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I vote for Bloggins. Never met the man, but I've heard so much about him/her...
F-35 saga may make picking the new chief of defence staff a complicated task
- Thread starter GAP
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OldSolduer
Army.ca Relic
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Occam said:
Yeah, right. :facepalm:
dapaterson said:
He'll do. He's made every mistake that could be made. His experience will be beneficial.
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A bit of a legendary icon, if you will....dapaterson said:
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Jimmy_D said:
Or we could go back to 1951 when the MND of the day, Brooke Claxton, established an embryonic unified system: the Chiefs of Staff Committee, which consisted of the three (three star) service chiefs (Chief of the Naval Staff, Chief of the General Staff and Chief of the Air Staff) and a Chairman (a four star) who was charged with coordinating (but not commanding) service activities. the first Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee was Gen Charles Foulkes ~ he served as Chairman for nine years! The second and last was Air Chief Marshal Frank Miller who, in 1964, slid, seamlessly, into the newly created CDS position.
Gen Charles Foulkes ACM Frank Miller
The system worked when defence budgets were healthy and robust, as in the early and mid fifties, but it faltered when recession hit in the late fifties and then the Grits decided to concentrate on developing the European model welfare state we have now. To do so, the defence budget would have to be scaled back quite dramatically, which should have triggered an effective review and rationalization of the defence structure. However the Chairman really did not have enough power to control the spending by the various services and there were three budgets and three bureaucracies and a hockey sock full of coordinating committees. And, boys and girls, was a situation tailor made for a royal commission to uncover all sorts of duplication and waste. And then (dramatic pause) along came an ambitious politician who decided to integrate the three headquarters into one as the first step to creating a superbly managed, modern force which would be a model to the rest of the free world.
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I would add that one of the reasons DND sufered from financial management problems was that, in 1955, Air Marshall Frank Miller was dragooned into replacing the estimable C.M. (Bud) Drury as Deputy Minister of National Defence - a position he held for five years until he returned to uniformed military service to replace Gen Foulkes as Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee. It was not, in my opinion, that Miller was a bad DM, but his focus was "off," I think. He remained, as he had been while in uniform, committed to building the armed forces when the better focus would have been on consolidating the gains he had helped to make and "battening down the financial hatches" when the costs of national defence began to spiral upwards. It is important to remember that defence policy, defence budgets and material (equipment) are all the responsibility of the DM, not the CDS. A tougher minded bureaucrat in the late 1950s might have saved us from some of the worst political excesses of he 1960s.
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No sardonics or irony intended here: This is a straight up legitimate question.
Has there ever been a time where upper management has delivered a system that generated results of the requisite efficiency?
My own sense, my own opinion, after having spent a lifetime chasing the elusive 95% efficiency, not to mention 99.999%, is that once the human element enters affairs we are doomed to operate at around the 70% mark with 80% being a very good week.
There are more B students than A students.
Has there ever been a time where upper management has delivered a system that generated results of the requisite efficiency?
My own sense, my own opinion, after having spent a lifetime chasing the elusive 95% efficiency, not to mention 99.999%, is that once the human element enters affairs we are doomed to operate at around the 70% mark with 80% being a very good week.
There are more B students than A students.
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I think you are right GAP but it seems I should have been clearer.
When I said system I was thinking more in terms of a system of management rather than a mechanical system like the LAVIII or the F35. Has there ever been an uncontestable method for delegating Responsibility, Authority and Budget that kept everybody happy?
When I said system I was thinking more in terms of a system of management rather than a mechanical system like the LAVIII or the F35. Has there ever been an uncontestable method for delegating Responsibility, Authority and Budget that kept everybody happy?
I have been musing on the success rate on major projects and, without a lot of anything except anecdotal information, suspect cost overruns and delays along with technical glitches are a fact of life. This, by the way, is not restricted to the CF or to Canada. It seems to be a fact of life that these programs are almost impossible to manage properly, at least in part because the challenges that pop up are too, too often impossible to forecast. The more advanced the technology, the greater the probability that something or a bunch of things will go off the rails.
Personal note - back circa 1966 I was a lieutenant posted as a liaison officer in HQ 4 CIBG. Among my duties was the operations overwatch of the introduction of the brand new M113A1s along with the VRC 12 family of radios. Despite both being proven systems and despite the CFHQ requirements and technical staffs being pretty well on the ball, a major glitch occurred with each. In the case of the M113A1, which was diesel powered, the vibration caused by the tracks on the German cobblestones and pavement cracked a large number of the fuel tanks. The gasoline models had a bladder inside the tank, but this could not be done with our version. The fix was to repair the tanks by welding, but welding aluminum required a technique and maybe kit not readily available in the army. In time personnel were trained and equipment came on line, and the problem went away. As for the radios, the 1780 box, which was the main controller for the system that connected intercom, headsets, antenna matching units, power supplies and the radios, had a major construction flaw which resulted in a replacement program.
Personal note - back circa 1966 I was a lieutenant posted as a liaison officer in HQ 4 CIBG. Among my duties was the operations overwatch of the introduction of the brand new M113A1s along with the VRC 12 family of radios. Despite both being proven systems and despite the CFHQ requirements and technical staffs being pretty well on the ball, a major glitch occurred with each. In the case of the M113A1, which was diesel powered, the vibration caused by the tracks on the German cobblestones and pavement cracked a large number of the fuel tanks. The gasoline models had a bladder inside the tank, but this could not be done with our version. The fix was to repair the tanks by welding, but welding aluminum required a technique and maybe kit not readily available in the army. In time personnel were trained and equipment came on line, and the problem went away. As for the radios, the 1780 box, which was the main controller for the system that connected intercom, headsets, antenna matching units, power supplies and the radios, had a major construction flaw which resulted in a replacement program.
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rgc1957 said:
My recollection is fuzzy and I cannot (quickly and easily) find and authoritative bio, but Charles Foulkes is buried (at Beechwood in Ottawa) as a General:
According to this (which is detailed and full of citations, albeit not all helpful) Frank Miller "... dusted off’ his air marshal’s uniform and commenced his second career in the RCAF, this time as its oldest recruit. On 2 June, he chaired his first COSC meeting. And on 1 September 1961, Frank Miller was promoted to Air Chief Marshal (General), the only active Canadian airman to hold that rank."
The original source for the rootsweb page is the Canadian Military Journal (http://www.journal.forces.gc.ca/vol10/no2/doc/08-stouffer-eng.pdf).
Thus, I stand corrected. However, the claim about Miller's fourth star was something I had read. I wish I could remember where, so that I could see to it that it was corrected.
Foulkes was promoted in January 1954. His comments at the time: "This new promotion to the rank of general is another first in my career. I was the only officer to rise from the rank of captain to lieutenant-general during the last war. I was the youngest officer at 43 to become Chief of the General Staff. I was the first permanent Chairman of the Canadian Chiefs of Staff and now I am the first Canadian to be appointed a general in peacetime. I am, of course, very pleased. It is one of those things a person looks for in life."
Thus, I stand corrected. However, the claim about Miller's fourth star was something I had read. I wish I could remember where, so that I could see to it that it was corrected.
Foulkes was promoted in January 1954. His comments at the time: "This new promotion to the rank of general is another first in my career. I was the only officer to rise from the rank of captain to lieutenant-general during the last war. I was the youngest officer at 43 to become Chief of the General Staff. I was the first permanent Chairman of the Canadian Chiefs of Staff and now I am the first Canadian to be appointed a general in peacetime. I am, of course, very pleased. It is one of those things a person looks for in life."
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rgc1957 said:
Thanks for that rgc1957. Can you point me towards the source of that quote, please? Thanks, in advance.
Edit: typo
And Foulkes, who was lucky to not have been relieved in Normandy, managed to forget that Sir William Otter, anorther Royal, was the second Canadian to be promoted to the rank of General after Sir Arthur Currie, and the first to reach that rank in peacetime. And I am looking for a source to confirm the date, but Currie was promoted to General after he returned to Canada after the end of the war.
http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=7848
http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=7848
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