Canada's New, Liberal, Defence Policy

[MarkOttawa]

Colin P.:  And have Seaspan build two more icebreakers for CCG instead of Berlins--costs similar.

Mark
Ottaw

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

I see it.
They better have a cargo elevator from the stores deck to the flight deck. Or a ramp for forklifts to drive pallets from the jungle deck to the flight deck.
During OP TOUCAN we did 1 heavy jackstay from PRO. 99% of our dry UNREPS were done by VERTREP and it was a pain in the *** for us to open the soft eye patch and manouevre the forklift to lift the pallets through the patch on to the flight deck.
We watched with envy other AORs where the forklifts drove straight from the jungle deck to the flight deck to arrange the cargo.

Then, I suggest you go to the Navy "AOR replacement and JSS" thread in these forum. Jollyjacktar put the Project Resolve website link there on October 19.

Go to the link and click on the "Survey" button at the top. They are seeking input from actual AOR personnel on what they think should be addressed as improvements on the Protecteur class. I did not answer myself as my last tour in PRO was in 1981, when she was just a young girl and I have little to no recent experience with the class. But your comment above definitely ranks as both timely and useful. So, perhaps if you get it to  Davie, they will incorporate it in their design.

 

[jmt18325]

So not that great then.

There was no better option available, so I took - as good as.

 

[Kirkhill]

And if we're going to go that route we will, likely, need more of this sort of thing, sooner rather than later, ...

   

and this

and even this

          ... and less or fewer of these:

             

  and this 

                    ... all of which might have a modest, short to medium term impact on this, giving the new government some breathing space to think (study, evaluate, consider) what it wants and needs for the defence of Canada and its vital interests around the world.

If the Liberals did focus on the Logistics side of things that wouldn't be all bad....Nor would an emphasis on Light Infantry, Engineers, Medics and Sigs.

 

[Baz]

Good point, I didn't think of that... especially in light of the reduced crew size too.  We had a ******* of a time getting shoring up to the flight deck to vertrep the GUNSTEN HALL, after she was badly damaged in heavy seas off NC.  I had forgotten about that.

Should also have some proper slinging gear for the helo, and in proper numbers on the ship so your not always having to ask for your net after every lift:
- pallet handling nets
- spreader bars
- lose item baskets
- large item slings (like vehicles)
- ...

 

[Kirkhill]

WRT the F35 - There is a work around

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_Squadrons

http://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/news-and-latest-activity/news/2013/may/23/130523-first-f35-pilot

First Navy F35 pilot completes first month’s training

23/05/2013
The Royal Navy’s first pilot of its next-generation jump jet has said it will give the nation’s future carriers an unrivalled striking power. After a month flying the F35B Lightning II – the most advanced stealth fighter in the world – Lieutenant Commander Ian Tidball has given the aircraft a glowing testimonial.

The Fleet Air Arm pilot is learning to fly the jet, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter alongside Squadron Leader Frankie Buchler from the RAF and is supported by a 13-strong team of British maintainers – seven are Royal Navy, six RAF.

Sqn Leader Buchler was the first British military non-test pilot to take the F35 aloft, with Lt Cdr Tidball following closely behind.

Two Royal Navy reservists, in their ‘day jobs’ as test pilots, have also flown it: Cdr Simon Hargreaves and Lt Cdr Peter Wilson.

Speaking at Eglin Air Force Base, Lt Cdr Tidball – who has over 1,300 hours behind him in the cockpit of Harriers, followed by over 500 hours flying the United States Navy FA-18E/F Super Hornet – says the F35 is “an exceptional aircraft to fly.”

“It’s extremely responsive, it has a lot of available thrust and the fly-by-wire control system makes the aircraft simple to fly,” he said.

“My background is the Sea Harrier – a pilot’s aeroplane, a stick and rudder type aircraft.

"The advanced flight control system in the F-35 reduces the amount of capacity I have to expend on simply flying the aircraft; instead it allows me to focus on operating the advanced mission systems and sensors so that I can employ the aircraft effectively in an operational environment.”

The small British team are based with VMFAT 501 – Marine Fighter Attack Training Squadron 501 which was formed in 2010 to bring the F35B into service with the US Marine Corps.

