Is the SAS still needed?

[df2inaus]

Anglo-Saxon,

My statement appears a bit extreme, in hindsight, I would have backed it up with facts and figures, which in my case would have meant graphing regular Canadian Military Personnel strength on the x and time on the y, then extrapolating.

That would be attempting to predict the future.

That being said, you are more qualified than I to speculate on the future of the Canadian Forces.

My prediction, based on years of following current affairs and having a passionate interest in the Canadian Military, is that Canadian regular personnel will fall below the 30,000 mark by 2019.

I also predict that we will still have a Liberal Government in 2019, hence the further shrinkage.

A 30,000-man army in Canada sounds fine doesn’t it?

Then, I point out to forum members from the UK that Canadian politicians hide behind unified force figures to shroud the disproportionately small Canadian Army from those pesky NATO allies who get more annoyed with Canada over time for its low numbers, and low budget.

My comments are intended for potential British soldiers and Marines to point out how lucky they are to be joining the British Forces. Britain still has a 100,000-man army and many forum users are worried it will shrink.

To be fair to the Liberal lefties, the Canadian Forces are well-equipped, very well-paid and are finally wearing DPM battledress which was 30 years overdue.

I’m interested to know how big you predict the Canadian army will be 15 years from now.

I’m looking forward to Jack Granatstien’s new book Who killed the Canadian Military?

The answer of course is the Canadian people, who are for the most part, in my experience, unworldly and self-absorbed. The majority of Canada’s population has failed to grasp that the smaller our military, the smaller our influence or even basic recognition, in world politics.

As a native Canadian , I take a great deal of offence to our lack of international influence, feeble dollar and petty knee-jerk Anti-American attitude.

I'm all too aware I'm in the minority .

[df2inaus]

http://www.canoe.ca/CNEWSFeatures9908/22_guard.html

Sunday, August 22, 1999
Who stands on guard for Canada?
Our CF-18s are rotting, our Sea King helicopters are flying coffins and our once mighty navy is rusting away
By ERIC MARGOLIS -- Toronto Sun

The Reform party recently claimed Canada's CF-18 fighter force was unsafe and should be scrapped. These charges were overblown, but they at least focused attention on the dangerously decrepit state of the nation's once mighty military forces.

Corrosion is a constant problem with all civil and military aircraft. The U.S. Navy has lost three F-18 rudders; the Anglo-French Concorde supersonic airliner lost its entire rudder assembly on a flight from Australia to the U.K. The answer to aircraft corrosion is thorough inspection and maintenance.

And that's the real problem in Canada. The Canadian military has been so gutted by budget cuts it often can no longer perform even minimum basic maintenance on its aircraft, ships and ground equipment. The problem here is politics, not aircraft.

If Canada's CF-18s are rotting - and the lives of their aircrews jeopardized - it's because politicians have diverted funds from defence to popular social spending schemes.

The government, which is now considering spending billions on state-sponsored babysitting to attract female votes, can't find the money to properly maintain its armed forces or equip them with modern weapons.

Ottawa has long used peacekeeping to disguise the gelding of its armed forces, turning its soldiers into the Swiss Guards of the United Nations. This charade has eliminated the need to equip ground forces with more than small arms and light, wheeled vehicles.

Canada's 20,900-man ground force is smaller than the Bolivian Army, with only 114 totally obsolete tanks that would become tracked coffins in wartime; a few outdated guns and scant stores of munitions and other warstocks.

The ground force, which is little more than a gendarmerie, amounts to only three regiments of combat troops, about 9,000 soldiers, half of the number of New York City's Transit Police.

Canada has more generals per soldier than any other modern industrial nation. In real armies, major-generals command 15,000-man divisions. In Canada, they command desks. In fact, Canada's 60,000-weak armed forces (now 10% female) have been transformed from a fighting force into just another politically-correct government bureaucracy. Amazingly, the precise function of a full 26% of the members of the unified armed forces cannot even be identified.

The Canadian navy, the world's third largest in 1945, today has only 16 small surface warships, some of them aged and unfit for combat, and three obsolete subs with which to patrol three oceans and the world's longest coastline. The navy's old Sea King and Labrador helicopters are flying coffins.

Back to the CF-18s. These aircraft have exhausted 60% of their service lives and will have to be replaced within the next 7-10 years. Canada's air force faces block obsolescence as its entire inventory of fighter/strike aircraft becomes inoperative at the same time. This would be comparable to a person having to replace his or, worse, her entire wardrobe at one time.

Not only will Canada need new aircraft - plus ships and tanks - the war in Kosovo showed dramatically that modern air forces must acquire very expensive military accessories, such as recon drones, electronic warfare aircraft, including AWACs radar craft and jamming planes, logistical support transports, integrated communications and a wide variety of precision- guided munitions, highly sophisticated avionics and, of course, stealth technology.

Multi-mission aircraft
Canada will need a new multi-mission aircraft that can serve as a long-range interceptor to cover the high Arctic and as a strike fighter to support NATO operations.

Canada has become a humble spear-carrier in an age of hi-tech electronic knights. Ottawa is spending $9.7 billion on defence. Yet for this sizeable sum it gets a tiny parade army, a bathtub navy, and a run-down air force that is so cash-starved it must ground a quarter of its aircraft, skimp on maintenance, and curtail training. Defence has become another giant patronage machine. Forcing Canada's first-rate soldiers, sailors and airmen to make do with deficient, often dangerous equipment is outrageous. In wartime, it would constitute criminal negligence by Ottawa's politicians.

The Netherlands, with only half Canada's population, spends a similar amount on defence annually, but gets a well-trained army of 27,000, with 330 state-of-the art Leopard-II tanks; 16 modern surface combatants and 4 submarines; and a strong air force built around 170 F-16s. In other words, about 50% more firepower for the same expenditure.

Switzerland spends only $4.9 billion on defence, yet has a highly professional 400,000-man armed forces with 370 Leopard-II tanks and 171 combat aircraft, including F-18Cs and Ds.

Spain has a smaller GDP than Canada and spends $2 billion less annually on defence than Ottawa, but it has armed forces of 193,000, over three times larger than Canada's, with a strong navy, including a Harrier-equipped carrier, 17 major surface combatants, eight submarines and an air force with 180 EF- 18s and 180 Mirage F1s.

Canada's defence spending per capita, a paltry 1.3%, is the lowest in NATO, save for tiny Luxembourg, and is among the lowest worldwide, which proudly puts Canada in the same percentage league as Guinea Bissau, Papua New Guinea and Paraguay.

Clearly, it is America's armed forces that stand on guard for Canada, and American taxpayers who foot the bill for Canada's defence. As the threat from cruise and ballistic missiles grows, Americans are going to increasingly demand their northern neighbor pull its weight in NATO and ante up for updating continental air defence, including modernizing NORAD.

Very soon now, Canada is going to have to replace or modernize much its military hardware. This will be the moment of truth. Canadians will be forced to decide whether they want true armed forces in this unpredictable, dangerous world, or more empty military tokenism. At minimum, they should act to stop billions in defence spending being poured down black holes in Ottawa with nothing to show for the effort but more desk generals and a bunch of uniformed social workers that Ottawa calls an army.

Political science teaches that the first role and raison d'etre for governments - and the primary reason for people to pay taxes - is to provide internal security and external defence.

A government that blithely talks of spending $13 billion on state-run babysitting - 44% more than it spends on defence - has clearly lost its way, and its mandate to rule. It's not the CF-18s that are rotten. It's Ottawa.