Justin Trudeau hints at boosting Canada’s military spending

I'll believe it when I see it.

 

[MacNav63]

There is some precedence for this - I believe a fair amount of our initial kit for Korea came from US stores....

We were also sitting on a lot of left over Second World War kit at that point.

 

[QV]

Well, you can be part of the solution, or the impact area...

I think it was last year, or maybe the year before, when the Cdn Gov was briefed on that subject and the shock... what do you think is going to happen as a free-loader?

 

[KevinB]

It kinda is when you get into crazy ideas like 5% of GDP. A country with a $40B defence budget

cough 39

is not going to suddenly just jump to spending $150B annually, outside of war time.

As I noted, the rhetoric isn't designed to get NATO allies to spend 5%, it is to get them at 3.5%, you never bargain from you desired goal - you set a higher position and negotiate down.

Heck, we had a Conservative government and even they didn't see the need, during an actual shooting war with troops down range.

The Conservatives in Canada haven't been great stewards of the National Defense (my keyboard refuses to accept the c in defense without multiple retyping and then it is still wanting to autocorrect), and the shooting war didn't have a large amount of CAF personnel deployed - so the whole BattleGroup-Itis for gear, and it not being a fought like a LSCO against a Peer or Near Peer lead to a lot of equipment and personnel divestiture of that sort of equipment.

I don't know where you're getting 40k personnel. But even your absolute worst case scenario here means that if we go up by 1% of GDP from current levels, we'd have C$20B in additional funds aside from full manning. That is a lot. Probably more than we can absorb. And if run for the better part of a decade, would see complete recapitalization of most of the force outside the RCN.

When you look at the (theoretical) manning of the CA, you should be able to field 2 full Divisions, if not a third (inc the PRes).

https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-2016/reports/51535-fsprimerlite.pdf

If you see what it costs the US Army to operate a Regular Army Brigade, and Canada has 3 Regular Bde's and a CSS Bde, plus the PRes, you can see quickly that an ABCT or SBCT took around 2.6 USB in 2017 funds to operate.
So I'm not seeing that 20B extra would actually be more than you can absorb.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

As I noted, the rhetoric isn't designed to get NATO allies to spend 5%, it is to get them at 3.5%, you never bargain from you desired goal - you set a higher position and negotiate down.

Jeez, where have I heard that before?

 

[Retired AF Guy]

Gripen for the win!!!!

Beat me to it!!

 

[Furniture]

There is some precedence for this - I believe a fair amount of our initial kit for Korea came from US stores....

RoK also realized that was a bad plan and developed their own arms industry.

We don't have to start at square one. We can leverage partnerships with like minded nations, and not be as beholden to US domestic politics.

 

[PrairieFella]

RoK also realized that was a bad plan and developed their own arms industry.

We don't have to start at square one. We can leverage partnerships with like minded nations, and not be as beholden to US domestic politics.

Which brings us back to Korea haha. They're down for anything too. They'd probably build factories in Canada.

 

[FJAG]

We were also sitting on a lot of left over Second World War kit at that point.

We did buy M4A3E8 Shermans and halftracks and trucks from the US because much of that was already overseas. The howitzers were 25 pdrs, however and small arms and uniforms were all Canadian. Concurrent with that we did a fairly large rearmament building jeeps, 3/4 2 1/2 tons and M2 pattern 105 mm howitzers domestically.

 

[GK .Dundas]

We did buy M4A3E8 Shermans and halftracks and trucks from the US because much of that was already overseas. The howitzers were 25 pdrs, however and small arms and uniforms were all Canadian. Concurrent with that we did a fairly large rearmament building jeeps, 3/4 2 1/2 tons and M2 pattern 105 mm howitzers domestically.

At point we were training the special service force raised for Korea at Fort Lewis and early on they were going to convert to American small arms .
But during the first phase of training they came to the conclusion that it was actually undermining the unit effectiveness. Most of the officers and I believe all the NCO's had combat experience.
And this introduction of new weapons required changes to tactics that reduced their effectiveness as a unit.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

We also equipped all the troops with US equipment to fight in the Aleutians. As I understand it, the big push to get US equipment was when the Forces in Europe where transferred from the British Command to American Command?

 

[daftandbarmy]

Sigh...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1884563492914561446

 

[MacNav63]

We also equipped all the troops with US equipment to fight in the Aleutians. As I understand it, the big push to get US equipment was when the Forces in Europe where transferred from the British Command to American Command?

All the Commonwealth forces slated to take part in the invasion of the Japanese home islands were to be equipped with US material. In the case of the Canadian division at least, it was being organized on the US model, although Hoffmeister insisted on using unit names from 1 Div.