Collectively, the British and American pilots are putting in eight to 12 sorties every day from the air base in north-west Florida.

The UK currently has three test versions of the F35B – the short take-off/vertical landing variant of the aircraft – which are being used not just to train the pilots, but also the engineers and technicians in the art of maintaining a stealth fighter which is two generations ahead of the Harrier, the Royal Navy’s last front-line fast jet.

Lt Cdr Tidball, who is from Weston-super-mare in Somerset and spent much of his career at Royal Naval Air Station Yeovilton, says the shared experiences of the RN and RAF personnel “complement each other well.”

Recently and for the first time ever the two pilots took up the initial two British prototypes for a joint flight.

“We are making good progress, it was really satisfying to be flying in formation with my RAF colleague in the first two British stealth fighters, it’s just another small milestone enroute to operational test and IOC” said Lt Cdr Tidball.

“It really is an indication that this programme is going somewhere when you’ve got British pilots flying British aeroplanes – excellent.

"It’s a testament to the people that are not just flying it, but are maintaining it as well.”

Although the F35 is assembled in the USA by Lockheed Martin, the fighter is an Anglo-American venture with around one seventh of it designed and built in the UK.

Around 130 British firms are providing parts and equipment for it, worth around £1bn per year to the UK economy.

Lt Cdr Tidball added:

“The stealth capability and advanced systems will allow us to penetrate enemy airspace that we couldn’t have dreamed of in the Harrier; this combined with the aircrafts STOVL capability will allow us to operate off the Queen Elizabeth class carriers to deliver a maritime strike capability that’s frankly, unrivalled.

"I’m extremely excited about the aircraft getting on to the carrier. I really hope that I’m lucky enough to be there, flying one of these aircraft off it.”

Once training at Eglin is completed the British team is due to decamp from Florida to Edwards Air Force Base in California where they will carry out operational tests to prepare it for frontline service.

The Fleet Air Arm and Royal Air Force are due to start receiving front-line F35s in 2016, operating out of RAF Marham, near King’s Lynn, where land-based testing and training flights will continue through 2017.

The first test flights from HMS Queen Elizabeth are planned in 2018.

The Fleet Air Arm Museum has a new exhibition opening shortly supported by BAE Systems and the Aircraft Carrier Alliance that will include material from Lt Cdr Tidball and his F35 experiences.

Naval Airpower for the 21st Century…the carrier story continues tells the story of the Royal Navy’s Queen Elizabeth class carriers. HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales are the next chapter in the proud and honourable history of Royal Navy aircraft carriers and naval aviation.

This exhibition explains how these new ships came into being and highlights the aircraft that will be flown from them and the people who will operate them.

This exhibition will be open for the 2013 summer holiday season.

Please see www.fleetairarm.com for more details.

Fleet Air Arm Museum, RNAS Yeovilton, Ilchester, Somerset, BA22 8HT

Canada finds the pilots for NORAD aircraft......

Other thoughts- JUSTAS goes to Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness which contracts the unarmed service from a civilian supplier like MDA's Geospatial Services International. 

Expeditionary effort could be Canadian pilots in ABCA seats or it could be Canadian helos.

 

[FSTO]

Then, I suggest you go to the Navy "AOR replacement and JSS" thread in these forum. Jollyjacktar put the Project Resolve website link there on October 19.

Go to the link and click on the "Survey" button at the top. They are seeking input from actual AOR personnel on what they think should be addressed as improvements on the Protecteur class. I did not answer myself as my last tour in PRO was in 1981, when she was just a young girl and I have little to no recent experience with the class. But your comment above definitely ranks as both timely and useful. So, perhaps if you get it to  Davie, they will incorporate it in their design.

Thanks. Just finished it.

 

[jollyjacktar]

Seeing as I've already done their survey, I used their contact form to quote you and add what I said in reply too.  So they'll get it twice then.  Maybe it will stick.  :nod:

 

[FSTO]

Seeing as I've already done their survey, I used their contact form to quote you and add what I said in reply too.  So they'll get it twice then.  Maybe it will stick.  :nod:

I had to laugh at the part about "What was your highlights during your time in PRO".
I did not write anything because my CBTO was a c********r and made my life and the lives of my department a living hell during our deployment. He was the most obtuse, obstinate, self centred and manipulative SOB it was ever my misfortune to serve with.

