Royal Canadian Air Force headed to mission in Africa ‘very soon’: top general

[Half Full]

Bus riding chair commandos with Sentinelle patches  :facepalm: who never come close to the battlespace but go home with *tour stories*.

Sounds like someone who has never been to NDHQ...that comment probably includes about 0.5% of the NDHQ population.

 

[Eye In The Sky]

:rofl:

okay.  Thanks for the laugh!  Let's keep this one on topic now...

 

[c_canuk]

Over support and not knowing what the mission is, is nothing new. When I was in the Golan 10 years ago CanLogBatt worked in isolation from the rest of the mission.

It was to the point that their Dispatch was better manned than the HQ Dispatch because we "didn't do anything" yeah, beyond being the back bone primary net for the observers, safety net for NGOs, admin net for the entire mission, conduit to adjacent missions, and SDS, we don't do anything, and you need more people to monitor your single dispatch net...

The best was when the far side Sig O was telling me I didn't know what I was talking about, in regards to responsibilities, because it wasn't covered in the sigs plan from, I shit you not, 1987. He thought that the Austrians were doing the night shifts, but they hadn't been for over 2 decades at that point.

The most common phrase there was "fucking Canadians!" by the other nations. They were always grounding fleets for general maint, changing support without asking permission let alone verifying it wasn't interfering with operations, and abandoning obligations with orders not to pass on information to our local CoC.

The rest of the mission saw Canlogbatt as a nuisance to be marginalized cause it regarded it's support role as THE mission. they were busy creating their own support mechanisms to deal with the issues. I don't know how that panned out once the Indian army took over.

There were multiple times I almost got into a fight with the maintainers cause they kept seizing my 4 runner while I was in the middle of an SDS Run. Couldn't be bothered to email or call me to set up an appointment, nope, they'd just leap on it when I came to pick up their fucking mail. So I'd have to run back to the CP to call over to my dispatch and let them know what was going on, so the QRF didn't get dispatched to find me. The idea that they'd send out a QRF to find a late SDS seemed to confuse them... cause I wasn't the mission, I wasn't important, why would the QRF be so worried if I was an hour late... :

 

[Colin Parkinson]

So what do you mean by "NDHQ types"?  Seems a little flippant and dismissive...

Quite dismissive actually. When you look at the size and look at the results on the ground, soldiers without boots, uniforms and tents, etc, etc there is something very wrong. I suspect there are many people there that have burrowed into nice safe holes and will take explosives to remove. I freely admit my paint roller may inadvertently splashed others who do try and have served in nasty places. 

 

[daftandbarmy]

Over support and not knowing what the mission is, is nothing new. When I was in the Golan 10 years ago CanLogBatt worked in isolation from the rest of the mission.

It was to the point that their Dispatch was better manned than the HQ Dispatch because we "didn't do anything" yeah, beyond being the back bone primary net for the observers, safety net for NGOs, admin net for the entire mission, conduit to adjacent missions, and SDS, we don't do anything, and you need more people to monitor your single dispatch net...

The best was when the far side Sig O was telling me I didn't know what I was talking about, in regards to responsibilities, because it wasn't covered in the sigs plan from, I crap you not, 1987. He thought that the Austrians were doing the night shifts, but they hadn't been for over 2 decades at that point.

The most common phrase there was "******* Canadians!" by the other nations. They were always grounding fleets for general maint, changing support without asking permission let alone verifying it wasn't interfering with operations, and abandoning obligations with orders not to pass on information to our local CoC.

The rest of the mission saw Canlogbatt as a nuisance to be marginalized cause it regarded it's support role as THE mission. they were busy creating their own support mechanisms to deal with the issues. I don't know how that panned out once the Indian army took over.

There were multiple times I almost got into a fight with the maintainers cause they kept seizing my 4 runner while I was in the middle of an SDS Run. Couldn't be bothered to email or call me to set up an appointment, nope, they'd just leap on it when I came to pick up their ******* mail. So I'd have to run back to the CP to call over to my dispatch and let them know what was going on, so the QRF didn't get dispatched to find me. The idea that they'd send out a QRF to find a late SDS seemed to confuse them... cause I wasn't the mission, I wasn't important, why would the QRF be so worried if I was an hour late... :

Holy cr$p.

I hope Santa doesn't pass by that way.... he'll never get his job done this Xmas eve!

 

[Jarnhamar]

Quite dismissive actually. When you look at the size and look at the results on the ground, soldiers without boots, uniforms and tents, etc, etc

Morale is quite high. The soldiers don't mind paying out of their pockets for boots that don't explode if it means seeing their leaders with new hats, ranks, and patches 

 

[Old Sweat]

This triggered a flashback to the late seventies when I was a staff officer in FMCHQ. There was a fair amount of angst being expressed because the combat arms had one mission, in Cyprus, while the Sigs and the CSS world picked up all the new missions. The rationale expressed to we humble beings of the lieutenant colonel genre was that any army could provide infantry, but only sophisticated western armies could send competent, effective logistics and communications organizations, and this pre-dated power point by 10 or 15 years.

