Our difference here is rooted in the terms "entitled" and "toys." You use the terms disparagingly while I use them facetiously. My point is solely that modern war requires equipment and the army has chosen over the decades to properly equip the ARes except with minor amounts of nondeployable kit.
It's all too easy to say that it doesn't meet the ARes requirement because no missions of a war-like nature have been given to the ARes. But let's not focus on just the ARes, because in my mind the army needs hybrid organizations which means both RegF and ARes use all equipment in the inventory.
Actually it is a reason which should generate thought as to why and how they are used. In many cases cost is an issue and cost is something that an army needs to take into consideration when it wants to develop mass. Canada has spent billions for years and all it can show in land equipment is six weak LAV battalions and a handful of tanks for what it has the gall to call on paper 5 divisions. I won't even get into all the other missing or grossly underequipped capabilities.
Give me a break. How long will this sham continue to be foisted on the Canadian public.
I've stood on record for years as buying zero "training" kit for the ARes. I don't consider a Senator or a Senator-like vehicle as "training kit." I expect it to be fully deployable BUT IN A ROLE COMENSURATE for what it is. It could work in dozens of rear area jobs including light battalions patrolling the security zone. Vehicles for headquarters and air defence batteries. Vehicles for both horizontal and vertical construction companies. Vehicles for headquarters above bde level. Vehicles for many CSS tasks together with appropriate logistics vehicles etc. Anywhere a LUVW lives now, a Senator model would take up the work. remember this is a log veh thread.
But, could I see Senators do some work with cavalry? Why not? But the real question that you need to ask is what army do you see Canada fielding when it has to go "all in?" And how do you equip it - all of it RegF and ARes - before you have to go "all in?" Right now its got bugger all which means that "all in" is three and one half raggedy brigades and nothing behind those . . . at all . . . except a bunch of TAPVs unconfigured for a real recce role. And, even worse, its got nothing on the books for downstream.
"Professional" Armour has had problems ever since it divested the Lynx and Leo C1. It took a long time to figure out how to use the smaller number of Coyotes and now half as many LRSS. TAPVs augment this but to no one's satisfaction. I'm with
@GK .Dundas - buy a bunch of surplus French VBLs to work with the LRSS. They're probably cheaper than Senators anyway. You don't have the time to find the "perfect toy" that will satisfy the RegF.
