I'll believe it when I see it.
Government hints at boosting Canada’s military spending
- Thread starter Maxman1
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What. It’s getting to the point where a malicious President isn’t allowed to make a dishonest mistake? Sheesh!!
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Now that things are serious (well, ok, the government still isn’t serious) but I would imagine there should be some form of fair vandal consideration to consent to be added to such a list, otherwise people will not be updating their address and the military police will be swamped taking AWOL dudes to strip clubs (Jack Nicholson enters the chat).
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Why doesn’t the CAF just accept reality, cut back the number of battalions, squadrons, ships etc. and use the excess staff to fill out CF units. Re-establish units if recruiting, CFTPO, other training to deliver more useable bodies?
Banging the drum again ....
But we can't address the difference in the Canadian Defence Budget versus the cost of defence in European countries, like Finland, that employ conscripts.
I will stipulate that conscription is a tax on individuals and it is a drain on the economy.
But the net effect is that more of the available cash goes to buying hardware and to training soldiers. Less money goes to salaries, accommodations and pensions.
Finnish conscription system - Puolustusvoimat - YJA
puolustusvoimat.fi
The chart below depicts the first year of service. 165 days of basic training. 255 days for specialists. 347 days for officers and Non-Military Service.
View attachment 92456
View attachment 92458
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About us - Finnish Defence Forces - Puolustusvoimat - YJA
Commander, generals and Defence Command Finland as well as the centres.puolustusvoimat.fi
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5.6 million Finns
40.1 million Canadians
8,000 Finnish "Regulars"
58,000 Canadian "Regulars" (Actual Canadian Regulars = 52,835 TES as of Jan 1 2024)
4,000 Finnish "Civilians"
29,000 Canadian "Civilians" (Actual Canadian Civilians = 27,000 employed as of March 2020)
To this point the Finns are matching our effort fairly evenly.
Here is the big difference.
22,000 Finnish "Trainees"
157,000 Canadian "Trainees" per annum
6 months to a year of service followed by 30 to 40 years on the books in the reserve with 3 to 6 months of refresher training over those decades.
The kit
Materiel and Equipment of the Finnish Defence Forces - Puolustusvoimat - YJA
You can browse our equipment branch-by-branch or by different classes of weapons and weapon systems.puolustusvoimat.fi
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There is a full time air and maritime force as well as a small army that deploys a small battalion overseas (486) annually.
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That is all sustained with a budget of 6.2 BEURO or 2.3% of GDP
They buy from Germany, Israel, Norway, Sweden and the US
But the also have a well developed domestic arms industry
Patria, NAMMO, Robonic, SAKU and Sisu Auto.
Together they generate 133 MEURO in export sales to offset those foreign purchases.
....
What would it take to maintain our existing professional force AND add 157,000 TES to the Reserve pool every year?
FJAG
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I don't disagree with the general concept of having contracts which not only set fixed terms of service during which voluntary releases are hard to get - in order to induce a good amount of certainty in troop strength and to get a good payback for training time and expenses - but which would also mandate a fixed period of SuppRes service (for both RegF and PRes) - maybe even mandatory PRes service for retiring RegF members.
The factors would have to include skill fade as well as equipment holdings. I keep phrasing this - for the army in particular - as knowing what the force wants to be when it grows up. That requires knowing what full-time force you want in peacetime (not only to do tasks but also to fill the upper offr and NCM ranks with qualified capable people and to form the core for expansion) and in a crisis. When you figure out the crisis level you want to be able to meet on short notice then you need to equip that force and determine how to fill it out with low-cost reservists.
IMHO. Unless you know what end state you want to reach, you cannot properly plan your reserve equipment and pers structure. You end up with the incoherent structure we have which merely plans for today with an ad hoced, inadequate tomorrow.
Fabius
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The CAF has a form of Stockholm Syndrome on this I believe. As an institution it’s scared that if it were to zero fill units it will never get them back.
To a degree that explains why the structure was deliberately designed to be larger than the available PYs in the 1990s. It can also explain why the CAF seems to display no short term ability to stand down units in response to personnel pressures.
The policy of never actually deploying units in the army but rather filling bespoke CFTPO bricks for overseas tasks with individuals can be viewed to a degree as masking the very unit personnel shortages that it’s being used to solve.
GK .Dundas
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It's s
But they'd sure as hell notice if that Battalion wasn't there anymore.
The Navy tried to lay up vessels because of crew and money shortages during the Harper year's and got their knuckles rapped.
It's also a political problem. The average voter neither knows or cares that basically some of our Battalions are basically just the equivalent of enlarged Company.
But they'd sure as hell notice if that Battalion wasn't there anymore.
The Navy tried to lay up vessels because of crew and money shortages during the Harper year's and got their knuckles rapped.
quadrapiper
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A more overt "this is a nucleus" approach might be helpful: allows singing the song of "more PYs plz" without having to be as deceptive about it.
Looking at the thread title: building out the nine battalions to full strength, including the school staff, battalion-adjacent pers from range control to RPOps, etc., etc. needed to make full strength workable seems like an easy start (compared to What Will They Ride In, What Will The Artillery Look Like, Tanks???, etc.) on the Army side of things. Start working on getting the CAF's authorized strength increased, instead of playing shell games.
McG
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I think rushing to fill-out currently hollow combat battalions that don’t have equipment to employ personnel may lead to supervision & retention problems. SIP+10% is going to push new people to support growth, but we don’t need to prioritize creating positions to support first regimental tours. Any PY growth should start within under-established service support, schools, and institutional functions.
Colin Parkinson
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Looks like we can get a deal on some accommodations for any Western base. The fact that they can't sell this camp is a telling sign of how badly the Liberals effed the economy by killing any chance for a major potentiel project.
The cost of dismantling and transportation would cost more then buying a new camp more then likely. That is a huge a camp that is not easily moved to another site.
DND should buy it and send it over to Latvia for our Soldiers.
DND should buy it and send it over to Latvia for our Soldiers.
you are contradicting yourself.The cost of dismantling and transportation would cost more then buying a new camp more then likely. That is a huge a camp that is not easily moved to another site.
DND should buy it and send it over to Latvia for our Soldiers.
First you say it is too costly and then you want us to buy it anyway and ship it off shore which would cost even more. But if it will fit in with the Latvian building codes it would be a good way of getting accommodation built quickly because it does appear that we will be there for a long time. The camp Itself appears to be totally modular with each section the size of a large can so pulling it apart isn't much of an issue from there a flatbed or even loading it on a railcar will get it to harbour.
KevinB
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I suspect he was being sarcastic hence the smilie at the end.you are contradicting yourself.
quadrapiper
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MilEME09
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really its a little bit of everything, especially for armoured vehicles, but even radios, arty, machine guns etc all need to be much more. Both regular and reserve.
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No no. We let the ships self select retirement. Only people are forced out of service at 60 years old.
MilEME09
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Just ask the Browning Hi power, served over 90 years in the CAF, Was begging for death, and now the Ukrainians have them.
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Uh, Latvia is only a tent city because we are ramping up massive construction projects; think Germany 2.0, and there is a lot of permanent concrete construction being delivered. Some wonky things that are allowed in Latvian code that we are getting changed (like deadbolts that needs a key on both sides for room doors), but in other things their requirements are actually higher than ours.you are contradicting yourself.
Some portions of that camp may have been delivered modularly, but it's now a fully assembled campus that doesn't seem to be built to be disassembled and moved. They also mentioned it would have to have upgrades done to meet current code, so it's not even just a break up/rebuild.
Probably a lot of bang for the buck to break down bits and pieces for reuse/recycling, but it would be faster/cheaper to just buy something off the shelf, which is why no one is biting.
GK .Dundas
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There was nothing wrong with those weapons that a decent rebuild programme couldn't have fixed.
I'm beginning to suspect that their replacement on the other hand will need a lot more then a rebuild ..
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It was specifically because we were out of money for repairs, so a few MCDVs got tied up temporarily. That was after a shit tonne of other cuts to 2nd and 3rd line cuts to the 280 equipment and some other things (they all fell under the same funding envelope as the MCDVs as the Class desks had been consolidated so the 280s, tankers, MCDVs and aux ships were all fixed with the same money). It's a bit fuzzy, but I think we had trimmed down our plans from $75m to $20m, then it got cut again. I think I had spent about a year coming up with a bare bones class plan to fit in that tiny envelope so kind of quiet quit for a few weeks when that came down.
There was a general shortfall for the O&M budget in other spots on the Navy side, so they were also out of fuel budget for the FY on the coasts so that contributed to some sailing getting delayed/canceled.
It was during Afgh, where the CAF had a budget cut while doing combat ops, so everyone understood that the Army then deployed RCAF units got dibs, but there was no adjustment to RCN expectations for operational tempo so was pretty insane.
Sometime around then one of the sub refits got a bill for an extra $100M or something someone forgot was coming so wasn't planned, so for a while the sea nerds had a pretty hard hate for the sub nerds in MEPM.
It was a weird time, but somehow they found the money for the repairs and fuel after that news story hit the front page.
I may be getting my timing mixed up (it was all a bit of a mess) but there was some pretty serious planning around an MCDV life extension at the time, including some costed proposals, but that never went any further than that. Budgets never were really topped up for ship maintenance/repairs, and CPFs around then got the bare minimum in the dock, and probably added a lot onto the current poor material state as some ships went about a decade without real repairs, as the only thing that was done was the planned work, with a few ships getting zero arising work,.
For a bit of context, that's a bit like putting your car on a lift, looking at a bunch of rusty stuff, slapping a bit of bondo and fresh paint on the body panels and driving away hoping for the best. There are typically hundreds of major arisings, including major structural, mechanical and electrical repairs, and is expected because it's the only time you can actually take a look at some of the things, and can only do some of the work with the ship out of the water.
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