Therefore peace keeping was the purview of the support trades, and this is not meant as an attack on any of these folks who served honourably and well. I wonder if this is where the peacekeeping image originated?

Or did our GOs have a different agenda?

 

[daftandbarmy]

Morale is quite high. The soldiers don't mind paying out of their pockets for boots that don't explode if it means seeing their leaders with new hats, ranks, and patches 

The beatings will continue until morale improves. Carry on

 

[Edward Campbell]

This triggered a flashback to the late seventies when I was a staff officer in FMCHQ. There was a fair amount of angst being expressed because the combat arms had one mission, in Cyprus, while the Sigs and the CSS world picked up all the new missions. The rationale expressed to we humble beings of the lieutenant colonel genre was that any army could provide infantry, but only sophisticated western armies could send competent, effective logistics and communications organizations, and this pre-dated power point by 10 or 15 years.

Therefore peace keeping was the purview of the support trades, and this is not meant as an attack on any of these folks who served honourably and well. I wonder if this is where the peacekeeping image originated?

Or did our GOs have a different agenda?

:warstory:

It goes all the way back to 1957, when Mike Pearson and the defence chiefs wanted to send a combat unit to the first large scale UN force (the United Nations Emergency Force) that Pearson rammed through the UN in order to prevent a strategic breach between President Eisenhower and the mental midgets running Britain and France.

    (It's important to stress that Pearson didn't give a damn about Egypt or peace; his only aim ~ a good one ~ was to preserve the strategic unity of the West in the face of ever growing Soviet challenges.
      I know that a hundred thousand university professors and school teachers disagree; they are ALL wrong. Ditto the Liberal Party's peacekeeping narrative: the part that isn't just wishful thinking is a lie.)

Anyway, as you might recall a battalion of the Queen's Own Rifles of Canada was ordered to prepare to embark and then Egypt's President Nasser objected, saying that it would be impossible to explain to his people that a unit named for the (British) monarch who had just invaded his country was now being sent to keep the peace. Nasser didn't have to explain anything to anyone, of course, but he had been humiliated by the Anglo-French-Israeli invasion and upsetting the UN's applecart gave him a minor and needed, political victory. It also gave the UN staff an opportunity to press Canada to provide "services" that many other countries, like Brazil, Columbia, Indonesia and Yugoslavia, could not provide. Thus was born the "tradition" of Canada supplying "housekeeping" troops (Engineers, Signals, Supply, Transport and Maintenance) rather than combat units.

    (Parenthetically, it damned near destroyed the (really quite tiny) Signal Corps by about 1960; the burdens of manning a big brigade Signal Squadron in Germany (4CIBG) and two others on UN duties (56 Sig Sqn in the Middle East and
      57 Sig Sqn in Congo) was, simply more than that Corps could manage and large numbers of soldiers were recruited from other arms and extra people were withdrawn from Canadian based units to augment the School and train them.)

Ok, helmets off, back to your smoke break.

Edit: typo

 

[Halifax Tar]

:warstory:

It goes all the way back to 1957, when Mike Pearson and the defence chiefs wanted to send a combat unit to the first large scale UN force (the United Nations Emergency Force) that Pearson rammed through the UN in order to prevent a strategic breach between President Eisenhower and the mental midgets running Britain and France.

    (It's important to stress that Pearson didn't give a damn about Egypt or peace; his only aim ~ a good one ~ was to preserve the strategic unity of the West in the face of ever growing Soviet challenges.
      I know that a hundred thousand university professors and school teachers disagree; they are ALL wrong. Ditto the Liberal Party's peacekeeping narrative: the part that isn't just wishful thinking is a lie.)

Anyway, as you might recall a battalion of the Queen's Own Rifles of Canada was ordered to prepare to embark and then Egypt's President Nasser objected, saying that it would be impossible to explain to his people that a unit named for the (British) monarch who had just invaded his country was now being sent to keep the peace. Nasser didn't have to explain anything to anyone, of course, but he had been humiliated by the Anglo-French-Israeli invasion and upsetting the UN's applecart gave him a minor and needed, political victory. It also gave the UN staff an opportunity to press Canada to provide "services" that many other countries, like Brazil, Columbia, Indonesia and Yugoslavia, could not provide. Thus was born the "tradition" of Canada supplying "housekeeping" troops (Engineers, Signals, Supply, Transport and Maintenance) rather than combat units.

    (Parenthetically, it damned near destroyed the (really quite tiny) Signal Corps by about 1960; the burdens of manning a big brigade Signal Squadron in Germany (4CIBG) and two others on UN duties (56 Sig Sqn in the Middle East and
      57 Sig Sqn in Congo) was, simply more than that Corps could manage and large numbers of soldiers were recruited from other arms and extra people were withdrawn from Canadian based units to augment the School and train them.)

Ok, helmets off, back to your smoke break.

Edit: typo

ERC, I think I remember you posting in the past that Canada used to be very well respected in the worlds of military logistics and signals.  Am I just making that up ?  Wish we could get back to that...

