FJAG
Army.ca Legend
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Funny you should mention that. I'm just reviewing the interview notes I have from a former CDS who laid out the difficulty he had in convincing the civilian bureaucracy and political leadership of the requirements beyond those deployed on immediate operations. A particular problem is convincing them that items bought under UOR (e.g. the first dozen M777s and the Chinooks) should not be immediately disposed of once the operation ends. Problematic in that is that those items were bought without full life cycle sustainment and suddenly the CAF needs to convince the govt that a) yes we need it for a longer duration and b) that's going to cost you a whole lot more ongoing money into the future.
Effectively, DND does not really have a budget per se. What it has are certain annual fixed costs to pay personnel and keep the O&M lights on in the infrastructure. Everything above that is a one-off procurement decision with approved project costs for the future. Effectively you have to go back to the government frequently to get authorization for this and that. It is not a system wherein you have a specified future funding model that lets the military make long term plans or rapid decisions on equipment.
Like you, I'm of the view that you always need to have the equipment and the appropriate level of NCOs and officers to man it. We can always recruit and train the bulk of the manning (or draw it from the reserves) when the time comes.
No more so than I think that we can actually man 15 CSCs under our current way of doing things. Like anything, I think you need a good propaganda campaign to induce people to join. In part that requires making serving attractive. That starts by having modern equipment and a mission to work with.
