Government hints at boosting Canada’s military spending

I have long said that you could fund the CAF to 4 percent of GDP, but we would still lag behind in NATO and be much the same where we are.

It's never the money, it's politics. It's procedures. It's the pork-barreling in our defence spending that makes us a paper tiger in NATO.

My only hope in all of this for the CAF and the GoC, whatever the political stripe that may be, is that it will rouse them out of the "Peace Dividend" slumber. The world has been unstable since 1945. We have used geography, proximity, and association as a Defence Policy ever since. ICBMs don't care how close to the U.S. or how far from Russia/China we are.

Don't give us a dime more, but let us spend money on defence like it matters. The fact we follow the same rules for purchasing a fighter aircraft as we do for buying office furniture for a Service Canada office is disgraceful. Don't treat defense procurement as a stimulus package for Canadian Industry. There I said it.

We spend so much money, time, and effort trying to get that money to stay in Canada; be it by awarding contracts to companies with no capability to produce items without first "retooling" and"developing the production lines", or by hamstringing perfectly competent and competitive bidders by forcing the project to be made in St. Margaret de Poutain de Champignon, QC because the ruling government either lost the seat in the election, or won it with promises.

We spend so much money and staff hours jumping through TBS regulations that are great for other departments, but are terrible for defence procurement. Some items you have to sole source, because there are technologies and capabilities no one else makes. By doing the bid process, you get companies clamoring for a project they can't deliver on, but because they tick the bright boxes on the score sheet....

I truly and honestly belief we need to split from PSPC and legislate that its not beholden to TBS, only to the PBO/PCO. The guiding principles of this new Defence Procurement department should be "Off the shelf, from somewhere else" if there isn't an industry in Canada.

BOOTFORGEN has demonstrated how well we do when we are able to actually get what we need, instead of lining the pockets of a Canadian company that got lucky.

That, but with tanks, fighters, ships, weapons systems....

 

[McG]

Just spitballing here. Latvia is the primary theatre where we expect to require our mechanized forces. We currently have 6 x LAV battalions at 65-67% of full pers levels. That means you basically have 6 x Battalions of vehicles but only 4 x Battalions of personnel.

Let's say you reorganize to have 4 x LAV Battalions at full pers levels in Canada. Pre-position 1 x Battalion of LAVs in Latvia with our eFP Brigade. That leaves you with 1 x Battalion worth of LAVs as spares/war stocks to draw on if necessary.

The four LAV Battalions rotate as a fly-over Battalion to crew the eFP Latvia LAVs or can be tasked for Battle Group sized deployments elsewhere if/when required. That still leaves you with 3 x full LAV Battalions for the primary Latvia mission.

Our armoured fighting vehicles are not the critical path. Our logistics fleets are in collapse. Our echelons from unit to formation are under resourced, and we don’t even have anything that can provide a national hub and support a mobile service battalion in a deployed theatre.

The logistics vehicle projects that we do have will ameliorate but not solve this. They are on fixed budget paths with max scope set before Feb 2022 (when we were still building towards a world class FOB army) and not revisited since.

 

[CBH99]

Our armoured fighting vehicles are not the critical path. Our logistics fleets are in collapse. Our echelons from unit to formation are under resourced, and we don’t even have anything that can provide a national hub and support a mobile service battalion in a deployed theatre.

The logistics vehicle projects that we do have will ameliorate but not solve this. They are on fixed budget paths with max scope set before Feb 2022 (when we were still building towards a world class FOB army) and not revisited since.

I'm not well versed on the specifics, and could very well be wrong here. But it was my understanding our logistics vehicle plans were...

- Approx 1200 medium utility trucks, that have replaced the MLVW. (They dwarf the old MLVW, and can be found in a lot of Reece unit vehicls pools)

- Approx another 1200 trucks of a SMP type, that would be more suitable for deployments (Armour kits, etc etc)


That's 2400 medium logistics trucks we should have in our inventory.



Was there a complication somewhere along the way? Is that not the case currently?

If our logistics fleets are in collapse, why is this the case?

 

[McG]

The medium fleet cannot move all our loads … too few trucks and too insignificant a payload. It has no recover variants and no fuel trucks. The logistics fleets are the HLVW, SHLVW, HESV, some Kenworths still alive in Wainwright, and the AHSVS (a micro-fleet in quantities to support a single BG in FOB based warfare).

 

[dapaterson]

MSVS MilCOTS was contracted in 2009; the trucks are over a decade old.

Also missing in necessary quantities is MHE (forklifts etc).

 

[McG]

Let’s not forget the self-divesting LSVW which provides the vast majority of mobile repair team vehicles and the command posts for all our logistics organizations.

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

Oh no I’m 100 percent with you in that. Although I think a light Bn could effectively defend some dense Baltic forests, I’d prefer they be in an ifv of some kind. Frankly that we can deploy a full Bg is shocking, even in the 90s we had Bgs in the Balkaans.

Multiple BG's
In fact the 92-93 period was just about as thing as there CA was stretched, as the CAR was in Somalia, and 2 RCHA was in Cyprus, as well as the FYR deployments coming and going...

Don't even need to go back that far....

2010 = BG in Afghanistan + SOTF + Air Wing + PRT + Naval Forces in the Arabian Sea and a bunch of extras... when you add up the #s it's close to 5000

We also had Haiti which was 800-1000 pers

And we were also handling the 2010 Olympics at the same time

All told, 10,000+ engaged in Operations as early as 13 years ago.

We have fallen considerably

 

[CountDC]

SHORAD
120Mortar
ATGM
what else are we missing that we can mount on a LAV

Politicians on the front?

No. Your memory has failed you here. The Liberals did promise to never buy it and to run a competition, but the Conservative deferred the actual decision until they lost power. Conservatives had announced an intent to buy F35 as early as 2011, but they never put it in the budget and they never committed through a contract.

Ah, thanks for the corrections but not so much my memory as mis-reported (imagine news getting anything wrong lol). Wikipedia and other unreliable sources let me down again. I remember some news at the time talking about cancelling the deal and wiki still reads "A Liberal government will immediately cancel the mismanaged $30 billion sole-source deal for F-35 stealth fighter jets"

 

[Brad Sallows]

Politicians on the front?


Ah, thanks for the corrections but not so much my memory as mis-reported (imagine news getting anything wrong lol). Wikipedia and other unreliable sources let me down again. I remember some news at the time talking about cancelling the deal and wiki still reads "A Liberal government will immediately cancel the mismanaged $30 billion sole-source deal for F-35 stealth fighter jets"

A deal that cost money was Chretien's cancellation of a helicopter contract. Maybe a mix-up?

 

[Fabius]

I’m out of the Bns right now and have been for a year. So grain of salt and I won’t get into specifics. That being. Said the infantry is actually doing okay for manning (ie it’s a green trade) however the Bns are only authorized at 70% their full strength. Which means that even at 90 odd percent full the Bns are actually at 65-67 percent of what they should be for a deployment. So for a Bn to go over you need to pull 1-2 companies worth of people from somewhere. Deploying two companies + a tank Squadron is an option but isn’t really doctrine, not that 15 tanks is either mind you.

Almost all L4 units are bottom of the manning priority.
Most CA units are the bottom of the VCDS manning priority, it then trickles down that most units are the bottom of the CA manning priority.

Interestingly the 3rd Battalions as the CA high readiness rapid deployment units are afforded the same priority as the mech Bns. I’m not expecting that to change with the GRTF.

Usually for a HR or VHR unit to go out the door with their actual establishment they are resourced at 105-110% manning to accommodate sick, injured, rear party etc.

 

[MilEME09]

I'm not well versed on the specifics, and could very well be wrong here. But it was my understanding our logistics vehicle plans were...

- Approx 1200 medium utility trucks, that have replaced the MLVW. (They dwarf the old MLVW, and can be found in a lot of Reece unit vehicls pools)

- Approx another 1200 trucks of a SMP type, that would be more suitable for deployments (Armour kits, etc etc)


That's 2400 medium logistics trucks we should have in our inventory.



Was there a complication somewhere along the way? Is that not the case currently?

If our logistics fleets are in collapse, why is this the case?

all 2400 aren't cargo, especially the new Mack fleet, it has MRT's, MHS, cargo, PLS. You can't just get less trucks and make them bigger. You can't have a truck delivering in two places at the same time. Every new generation of kit we buy less, and less of it, and we are coming to the point it is biting us in the rear end.

 

[Kirkhill]

MSVS MilCOTS was contracted in 2009; the trucks are over a decade old.

Also missing in necessary quantities is MHE (forklifts etc).

1200 trucks

2023-2009 = 14 years (Call it 15)

80 new trucks a year on an ongoing basis?

Aside from the Engineer and Arty versions aren't all the rest of them equipped to take on SEV Modules?

 

[suffolkowner]

The trucks are an interesting thing

The LSVW is supposed to be replaced close to (or less?) what we have now 1300 instead of the original 2879

The MSVS Milcots = 1300
The MSVS-SMP - 1587

The HLVW I think I read somewhere is going to be a max of 500?

And then I think I read that the LUVW-Milcot (1061) and LUVW-SMP (1159) were going to be replaced with one common vehicle with add on armour but at half the fleet so like 1100 total

edit

Logistics Vehicle Modernization Project (LVM) - Canada.ca

The Logistics Vehicle Modernization project will acquire new fleets of light and heavy logistics vehicles, trailers, vehicle modules, armour protection kits, initial in-service and logistics support.

www.canada.ca

edit no 2

"The LVM project will acquire up to 542 heavy trucks and as many as 1,113 light trucks to replace the Heavy Engineer Support Vehicle (HESV), Heavy Logistics Vehicle Wheeled (HLVW), and Light Support Vehicle Wheeled (LSVW), all of which entered service in the 1990s."

Bidding opens on logistics trucks | Canadian Army Today

canadianarmytoday.com

 

[markppcli]

Almost all L4 units are bottom of the manning priority.
Most CA units are the bottom of the VCDS manning priority, it then trickles down that most units are the bottom of the CA manning priority.

Interestingly the 3rd Battalions as the CA high readiness rapid deployment units are afforded the same priority as the mech Bns. I’m not expecting that to change with the GRTF.

Usually for a HR or VHR unit to go out the door with their actual establishment they are resourced at 105-110% manning to accommodate sick, injured, rear party etc.

None of which contradicts what I said. I know the manning for units, they’re just below their peace time establishments. The problem is that’s only 70 percent their deployed strength. So we end up robbing Peter to pay Paul. I’ll care about the man I g of the light “GRTF” if they ever deploy a company to harms way.

 

[Fabius]

None of which contradicts what I said. I know the manning for units, they’re just below their peace time establishments. The problem is that’s only 70 percent their deployed strength. So we end up robbing Peter to pay Paul. I’ll care about the man I g of the light “GRTF” if they ever deploy a company to harms way.

Agreed generally. It was meant as amplification not contradiction.

 

[dimsum]

The more I read this thread the more incensed I get at the state of our CAF. Is there not someone out there who can stop this insanity before it costs lives?

The sad, but true, part is that an LSVW (or tank) blowing up won’t cause national headlines the same as a CPF sinking or an Aurora falling out of the sky.

 

[Maxman1]

I'm not well versed on the specifics, and could very well be wrong here. But it was my understanding our logistics vehicle plans were...

- Approx 1200 medium utility trucks, that have replaced the MLVW. (They dwarf the old MLVW, and can be found in a lot of Reece unit vehicls pools)

- Approx another 1200 trucks of a SMP type, that would be more suitable for deployments (Armour kits, etc etc)


That's 2400 medium logistics trucks we should have in our inventory.



Was there a complication somewhere along the way? Is that not the case currently?

If our logistics fleets are in collapse, why is this the case?

The FMTV would fit the bill. It's available in 2.5 and 5 ton and is the same as the HLVW, and has an armour package.

 

[FJAG]

The new edition of Canadian Defence Review is out and has a number of very interesting articles.

Home page

Home page

www.canadiandefencereview.com

 

[FSTO]

Matt Gurney today.
Merry Christmas Canada, we're fucked.

Matt Gurney: Are we lying about our values, or do we just think everything will fix itself?

Fourteen months after Chrystia Freeland went to D.C. to say what the democracies must do, we are not doing those things.

www.readtheline.ca

 

[Rifleman62]

We currently have 6 x LAV battalions at 65-67% of full pers levels. That means you basically have 6 x Battalions of vehicles but only 4 x Battalions of personnel.

Take into account VOR and I bet it is less than 6 x Bn of vehs. Plus you need repl vehs in Theatre for battle cas, accidents and VOR. Add spare parts depot also.

 

[KevinB]

Take into account VOR and I bet it is less than 6 x Bn of vehs. Plus you need repl vehs in Theatre for battle cas, accidents and VOR. Add spare parts depot also.

The last OS VOR rates I saw for the LAV fleet suggests that one probably can’t field much more than 2 LAV BN’s.

So you have 4 LAV Bn with if troops for 2 BN’s of serviceable vehicles.