 

[Edward Campbell]

ERC, I think I remember you posting in the past that Canada used to be very well respected in the worlds of military logistics and signals.  Am I just making that up ?  Wish we could get back to that...

I'm not sure "respected" is the right word. We could and did do both, and a few other things like run airfields, run fixed services like water and electrical supply and so on, for the UN and on other missions ... something that only a few other armies, and most of them quite large, could do, and only a few of them could do them well. We were also politically and militarily "willing," again, something that several other countries were not.

The political willingness was obvious: "housekeeping" units were (still are?) less likely to end up in sustained combat thus they will neither inflict nor receive casualties and the attendant (too often unfavourable) media coverage, but we, as a country and the government of the day, still got "credit" for having "boots on the ground."

The military willingness was a bit more complex. Some admirals and generals understood that "services" are vital in war and that UN missions gave engineer, signals and logistics officers and NCOs a chance to improvise and innovate and so on and, also, gave them some (needed) operational experience.

 

[MarkOttawa]

E.R. Campbell:

...
(It's important to stress that Pearson didn't give a damn about Egypt or peace; his only aim ~ a good one ~ was to preserve the strategic unity of the West in the face of ever growing Soviet challenges.
      I know that a hundred thousand university professors and school teachers disagree; they are ALL wrong. Ditto the Liberal Party's peacekeeping narrative: the part that isn't just wishful thinking is a lie.)..

Spot on--a post of mine in 2011:

Canadian Suez Policy was not About the Middle East

A letter of mine sent to the Toronto Star that was not published:

"Re: Travers: Once a Middle East player, Canada now a spectator, Feb. 12
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2011/02/12/travers_once_a_middle_east_player_canada_now_a_spectator.html

Mr. Travers fails to understand what Canadian policy - as much Prime Minister St. Laurent’s as External Affairs Minister Pearson’s - on Suez in 1956 was really about.  Their main concern was not the Middle East.  It was rather finding a way to avoid a complete falling out between the U.S. (which strongly opposed Western military intervention) on the one hand and the U.K. and France (who were attacking Egypt in collusion with Israel) on the other.  It was feared that such a major falling out would be to the great benefit of the USSR, which was just suppressing Hungary.  The main point was to maintain NATO Cold War solidarity, not to bring peace to the Middle East.  The second point was trying to avoid the Soviets’ gaining substantial ground in the Third World generally in reaction to perceived British-French neo-colonialism.

I worked as research assistant on the relevant section of Volume II of Mr. Pearson’s memoirs, Mike.  People should look at it for a good account of what really went on.  Canada was actually very “cozy with the U.S.”, something Mr. Travers now decries us for being.  The “peacekeeping” force was in fact as much an American idea as Canadian; the U.S. asked us to front it for them at the UN as a way of salving Franco-British amour propre, i.e. so it did not look publicly as if the latter were bowing to the overwhelming power of the former.  Which of course they were.  The U.S was threatening to bring down the pound amongst other things."
http://www.cdfai.org.previewmysite.com/the3dsblog/?p=105

Mark
Ottawa

 

[daftandbarmy]

I'm not sure "respected" is the right word. We could and did do both, and a few other things like run airfields, run fixed services like water and electrical supply and so on, for the UN and on other missions ... something that only a few other armies, and most of them quite large, could do, and only a few of them could do them well. We were also politically and militarily "willing," again, something that several other countries were not.

The political willingness was obvious: "housekeeping" units were (still are?) less likely to end up in sustained combat thus they will neither inflict nor receive casualties and the attendant (too often unfavourable) media coverage, but we, as a country and the government of the day, still got "credit" for having "boots on the ground."

The military willingness was a bit more complex. Some admirals and generals understood that "services" are vital in war and that UN missions gave engineer, signals and logistics officers and NCOs a chance to improvise and innovate and so on and, also, gave them some (needed) operational experience.

I can hear the Unicorns crying from here... realpolitik at it's finest! 

 

[McG]

So, will the new ebola vaccine be on the pre-deployment checklist when we head to Africa in force?

http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/health/blog.html?b=news.nationalpost.com/health/final-test-results-confirm-canadian-vaccine-for-ebola-is-highly-effective

 

[PuckChaser]

Depends if its a country affected by the Zaire strain. If its the Sudan virus, it wouldn't work.

 

[dimsum]

Depends if its a country affected by the Zaire strain. If its the Sudan virus, it wouldn't work.

Pssst....it's called the DRC now   

 

[The Bread Guy]

Pssst....it's called the DRC now   

You're right, geographically, but WHO and CDC say the virus itself is still called Zaire ebolavirus.

 

[PuckChaser]

Pssst....it's called the DRC now   

They can call it whatever they want as long as my allowances/pay are tax free and I don't die of Ebola.

 

[SeaKingTacco]

They can call it whatever they want as long as my allowances/pay are tax free and I don't die of Ebola.

No deal. You get to pick 1 out of the 2.

 

[Journeyman]

They can call it whatever they want as long as my allowances/pay are tax free and I don't die of Ebola.

Don't forget the bit of coloured ribbon for the DEU.    :nod: