FJAG:
Do you know the reason why there are no small car manufacturers? And why it is so difficult to start a mom and pop food business?
Because there is so much "non-productive" but "essential" work that has to be done. That work is covered by Overhead, by Administration, by Utilities, Bricks and Mortar, Consultants, Lawyers, Accountants, Tax Assessors ad infinitum.
A small military faces the same challenges, IMO. Especially one that aspires to do everything and is reluctant to make choices, that is reluctant to cut the suit to the suit the cloth.
Sorry, but I don't quite understand where you're going with this post. If you are talking about my decision to ignore the issue of overhead in my last post I did so because the two aren't as easy to compare as the "combat" to "support" ratios because our integrated force structure makes that hard as against their no integrated Army. I didn't do it because I didn't think it was essential to have such overhead.
If the intent is to cooperate with the Yanks then the inclination is to have a Canadian available to sit in every Yankee office. So we start filling from the top down. The alternative is to accept that we can't do everything we want, even if it is because our taxpayers are unaware and uncaring of the risks and costs around them, and do what we can.
I don't see those as the only choices at all.
And we can do a light force. We can't do a heavy force.
Yes we can and that is essentially what we are doing in Latvia. The issue is not whether or not we can do heavy; the issues are how large a force can we do heavy with? what capabilities are we short to do it effectively and how do we compensate for those?
We're kidding ourselves that 80 refurbed, super-annuated Cold War relics is a solid foundation on which to build a heavy division. It is the basis on which to build a single armoured battle group and no more.
Actually with that number you can build an Armoured Brigade Combat Team ( which has 73 tanks). It's many of the key enablers were short on.
As to the arty, when does it become apparent that the world has moved on and it is time to replace 6 pdr rifled breech loaders with 18 pdr QF guns and 4.5" howitzers?
I think everyone knows that. The Army lost its way over the last twenty years. Knowing things are screwed up and correcting them in this very sluggish combat development and equipment acquisition system Canada runs are two different things
I'm not having a dig. But there is an awful lot of change in the air and we already missed a generation of changes (like not buying Light Guns when everyone else was or not buying MLRS and AD and Attack Helicopters when everyone else was). Our allies are moving on from the AirLand Battle and re-examining which of those legacy systems have legs and which ones need to be cut to free up cash for other systems that they think/believe/hope/feel will be more useful.
We have left AirLand battle behind around the turn of the millennium. We haven't replaced with anything that I'd call concrete doctrine albeit we have flirted with adaptive dispersed operations and now with Pan-Domain operations (our answer to the US Army's Multi-Domain Operations and the related USAF and USN's new doctrines).
I don't doubt that the intellectual debates are going on at higher levels about this (notwithstanding various government lobbed harassing hand grenades thrown in from the sidelines).
Here's an example. We're just not seeing any quick (or even reasonable) action and in fact have seen counterproductive activities (such as the deactivating air defence and still not having a MALE UAV)
The point though is that just because there are new capabilities does not automatically mean old legacy systems are obsolete. We do not yet understand the full extent of newer systems and their limitations and while we're figuring that out new countermeasures are being developed and even newer offensive systems are being developed. One still needs to seize ground and you don't do that with a UAV or even a hypersonic missile. You do that with armoured and protected ground forces which, for the time being, are manned systems. In the future they may be autonomous or semi-autonomous but they'll still be classified as heavy.
When are we going to roll the dice and take a chance? Because ultimately that is what this is all about. We can never know the future perfectly so we must always be prepared to chance it.
We've been doing that but in doing so we've been betting that nothing serious is going to happen. On this issue I'm a glass half empty guy.
We debate interminably. We act so infrequently that movement seems imperceptible.
You know I keep pondering that. I know many of the folks that have made some of these poor decisions. They're for the most part good guys and reasonably smart. At least as smart as you and I and in many cases a lot smarter. They have the Army's best interest at heart and believe they are doing the best thing in light of the circumstances. There have been serious debates and push back on a lot of things but in the end, we are where we are.
I tend to put down the workings of Ottawa as the
boiling frog syndrome. You simply do not understand the peril they're in as the water gets gradually warmer. Too many small issues divert you from seeing your real goals much less achieving them.
Cheers, Sir.
