How Ready has CAN mil been? (split fm US Presidency 2019)

[Cloud Cover]

Unlike Canada, which seems to excel at not having a standing army until 6 months after it was needed.

 

[PPCLI Guy]

Unlike Canada, which seems to excel at not having a standing army until 6 months after it was needed.

Really?  Please provide a specific example NOT related to WW1 (which was an entire century ago) to bolster this claim of yours. 

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Unlike Canada, which seems to excel at not having a standing army until 6 months after it was needed.

Now you've done it. You forgot the sarcasm emoji 

 

[Infanteer]

Really?  Please provide a specific example NOT related to WW1 (which was an entire century ago) to bolster this claim of yours.

Spring 1940 (which turned out to be a good thing - would have got trashed on the continent)
Korea 1950 (Pretty much missed the war of movement)
Kuwait 1991 (if I understand the history right, Operation BROADSWORD was a no go partly because of the inability to scrape together a force out of 4 CMBG to be able to actually fight the Iraqis (see pg.41-43 here)

 

[PPCLI Guy]

Spring 1940 (which turned out to be a good thing - would have got trashed on the continent)

Like every other Ally

Korea 1950 (Pretty much missed the war of movement)

Compared to?

Kuwait 1991 (if I understand the history right, Operation BROADSWORD was a no go partly because of the inability to scrape together a force out of 4 CMBG to be able to actually fight the Iraqis (see pg.41-43 here)

I like Sean.  He is a friend.  Not sure this is right - and I was a planner for an un-named unit / formation for that operation.  His conclusion briefs well, but does not represent the facts as I recall them - although I was decidedly more junior then than I am now....

 

[Brad Sallows]

Having a hard time picturing Canadian ground forces in May 1940 being anywhere near as capable as the Br and Fr forces.  The latter were defeated, but "trashed" - at least to me - implies something more abject.

 

[Old Sweat]

I attended some of the planning sessions for Operation Broadsword, but was not a real player. A number of the planners were opposed to it, and did their best to make it too difficult. For example, the casualty assessment for the bridge group for thirty days in operations was more than 1.5 times the formation's strength. I noted on a file copy that this was ridiculous, as the predicted casualties for one brigade group and its tail exceeded the casualties suffered by the Canadian Army at Passchendale in 1917 and in the 1944 Normandy campaign.

Frankly, Broadsword was a make work project as, I was told, the government did not want to face the political fallout of suffering casualties. When the thing first blew up, the CDS had mused about sending the airborne regiment, but that soon was put to bed. The army also was heavily involved with OKA et all, and none of us knew where that was going.

Add: Someone came up with the theory that 4 CMBG was not operationally ready as the rotation was underway. From my perspective, this was an excuse for inaction. A certain staff officer from the army floor actually stated that he was against sending troops to the theatre, as "someone might get killed".

 

[PPCLI Guy]

I attended some of the planning sessions for Operation Broadsword, but was not a real player. A number of the planners were opposed to it, and did their best to make it too difficult. For example, the casualty assessment for the bridge group for thirty days in operations was more than 1.5 times the formation's strength. I noted on a file copy that this was ridiculous, as the predicted casualties for one brigade group and its tail exceeded the casualties suffered by the Canadian Army at Passchendale in 1917 and in the 1944 Normandy campaign.

Frankly, Broadsword was a make work project as, I was told, the government did not want to face the political fallout of suffering casualties. When the thing first blew up, the CDS had mused about sending the airborne regiment, but that soon was put to bed. The army also was heavily involved with OKA et all, and none of us knew where that was going.

Add: Someone came up with the theory that 4 CMBG was not operationally ready as the rotation was underway. From my perspective, this was an excuse for inaction. A certain staff officer from the army floor actually stated that he was against sending troops to the theatre, as "someone might get killed".

I too was very much on the periphery, but this is much as I remember it - that the casualty estimate is what killed it.  That's what happens when you do not update Staff Planning Data that was based off of decades old spurious reasoning

 

[Old Sweat]

I too was very much on the periphery, but this is much as I remember it - that the casualty estimate is what killed it.  That's what happens when you do not update Staff Planning Data that was based off of decades old spurious reasoning

My reading of the casualty estimate was that it was made deliberately high. Instead of a few days in high intensity contact followed by periods of lesser intensity for F echelon under a nuclear threat in Germany, the whole in theatre strength was calculated to be in contact under the same threat because of the possibility of the Iraqis using chemical warheads on Scuds indiscriminately. I could see where this was going, but uncharacteristically kept my cake hole shut.