 

[Eye In The Sky]

If the Liberals did focus on the Logistics side of things that wouldn't be all bad....Nor would an emphasis on Light Infantry, Engineers, Medics and Sigs.

Why?

If you don't have a 'mission end', why dump money into Logistics first?  The job of logistics is to support the pointy end, or that is what I've thought over the last XX years.  I'm not saying Logistics are not important; they are extremely important but they have basically no function if there isn't a fighting force to support.

Right now we have DDGs that are past service life, no FWSAR replacement, hulls needed to begin the CPF replacement.  Christ, we can't even supply our VERY SMALL military with boots.

Funding and procurement needs to be balanced but if the scale tips slightly one way over the other, it should be on the "F Echelon" elements of the RCN, C Army and RCAF.  :2c:

 

[Kirkhill]

Why?

If you don't have a 'mission end', why dump money into Logistics first?  The job of logistics is to support the pointy end, or that is what I've thought over the last XX years.  I'm not saying Logistics are not important; they are extremely important but they have basically no function if there isn't a fighting force to support.

Right now we have DDGs that are past service life, no FWSAR replacement, hulls needed to begin the CPF replacement.  Christ, we can't even supply our VERY SMALL military with boots.

Funding and procurement needs to be balanced but if the scale tips slightly one way over the other, it should be on the "F Echelon" elements of the RCN, C Army and RCAF.  :2c:

Because the Logistics end of things are buggered?  No trucks - of any type?  No ability to move around the continent or off the continent? Machine guns falling apart?  Ability to procure weapons and mukluks not obvious?  Inability to get Water and POL and Beans, Bullets, and Bandages to the front end?  Inability to get troops to and from the front? 

That is not an unfounded opinion.  It is the strong sense that I get from reading these boards for the last 10 years.


 

 

[Eye In The Sky]

Good points but I wonder how much of this is because of inefficiency outside the CAF/DND.  PWGSC.

Additionally, I thought you meant something else by the word logistics.  I'll also admit I have been away from anything Army for some years now (approaching 9 yrs) and wasn't aware things were quite that bad.  Or, I was aware of bits and pieces but failed to connect the dots into the big picture.

My most recent experience in an operational context opened my eyes on the ability of the CAF to supply items that in my line of work are 'no brainer - we must have extras of these on hand'.  Simple things like flashlights and flying gloves.  I do, however, have brand new mukluks in my B25 kit.  Not much use in the current op theatre.  ^-^

 

[Navy_Pete]

I desparately would like to see military procurement get rolled into a single departement.  We buy enough small things, and enough big things, that we already effectively have dedicated specialists.  The problem is now they answer to four different bosses.

There are about three layers of PWGSC between DND and the treasury board.  My experience was we 'draft' the TB submission, dumbing down highly technical details to simple terms, send it into the PW black hole for numerous revisions, we get it back, correct the things that are misleading or straight out incorrect, resubmit, and then wait for it to eventually get to someone at the TB secretariat to review it, put their own spin on it, and put it up to TB for approval. All of that happens with no direct communication to the PM that is actually responsible for the budget and timeline to some random bureaucrat, twice removed, who may or may not have any idea what you are doing.

Along the way, we already had to jump through numerous DND approval hoops, a number of joint DND/PW/Industry Canada hoops, individual PW and IC reviews, and all sorts of other shenanigans.

If you are lucky enough to get through all that, you get to look forward to years of trying to fight the bureaucracy to implement the project, where the good ideas club is constantly trying to inject new requirements that may or may not be in the contract (fully integrate with DRMIS!.... oh wait, DRMIS isn't ready, do something different, but still use DRMIS)  Gah!

So glad to be back in a ship.  Now I can complain that there are no widgets because the standing offer expired and the contract is stuck at IC undergoing a review for whether or not the new (but not yet developed) IRB policy applies or some other insanity.

 

[Baz]

F ech win battles, logistic Ian win wars.  The person who drove that home the best for me was a RCR LCol.

Logistics extend all the way back to 4th line, and include procurement, and it is broken.  Massively, totally broken.

We, like most other militaries,  used to have environments that were completely responsible for FG... weapon system procurement and personal generation.

Then we unified and put those supporting functions under the ADMs, which was bad enough.

Now we have PWGSC, which I doing the contractual piece.  But stuck in the middle we still have the ADMs.

FUBAR.

 

[Eye In The Sky]

Then I guess we are far worse off than I realized.  How we fix the F, A and B echelons across the board is... (looking for thoughts from those who understand that beast).  NP made one suggestion above.

I am a tactical level oar-puller;  I would like to see I can get what I need to do my job in a timely manner from the system, not have to drive to the PX and spend $30 USD on a flashlight because I need one the next day IAW flying regs.  And because I have no option for a tactical one in the system.  White lights in windows aren't always a good idea.

You still have to be able to win the battles to win the war. 

 

[Navy_Pete]

F ech win battles, logistic Ian win wars.  The person who drove that home the best for me was a RCR LCol.

Logistics extend all the way back to 4th line, and include procurement, and it is broken.  Massively, totally broken.

We, like most other militaries,  used to have environments that were completely responsible for FG... weapon system procurement and personal generation.

Then we unified and put those supporting functions under the ADMs, which was bad enough.

Now we have PWGSC, which I doing the contractual piece.  But stuck in the middle we still have the ADMs.

FUBAR.

ADMs make a lot of sense when you have joint operations and common equipment.  Having three separate LCMMs for the same piece of kit is kind of dumb.

 

[Baz]

Common LCMMs for common equipment make sense.  ADM (Mat) is FUBAR, especially with the existence of PWGSC.

Power is where the money is... Pers has the most, ADM the next, and the environments somewhere way down the list.

Logistics win wars, but the ones at the top in Canada don't seem to care...

 

[Ostrozac]

Redirecting the Army (and RCAF) towards traditional, baby-blue beret style peacekeeping will pacify one part of the Liberal base and ease some spending pressures.

MONUSCO in the DR Congo and UNAMID in Sudan are, to my knowledge, the biggest blue beret operations in history, and they are pretty serious operations on the far end of anyone's logistics chain.

These are two South African Rooivalks serving with MONUSCO, note the rocket pods.

Blue beret peacekeeping isn't like Cyprus in the 80's. It grew up in Yugoslavia in the 90's, and has stayed there. Large scale Canadian participation in these missions will be expensive and manpower intensive, and there will be plenty of tours for everyone, if that's where our foreign policy is drifting. I'm not sure that it is -- I suspect that "peacekeeping" is a throw away line in some parts of the Liberal Party, and is code for the speaker not liking American-led wars, not evidence that the speaker is actually talking about large multiyear UN-led operations in Africa.

 

[a_majoor]

Ultimately, we need to understand how the powers that be think about defense (if they do at all). Nonsensical pronouncements like replacing bombing and boots on the ground with aid distribution shows an astonishing lack of understanding of how the world works (you are going to be able to distribute jack s*** if you don't control the ground, and of course you need the logistical chain going all the way back to warehouses in Canada to get the goods from point a to b in the first place). And cancellation of the CF-35 kills the ability of the CF to learn and practice "network node" forms of warfare for a generation or more, making us increasingly inoperable with our allies and unable to effectively defend against such forms of warfare by peer enemies.

I'm rather afraid that most of the "thinking" about defense will be on the same level as above, and while we may wish for a White Paper, it may be like the one which the Sun King delivered back in 1971 (and the one Edward detests so much).

Be careful what you wish for......

 

[MarkOttawa]

Ostrozac: Indeed:

US-Backed UN “Killer Peacekeeping”: Would Canadians Support Taking Substantial Part?
https://cgai3ds.wordpress.com/2015/09/28/mark-collins-us-backed-un-killer-peacekeeping-would-canadians-support-taking-substantial-part/

Weasel-way to pretend?
https://cgai3ds.wordpress.com/2015/10/19/mark-collins-canadian-election-isis-the-f-35-justin-trudeau-and-potus/comment-page-1/#comment-14130

Check NDP's numbers when platforming during campaign:

NDP Defence Platform Leak: Real Boots for UN Peacekeeping (but do they know facts?)
https://cgai3ds.wordpress.com/2015/10/07/mark-collins-ndp-defence-platform-leak-real-boots-for-un-peacekeeping-but-do-they-know-facts/

Mark
Ottawa