Venandi

Bloody exhausting eh? There are lots of questions here IMO, lots of stuff that doesn't make sense to anyone who's ever done anything in the way of security / access control work. There needs to be a full public inquiry into this by an independent judge, all televised, all under oath (with full subpoena power) and all relevant documents declassified. I've come to think it's for the good of the country. Otherwise, those with agendas (like Roboduh) will forever be flapping their gums and the people who actually do know stuff (not Roboduh) will be leaking self serving snippets of truth against a background of lies and BS forever and a day. As with the Epstein files, I have no more sympathy for innocents or victims and zero trust in politically motivated entities like the DOJ and FBI. They should never have been political pawns in the first place and there needs to be a full and total REINIT and ruthless purge... names need to be named, criminals need to be jailed and there needs to be lots of well earned firings. I say Clear the air completely and shut down political hacks like Roboduh with the unfiltered unadulterated truth. He won't believe it anyway but who cares... once this is done ,no one will give a rat's behind what he believes. Get er done and let the great axe fall where the offence lies. When that happens I suspect Robodouche will be too busy putting bandages on his Biden action figures to have much more to say here.

I don't want to get into the weeds here but have a look at the difference between range and combat radius. I think you'll see that the F35 wins... that's what (I suspect) people are referring to here when they talk about "range" even though the difference isn't huge. I think it's about 100 miles or so. The "kill switch" is miss named a bit (I think) it's not like disabling a car but it's certainly a potential issue with the F35. The US controls virtually all aspects of software development and access, global parts, supply, logistic support etc. The fear is that it creates dependancy and that dependancy could turn an expensive airplane into something of a paper weight (in terms of capabilities and interoperability) pretty quickly. I'm not a fighter guy but when people talk about the "kill switch" thing I suspect that's what they really mean. At this level of capability / complexity it's almost the same thing as a kill switch... being left with an expensive computer and no software / internet access maybe isn't the perfect analogy but that's the point they are trying to make (I think)... in other words, being dependant is rightly seen as a vulnerability.

Yes Herb... good job, you caught them It has nothing to do with operational range, payload capacity, multirole capabilities, wanting more stealth / better interoperability with the US, or the demands of Canadian geography. After an insightful assessment like that a long nap is in order... you must be tired. Nighty Boo.....

Looks like nothing has changed, they were banned (for group training) from our range. Loading a snap cap or two per magazine would probably provide some entertainment. Sadly, I still need to do that routinely in order to keep the flinch that stole Christmas at bay.

But it was comprised of trained (not necessarily combat ready) personnel and it provided a means of NOT archiving their personnel records...that was the point of it, they were available and ready to go if needed assuming the member could still make the cut. Going from fully trained to combat ready isn't a big leap, it's a bunny hop. What you seem to be advocating for is an entirely different, vastly dumbed down and bloated critter who's only charm lies in the fact that its idle carcass is 88 times bigger than what you had before. As me grand-pappy would say: "bad trade." I see little sense in pursuing this further as nothing I say is going to resonate... if you and enough other voters really want to do this then go for it. Army Guy and I will drink Scotch, gobble popcorn and watch the show. Best of luck with it...

Me either. Now, if you were to cast your mind back to the Primary Reserves of yesterday and commit to two training nights a week, one Saturday per month and 2 months in the summer the only thing I would question would be the logistics, facilities, instructor availability and your willingness to pay for it all. Say we wanted to produce a given amount of MSE OPs (drivers), calling them combat drivers might be better. Between Sept and June of the following year we could complete basic training. In the summer we would do the basic trade qualification course (say 6-8 weeks). If that was your (our) plan I'd say OK, but it isn't... not by a long shot. My turn to use an extreme example: As currently envisioned It would take about 10 years to complete basic training and another 8-10 years to produce a trade qualified driver and by the time we were done the only thing we would have gained is a pension liability. Even if you went a step down from my driver analogy and said we will do 2 months of basic training followed by two (continuous) weeks of training per year I could get on board with the potential reasonableness of doing it. That's not what we're talking about though. Here's another potential issue, by necessity, those two weeks would be pretty intense in order to provide the value intended and I think attrition would be disappointingly high. The reason civil servants would make good candidates here is the fact that their employer is actually the one sponsoring their military training and time away from work. I think that was the thought process in suggesting them as a recruiting pool. Anyway... if this had been presented logically and the numbers made any sort of sense at all, you would likely see much less resistance from people who have a passing familiarity with such things.

Nuclear powered, not boomers though... and they actually are honest to goodness attack submarines Herb. Were you expecting one of those tourist sight seeing thingies? IMO the argument here isn't do we need them, if you want a credible under ice deterrent with long duration and high speed capabilities you most definitely do need them. So yes, being submerged for a long period of time really is the point here. The issue for Canada isn't a case of need, it's a question of practicality. Even manning is a problem here, a typical SSN requires (about) twice the crew size and would demand training an entirely new generation of submariners with all of the infrastructure required to support the effort. It would be years in the making unless you think 130 civil servants per sub are up to the task after a one week course.

I'll bring the popcorn. Guess I'll burn that RSO certificate too... just in case the phone rings.

OK, I find myself forced to type LOL... did you actually proofread that before you hit submit? That speaks volumes about the people who support the gun grab. When I talk to some of these folks I always ask them what regulation they would enact if they were King for a day. Almost invariably they are surprised to hear that it already exists and that when combined with the cross over from provincial hunting regulations is even more strict than their King for a day idea. At one week a year you'll be hard pressed to find anyone to say the words "trained military" and Civil Service Reserve Force in the same sentence. This will be a very costly social experiment. Kit issue alone is going to be fun to watch, we can't even get that right for deployed Regular Force members. Here's another fun fact, most police officers aren't the weapon handling experts you think, there are a few hobbyists/competitors who are very good and TRU team members that specialize in CQB are excellent (relatively speaking) because they drill it. Generally though, they are the exceptions and very much in the minority, for most cops carrying a duty weapon is just part of the job and it's a matter of qualifying once or twice a year... not much different than non combat arms military members. Most active IPSC competitors are hands down more proficient. I struggled to find so much as kernel of logic in your posts on this topic and unpacking the rest of it will no doubt fall on deaf ears anyway so I won't bother. If you (meaning voters) want this and you're willing to pay for it then go ahead and do it... It doesn't make sense to me but I'm rooting for you anyway.

Here's a world record effort from a few years ago... even a high average performance in pistol calibre is pretty impressive though:

And what is special about the number 5? The mandated pins restricting magazine capacity are easily drilled out by anyone with a modicum of technical ability and it certainly doesn't appear that gang members in Toronto are adversely inclined to using over capacity magazines. Elevating a 5 round box magazine on a semiautomatic .22 to the status of an assault rifle would tend to eliminate any civil servants inclined to agree with the concept from the threshold of knowledge required to join the new reserve units if I were doing the intake interviews. The amount of training time required to dispel all of the logical absurdities here would take up most of the first week's training.

Which includes a trail of blood drops from Flybaby in lieu of thoughtful commentary.

It's also worth noting that training time will be limited to one week initially followed by one week per year. As a result "Specialized High Intensity Training (SHIT) will, of necessity, contain a blended approach combining "common to corps" and individualized trade specific (occupational) training "sandwiched" into an individualized package. The result will be "SHIT Sandwich." The government will be working diligently to develop a combined CTS/CTP manual to highlight the "Specialized High Intensity Training Standard" that civil servants will be required to meet. This training manual will be titled "The SHITS." Yes Herb, I actually can do this all day... but I won't. We now return you to regularly scheduled liberal madness.

Given that transgender awareness week culminates in a day of remembrance on the 20th, Herb is likely to be offended by your timing and lack of sensitivity. In the spirit of reconciliation, I sentence you to serve in the Civil Service Reserve Force of Canada for a period of one week. During that time Herb will be your training buddy for advanced first aid and land navigation. Since you will be participating in an abbreviated version of Special High Intensity Training (SHIT), the artificial respiration and full body assessment portions of your first aid course will videotaped and used for recruiting / training purposes. After you've shared some quality training time and gone through SHIT together, I'm confident you will come regret your tendency to indulge in improper thinking.

The people who've actually read your posts don't think that's likely to work...

When I heard about this my first thought was the gun grab. Imagine the logical gyrations a liberal voter would have to perform in order to think that proceeding with both of these things simultaneously is a jolly good idea. The thought of training civil servants to use guns whist simultaneously having the same people actively engaged in taking guns away from those who actually know how to use them is a uniquely Canadian idea. Even the Good Idea Fairy didn't think this one would pass muster. While our best Regular Force recruiting efforts are barely able to stay ahead of attrition, no one with a hand held calculator questions the logical absurdities here. Even more delicious is the fact that many of the people defending it also think getting submarines is a "silly" idea and simply shrug at the notion that we can't equip and train what we already have in a timely and efficient manner. I hope they go ahead and do it, I'm looking forward to watching it play out.

Stealth is synonymous with submarines, that's exactly what makes them a force multiplier. From any aggressors point of view, even the threat of a "possible presence" demands attention. This has a huge deterrent effect simply because an ASW plan (and allocated resources) has to be part of any rational threat assessment, every maneuver undertaken needs to be considered in that context.... and since they really are a threat, that's way more than a simple mental exercise with no consequences attached to getting it wrong.

And the fact that they talked at some length at Epstein's place isn't terribly surprising to me. He knew her because she worked for him briefly and the only reason he even hired her was because she was the daughter of the maintenance man he employed at Mar a Lago. At first I thought dumping all of the information into the public domain was a bad idea because it tended to tarnish far too many innocent people and victims alike, placing all of them under a spotlight in the public domain that they didn't deserve to wither under. I was prepared to trust the DOJ (of any administration) to investigate and bring charges where appropriate as opposed to tarring and feathering all and sundry. I didn't anticipate the level of the self serving cherry picking that would take place though and I've had a change of heart because of it. I now say dump it all, let the chips scatter as they will and let the great axe fall where the offence lays. Democrats may find themselves suddenly defanged and more on the defensive about "their guy(s)" than they anticipated. So... up to now I considered the contents to be a criminal matter as opposed to a political one and thought it reasonable to protect the innocent from scrutiny and abuse. I now think Robo deserves to wear the consequences of the very data dump he longs for and in response to his selective snippets of self serving appetizers served out of context I'm now in favour of stuffing the entire menu up his left nostril and passing out Gravol to anyone inclined to vomit.

I'm not sure what that means. Are you suggesting that no one supports it then? ----------------- In general , and IMO of course, if you have a huge coastline, an inadequate supply of surface combatants, limited shore bombardment capabilities and limited TASMO options all at the same time, then logically (I think) the force multiplier effect of submarines is a topic worthy of sober reflection. Over the years I've watched (mostly in awe) as capabilities got whittled away and the prefix always seemed to be "Canada doesn't need." For me, heavy lift helicopters was the most obvious one to date but I'm now hearing the same sentiments expressed (in some circles) about ASW and fighters in addition to subs. All are perishable capabilities (especially ASW and subs) and you have to envision a world where you will never face a submarine threat and never need to protect airspace in order to make your case. I'd simply observe that water is where your navy operates and airspace is the domain of the rest of your AIR Force. There's an interesting overlap in this stuff too, if you are going to offer TASMO as a reason to limit an NGS capability does it make sense to later say that Canada doesn't need fighters? As it stands, any potential aggressor(even in low-level events like fishery disputes) is forced to consider the presence (or possible presence) of submarine(s) and take the appropriate precautions. It imposes a significantly broader threat assessment on them and requires a lot of baggage to counter (and you can't not counter it)... the Falklands conflict is case in point. You can find reams of information about the value of submarines on line and northern sovereignty should be a consideration for anyone who sees global warming as a threat. I won't belabour this point further but (I think) a navy without submarines (especially a small one like ours that has a huge coast to protect) is like a small army that decides sniper teams are a waste of resources without considering that both are potent force multipliers that provides a level of deterrence and kinetic potential that punches above its weight... I'd also suggest that both are harder to reinit when they're gone than they are to maintain.

As an aside, this is one of the benefits of digital ID and face/gait recognition. I can think of other benefits but for every one of them there seems to be an equal and opposite dark side. This might be further advanced in deployment than I thought though. DNA data bases and implanted ID chips are on the horizon. Just for fun, I'll even take it a step further... if everyone on the planet was to be assigned a unique ID number, how many digits would it likely contain? I read some where (and it was a while ago) that 18 digits would be reasonable to encode regional data and provide for sufficient expansion. Almost sounds like 666 eh? Cool, I thought it was just me... that was one of my first thoughts after the number of plants in the crowd was revealed. There are other examples of this too... had the RCMP not been caught in the act of sabotaging heavy equipment on private property Robo-duh wouldn't have believed the possibility of it happening either. That's why such things work. The guy who photographed the Nazi flag (not to mention the clown that waved it) at the trucker protest is another interesting case study. I won't belabour the point but those interested in such things should look into the viewing angle, duration of exposure, who took the picture, and who put the run on the guy waving it.

Because that's where most of the current distrust was spawned (I think) and as the nonsense (like mandatory youth vaccinations for sports) increased, so did concerns that distrust and hesitation would spill over to other realms of the vaccination orbit. Only about .07% of the population are Mennonites and you seem to be suggesting that the current hesitation is simply a function of them plus immigration... that may be partially true, I'm not sure and I'm not going to waste time researching it because the Herbs and Robos of the world will just contest the sources anyway. But, as it stands now, 16% of people regret getting the covid jab, they feel they were coerced into it, they won't do it again and some resent the fact it was mandated and that resentment remains palpable today. Some military members fall into that category BTW and what really pi$$ed them off was the spectre of their neighbours cheering when people were fired for balking at it. I'm willing to bet that I've had more inoculations (probably lots more) than any of the people here who delight in screaming anti-vaxxer in my face. Clearly you can quote the instances of administrative military releases and say they were small in number (235ish if memory serves) that's the party line and you would be right... but (and it's a big but), the voluntary releases to avoid having a disciplinary one on their file were much higher and if you want to find a pi$$ed off group of veterans, look no further. Many of them (including my oldest) dropped their release notice just prior to recieving a recorded warning. If you decide to look into the actual statistics on Mennonite and immigrant vaccine uptake I would be very happy to read through it. I'm not suggesting your observations are wrong BTW but I think there are enough non immigrants in the mix to warrant concern. Regardless of the actual stats though I fear it may be a while before we regain the ground lost. Hateful, ill informed, nasty, sarcastic BS rhetoric from the likes of Herb isn't helping solve the issue either. It seems to me that the biggest loudmouths can't even discuss the science at a high school level and they aren't helping IMO. Cheers.

Here's an AI response for whatever that's worth... there's more to it I think and no date was included. I think AI is like GPS... watch out for the bridges. Anyway, I'm not going to go digging for stuff because it's all been done here before and none of the Herbs will read anything factual if it's to long anyway. I think they'll defend this one though: Approximately 97% of recent immigrants to Canada have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. This figure highlights a high level of vaccination coverage within this demographic, which is consistent with the overall trend of strong vaccine uptake across the Canadian population.

I'm not going to go looking but that stands at odds with what I remember from when I did look for it. The vaccination rate among immigrants was higher than I expected and if memory serves, it's close to on par with the general population.

That says more about your circle of acquaintances than it does the how and why of current vaccine skepticism and distrust. Some feared this would happen and warned of it... they also suggested there would be inertia because it would be somewhat generational in nature and it would take time to rebuild trust. It seems some of you were expecting a different result... as far as I'm concerned, that's just one more thing you got wrong. As it stands now some 36% of Canadians feel the covid response was overblown (clearly some rethinks there) and 16% regret having gotten the shot and wouldn't do it again. Add that to the percentage of people who refused to get it in the first place and you begin to see the extent of the problem. Personally, I'm hoping that there are no further revelations or near future ill effects from the covid vaccine that make this trend worse. Like other grand experiments of late, this is going to take some time to unfuc%... Thanks for your service Herb.

Thanks Herb... that made it all better. When I see trees voting for the axe I'm reminded of your particular brand of logic... the axe handle is made of wood so the axe is one of us.