 

[Blackadder1916]

I too was very much on the periphery, but this is much as I remember it - that the casualty estimate is what killed it.  That's what happens when you do not update Staff Planning Data that was based off of decades old spurious reasoning

"Spurious"?  Outdated perhaps, but remember the times and our (and our allies') experience.  The primary data that was used in all the NATO and ABCA casualty estimates was based on primarily WW2 and Korea.  In the US Army's FM 101-10-1/2 Staff officers' field manual organizational, technical and logistical data planning factors (volume 2) that was likely used at the time  they so state and while I'm sure that they had extensive statistics about Vietnam, they apparently didn't feel it to be applicable to the big battle scenarios that were expected in Europe and Korea.  I used the same edition to do medical force planning and patient estimates on course in the US in 1990.

d. The data that appear in the tables of this section are based on both experience (World War II and Korean War) and on projections (see paragraph 4-11h for appropriate projection parameters). The tables should not be viewed as directly applicable to any future conflict, but as a basis from which planning can begin. Each conflict will have its unique characteristics and, as such, will require that each echelon of command compile loss statistics. The longer the conflict progresses, the more comprehensive the statistical base will become. Accurate estimates of losses should, therefore, improve over time as the unique aspects of the conflict become readily apparent. Since administrative losses are based on policies which are subject to change over time, they are not readily adaptable to presentation in tabular form. Therefore, tables on administrative losses, other than confinement, are not included in this manual.

While my experience with Broadsword was, as well, very much on the periphery (so much so that if it was mapped, the legend "there be dragons" would appear) I do recall that the American's casualty estimates were very much like ours.  Maybe not quite in the order of doom and gloom that Old Sweat relates but I attribute that to a much more sophisticated pers loss estimation process than that which we infrequently used in the CF.  Of course, I fully accept OS's version of a staff process that situated the estimate in order to validate a foregone political conclusion.

From my foggy memory, I recollect the Americans using daily figures in the neighbourhood of 8000 casualties if the worst case scenarios happened.  They had somewhere around 13,000 hospitalization spaces up and running at the start of the air war.  I don't know what their utilization rate was but we were receiving through the aeromedical staging facility in Ramstein patients with very minor conditions (sprains, skin rashes, etc) in addition to those who genuinely needed hospitalization.  It seemed as if their theatre holding policy was "do not hold if can be evacuated".  The worst case scenario would have been the Iraqis using NBC weapons.  Preparing a valid casualty estimate for such was not the easiest.

3.4-10. NUCLEAR, BIOLOGICAL, AND CHEMICAL LOSS ESTIMATES.
. . .
b. No valid experience data exist from which loss experience tables can be compiled. The problem of estimating the number of replacements (both unit and individual) required to replace losses to NBC weapons involves many variable factors. . . .

And since this has been discussed before, this from someone who was downrange.

I was interested to read the posts about possible casualties in Desert Storm. My unit in Desert Storm (1st Infantry Division) had the G-Day mission of forcing the breach in the Iraqi main defensive belt in the Neutral Zone. We rehearsed and drilled our G-Day mission for a month, and had it completely memorized. When we went to rock walks and so forth, we'd always ask what our follow-on mission was going to be. The answer was always the same, "It's an 'on order' mission." Well, the rumors flew that casualties would be so heavy, there wouldn't be enough of us for any follow-on missions.

Needless to say, the reality was completely the opposite. The Iraqi front-line division in our sector (the 25th Iraqi ID) had been heavily attritted from he aerial campaign and the pre-assault arty prep. Once we cleared the forward defense, the whole desert was covered with little groups of Iraqis with surrender chits. The little chits, pieces of paper with a cartoon of an Iraqi surrendering to the coalition with some Arabic writing on it, were blowing around the desert everywhere. We collected them and found out they made way better butt-wiping material than the TP in MRE's. Every time I see one on E-Bay, I always wonder how it could be real, since 99% of the surrender chits ended up buried in a cat hole.

 

[tomahawk6]

This conversation while interesting needs a thread of its own.

 

[The Bread Guy]

This conversation while interesting needs a thread of its own.

Good idea - stand by …

Milnet.ca Staff

 

[tomahawk6]

Thanks

 

[MarkOttawa]

Canadian Army actually almost fought in Battle of France 1940: 1) "Men of 1st Canadian Division landed in France on June 13, but never saw action...managed to get out with most of their equipment"  https://www.warmuseum.ca/cwm/exhibitions/newspapers/operations/westerneurope_e.html 2) More: https://www.lermuseum.org/second-world-war-1939-45/1940/canadian-1st-infantry-brigade-in-france-13-18-june-1940

Much more, starting p. 274 at link "Forlorn Hope: The Second B.E.F., June 1940"--saved by LGEN Alan Brooke's insistence against Churchill's wish that the force be withdrawn https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/UN/Canada/CA/SixYears/SixYears-9.html

Mark
Ottawa

 

[FJAG]

...managed to get out with most of their equipment" 

Most importantly for the artillery, 1st Field Regiment RCHA brought back all 24 of their 25 pounders which apparently no other Commonwealth unit was able to do.

:cheers: