9 billion this year.

Capital spending will get a major $47.2 billion boost over the 20 years covered — taking the total for planned projects and new investments to $164 billion, on a cash basis.

The bulk of that capital spending increase is accounted for by surface combatant ships and fighter jets.

The $26 billion set aside to build 15 warships will be increased to the $60 billion it is estimated it will actually cost to build them.

The Royal Canadian Air Force has been promised 88 advanced fighter aircraft to replace the CF18s. The Conservatives had earmarked $9 billion; the new plan estimates an acquisition cost of up to $19 billion.

The $9-billion “interim” purchase of 18 Boeing SuperHornets barely warranted a mention, suggesting the “capability gap” the minister was so concerned about has mysteriously vanished. “The government continues to explore the potential acquisition of an interim aircraft,” was all the review said.

It was a curious document in many ways, spending much of its time on a new health and wellness plan, family support program and efforts to improve gender balance. It was replete with images of cute, multicultural military families, native drummers and Forces members doing all manner of good works around the globe.

Important as all that is, many in the military would surely prefer to know where they might engage — there was no mention of peacekeeping in Africa or new deployments in the Middle East.

There was ambitious talk of the Forces being able to handle a number of concurrent missions but no sense of strategic priorities — where in the world should we engage? Our ally south of the border is preoccupied by Kim Jong-un and his desire to build an inter-continental ballistic missile. Yet the government made clear it has no intention of signing up for ballistic missile defence.

The focus was on investments in equipment, aimed at providing the Canadian Armed Forces with the capacity to wield “the principled use of force” referred to by Global Affairs Minister Freeland.

Yet, as one veteran of such bureaucratic wars put it, having the commitment in a defence policy review means Sajjan is “only 10 per cent” of the way to delivering it.

The 2005 defence policy statement promised increased defence budgets, which saw a 35 per cent spending uptick by 2011. But the 2008 financial crisis curtailed that growth and cuts followed.

The 1987 White Paper had an even shorter shelf life and was gutted after the fall of the Berlin Wall two years later.

At that time, the Mulroney government had just started becoming concerned about the national debt. The Trudeau government appears to be unburdened by any such concerns – the new spending will simply be piled on the deficit.

But who’s to say the prime minister won’t have a blinding conversion to fiscal conservatism if confronted by imminent unemployment?

There are logistical issues, too.

David Perry, senior analyst at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, said the government has committed to spending serious amounts of new money, “if it all gets delivered as promised.”

But on that point, he expressed himself “very dubious.”

The Defence Department has long had major problems spending the money it has, never mind an extra $47.2 billion.

As one close watcher of the Defence Department put it, “Strong, Secure, Engaged” is a nice, clean, well-articulated document but it has no timelines and no implementation plan.

Sajjan echoed Freeland’s sentiments in his speech. “The Canadian Armed Forces are an indispensable instrument of Canada’s foreign policy. If we’re serious about our role in the world, we must be serious about funding our military. And indeed we are,” he said.

At least, they are for now.

But they weren’t particularly enthused during the 2015 election, when they promised to merely “maintain current National Defence spending.”

This is not an issue on which the Liberals are trusted on motive. It is not a vote-winner for them and their faith will be tested in the future, when other priorities become more pressing.

For now, though, the government should be commended for putting the national interest ahead of its own narrow partisan concerns.

There is no particular political upside for them. They will be judged on results, not intentions — and they won’t be in for another decade.

Liberals’ feel-good defence plan has some notable omissions
Matthew Fisher
National Post
07 Jun 2017 (Updated: 08 Jun  7:31 AM ET)

Canada’s back!

Well, it may be one day if some grand spending promises outlined in the Trudeau government’s defence policy review — which would increase defence spending by a whopping 70 per cent — are kept. But the timeline announced by the government Wednesday to get there runs to 2026 and beyond.

“Canada’s Defence Policy” is like other papers published since the end of the Second World War outlining military policy for the next 20 years. It is long on spending promises — $62 billion of them. But most of the money is heavily back-loaded. It will be subject to the budgetary constraints and whims of the winners of the next few federal elections and will not be of much help to Canada or NATO in the near future.

The document — announced to great fanfare before a Greek chorus of several hundred soldiers in Ottawa’s Cartier Square Drill Hall — was as interesting for what it didn’t say as for what it did say.

There was scant mention of peacekeeping, although this was supposed to have been Justin Trudeau’s signature military policy and the best way — or so he and his aides once thought — for Canada to secure a two-year appointment as a member of the United Nations Security Council.

Other than stating for the umpteenth time that at some point Canadian blue helmets will embark for Africa to honour a campaign promise that Trudeau made nearly two years ago, there was barely a whiff in the 112-page document or numerous side papers about where those peacekeepers might end up, in what configuration and to what end. The best its authors could muster was some vague talk about collaborating with the UN, which has made a hash of peacekeeping lately, and, even more dangerously, establishing closers ties with the African Union, whose record on peacekeeping has been a disgrace.

Replying to questions from journalists, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan hid, as the government has for months, behind the excuse that peacekeeping was dangerous. So there must be “no snap decisions” made about where to commit troops, the minister said.

What Sajjan did not say was that there had been a snap decision on peacekeeping and it was made by Trudeau in the 2015 election because his advisers thought there were votes in such a humanitarian gambit. But clearly neither the prime minister nor those around him had the slightest understanding at the time about how peacekeeping has changed radically since Canadians last did it in large numbers 20 years ago.

The military and the diplomatic corps have been bringing the cabinet up to speed about this ever since. What they have heard has clearly spooked them to the point where they do not have a clue how to honour this promise.

As tricky as peacekeeping has become, the army and the air force have been ready for nearly a year with personnel and assets to fulfill a wide range of mission requirements. Troops were identified and training space was set aside, but the government continues to dither, leaving in limbo the brigade that is always on call for such operations.

There are other significant gaps in what the government claims is a landmark document. Perhaps the biggest one is that there is nothing about whether Canada will finally join the U.S. program for North American ballistic missile defence, which has been a top NORAD priority for some time because of the lethal long-range capabilities that North Korea, Russia and China have been acquiring.

After consulting for months with all kinds of Canadians, all that the paper has to say about BMD is that Canada is committed to modernizing its overall contribution to NORAD.

There is also no clarity on the jet fighter procurement muddle. The paper announced that Canada now needs 88 new fighter jets, rather than 65, as the Tories had it. If this is the number of new jets that the RCAF actually gets, it will be good for Canada, NORAD and NATO. But there is no explanation about what represents a multibillion-dollar shift in policy or about when those new aircraft might actually join the fleet.

There is also nothing about how these new jets will fit in with the Liberals’ ill-considered plan to spend as much as $7 billion on an interim purchase of 18 Boeing Super Hornet jets that almost nobody in the military community in Canada or elsewhere understands the justification for.

What may be happening in slow motion is that the government is laying the groundwork to bail out of the sole-source Super Hornet interim buy in favour of a competition for a much larger number of aircraft. Almost all of Canada’s allies inside and outside NATO have decided on the much newer Lockheed Martin F-35. Germany and Poland are the latest countries to seriously consider buying the F-35, leaving Canada in awkward isolation with a short-term plan to buy the much older, less capable Super Hornet.

Other than the smart, multi-coloured brochure announcing the new policy, the most impressive thing about Wednesday’s announcement was that the numbers being thrown around were bigger than anyone expected. Special Forces is a prime example. This secretive lethal part of the military is to get an additional 605 badly needed troops for critical missions. And there is a guarantee of sorts that Canada will build 15 surface warships, after speculation that the number was going to shrink to as low as six because of ballooning costs.

There is also an acceptance of the realities of modern warfare with talk of more resources for drones, cyber warfare and intelligence, as well as predictable words about the need for greater diversity and gender equality.

The Defence Policy Review was not written only for Canadians, of course. It is designed to answer serious questions that Washington and NATO have about Ottawa’s commitment to collective security.

In this regard there is some fancy — some might say fanciful — bookkeeping so that it can be claimed that Canada will eventually spend 1.4 per cent of GDP on defence, though this is still far short of the pledge that it and every NATO country has made to spend two per cent of GDP on defence. Part of the way the government plans to reach 1.4 per cent is to throw into the calculation some of the money that is spent on the Coast Guard, the RCMP and pensions for soldiers and, if it was understood correctly, for DND civilians.

How much of this new arithmetic will be accepted by NATO, the U.S. and other allies is anyone’s guess. Still, the feel-good factor was high Wednesday. If history is any guide, a lot of the promises made in the Defence Policy Review will never be kept. Canadians should have the answer to that in about 2026.

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

Isn't that completely different?

CSE Mandate, as defined in the National Defence Act:

CSE’s mandate and authorities are defined in the National Defence Act, which requires CSE to do three things:

a.  to acquire and use information from the global information infrastructure for the purpose of providing foreign intelligence, in accordance with Government of Canada intelligence priorities;

b.  to provide advice, guidance and services to help ensure the protection of electronic information and of information infrastructures of importance to the Government of Canada;

c.  to provide technical and operational assistance to federal law enforcement and security agencies in the performance of their lawful duties.

So, we've got an organization that is administered by National Defence, has National Defence assets (CFS Leitrim/CFS Alert/CFS Masset/CFB Gander) already supporting it, already looks after Cyber Defence for the Govt of Canada and is responsible for all SIGINT collection, yet we deem it necessary to stand up an entirely new command with a very narrow scope? 

A cyber operator is only as good as the computing power they have at their disposal.  CSEC is in possession of one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world in their new billion dollar HQ in Ottawa, want to do actual offensive cyber operations?  You need to use a computer like that, is the CAF going to have a billion dollar computer at its disposal to conduct military operations?  Especially Offensive Ones.

A proper Denial of Service Attack takes a lot of computing power, especially if you want to bring down someone elses system.

In other words, I feel like we throw the word Cyber around a lot in the Defence Review, without having much of a clue as to what it all means.

 

[McG]

A proper Denial of Service Attack takes a lot of computing power, especially if you want to bring down someone elses system.

That is why you use zombies.

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

That is why you use zombies.

Where do we get the Zombies though?  Also, would the Canadian Government be willing to infect a bunch of random computers with Trojans and use them in a DoS attack?  Sounds kind of illegal to me and probably wouldn't pass the G&M test.

 

[Eye In The Sky]

I can't understand why we need a "Cyber Command"? 

For the same reason we *needed* Int Command?  8)

 

[The Bread Guy]

And what's the message o' the day?

• "Minister Sajjan Highlights Care for Military Members in Canada’s new Defence Policy"
• "Minister Hehr Highlights Care for Military Members in Canada’s new Defence Policy"
• "Parliamentary Secretary DeCourcey Highlights Care for Military Members in Canada’s new Defence Policy "
• "Parliamentary Secretary Romanado Highlights Care for Military Families in Canada’s new Defence Policy"

Care to guess how different each news release is?  #InfoMachineBoilerplateRulz

 

[Eye In The Sky]

So, out of all the talking and posturing, what deliverables are happening during this current governments term?  Anything other than CANSOF DEUs?

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Where do we get the Zombies though?  Also, would the Canadian Government be willing to infect a bunch of random computers with Trojans and use them in a DoS attack?  Sounds kind of illegal to me and probably wouldn't pass the G&M test.

You be able to spot the infection as being Canadian it will say "Please may I take over your computer"

 

[Blackadder1916]

You be able to spot the infection as being Canadian it will say "Please may I take over your computer, eh"

FTFY

 

[jmt18325]

So, out of all the talking and posturing, what deliverables are happening during this current governments term?  Anything other than CANSOF DEUs?

Since there is a substantial funding increase (about 10%) this year, it seems that there has to be something.  There is also predicted to be a jump of capital expenditures from 10% of last year's budget (less than $2B) to almost 20% this year (more than $4B).  I'm not sure what they're buying though.

 

[Kirkhill]

The $26 billion set aside to build 15 warships will be increased to the $60 billion it is estimated it will actually cost to build them.

Per John Ivison above.....

60,000,000,000 for 15 ships

Ugly news - 4,000,000,000 per ship 

Looking from the other side for possibilities

Given the nature of Canadian defence budgeting as I under stand it, which means that those ship "projects" include weapons systems, sensors and munitions .....

Could that unseemly price for ships include 6 (+/-) ships of the Aegis or similar type armed with RIM-161 Standard SM3 missiles?

And if 2 Task Forces of a JSS and 2 to 4 CSCs and an SSK (maybe)  how would a fleet of 2x JSS, 4-6 CSC-AAD, 6-9 CSC-GP(ASW), 2-3 CSC-C&S, and 4x SSKs be received?

Especially with 5-6 AOPS covered by Sats, RPAS-MALES, Xx LRPAs and 88x CFXX?

And an Army leaning "Lt" with a GBAD capability and the CF with a useful SOF capability?

All with reasonable C4ISR and Log?

Existing helo and air transport.  No new sea transport.