US, UK, Australia in security pact against China. Canada left out

[Army Guy]

52 minutes ago, Queenmandy85 said:

Argus, you and I are in agreement but we are not in step with the majority of Canadians. Between the wars, we had less than 5000 all ranks in the regular force and the militia was not viable. An artillery unit "fired the gun" once a year. My Strategic Studies prof was in a militia infantry unit. His unit had a "liberated" grenade that was disarmed and they would practice throwing it.

I

And what we have failed to remember is most soldiers in WWI had very little basic training and what regular guys they did have would have been over whelmed with the sheer number of recruits, WWII 39, 40 many soldiers do not recieve any basic training they would get that over in England, later in the war basic training was done inn Canada for 6 weeks then off to the front. to give you an example todays Basic and Infantry training is almost 6 months long...then it is off to the unit... My point is many young Canadian men died because of the lack of proper equipment and training, but hey it's only a thousands of Canadians we can afford that...right i mean billions spent on equipment and training is certainly not worth thousands of lives right... And once again we forget it is our sons and daughters that will be fired on those front lines and forced to use that equipment made from the cheapest bidder, or friends with the Politician's.

We don't need a military that could act as a non dependent force, our allies are asking more like begging us to have a force that is armed with modern equipment capable of fighting in a high intensity conflict with a near peer adversary.

Lets take a look at first gulf war, we did not provide any fighting equipment because the Iraqi army had better and more modern equipment than we did..to put that into a perspective a 3 rd world nation had better equipment than a G-7 nation.. of course that was not hard as a lot of the African nations also had more modern equipment.

To prepare a fighting force to go into combat takes weeks, Units designated as first response units can move within 72 hours but it takes weeks to get to that state...and those forces are only unit level...

Conscription was not a major problem with exception of Quebec, and even then they provided the manpower required of them. I think the average Canadian would sign up, after 9-11 Canadians looking to sign up went up 1000 %.

Canadians won't realize their mistake about our military size until it bites them in the ass, even domestic ops like the Winnipeg floods took 2 complete brigade groups and hundreds of Airforce and navy pers...or 3/4 of our entire army. Now they looked at something like a major earth quake in BC, thousand of lives may perish because of the lack of assistance available from the government that info was made public, but Canadians seemed to brush it away with ahh that won't happen...but when it does i hope we have the balls to point the finger at ourselves for this mistake... 

[Aristides]

7 minutes ago, Army Guy said:

And what we have failed to remember is most soldiers in WWI had very little basic training and what regular guys they did have would have been over whelmed with the sheer number of recruits, WWII 39, 40 many soldiers do not recieve any basic training they would get that over in England, later in the war basic training was done inn Canada for 6 weeks then off to the front. to give you an example todays Basic and Infantry training is almost 6 months long...then it is off to the unit... My point is many young Canadian men died because of the lack of proper equipment and training, but hey it's only a thousands of Canadians we can afford that...right i mean billions spent on equipment and training is certainly not worth thousands of lives right... And once again we forget it is our sons and daughters that will be fired on those front lines and forced to use that equipment made from the cheapest bidder, or friends with the Politician's.

We don't need a military that could act as a non dependent force, our allies are asking more like begging us to have a force that is armed with modern equipment capable of fighting in a high intensity conflict with a near peer adversary.

Lets take a look at first gulf war, we did not provide any fighting equipment because the Iraqi army had better and more modern equipment than we did..to put that into a perspective a 3 rd world nation had better equipment than a G-7 nation.. of course that was not hard as a lot of the African nations also had more modern equipment.

To prepare a fighting force to go into combat takes weeks, Units designated as first response units can move within 72 hours but it takes weeks to get to that state...and those forces are only unit level...

Conscription was not a major problem with exception of Quebec, and even then they provided the manpower required of them. I think the average Canadian would sign up, after 9-11 Canadians looking to sign up went up 1000 %.

Canadians won't realize their mistake about our military size until it bites them in the ass, even domestic ops like the Winnipeg floods took 2 complete brigade groups and hundreds of Airforce and navy pers...or 3/4 of our entire army. Now they looked at something like a major earth quake in BC, thousand of lives may perish because of the lack of assistance available from the government that info was made public, but Canadians seemed to brush it away with ahh that won't happen...but when it does i hope we have the balls to point the finger at ourselves for this mistake... 

This country has a history of going to war poorly trained, led and equipped at the beginning, all of which cost lives. An exception might be Korea because it came so quickly after WW2.

[Yzermandius19]

29 minutes ago, Aristides said:

Why should the Americans support Canadian territorial claims, we have disputes with the US in Arctic as well.

why? the Monroe Doctrine

Canada is incapable of enforcing it's own territorial claims against any major naval power

and the value of doing so wouldn't be worth the cost even if Canada could afford it

better to leave the heavy lifting to the Americans

and Canada is doing just that

Edited September 20, 2021 by Yzermandius19

[Yzermandius19]

57 minutes ago, Army Guy said:

One does not need to have a massive NORMANDY landing of troops to disrupt a nation, and throw it into disarray, we learned that on Sept 11... attacking key nods could shut down power grids, disrupt transportation grids air, land and sea, spread fear amongst the local population this can be done with out any landing craft or ships...

Other modes of attack could be via cyber warfare, something CSIS has been warning the government about for years and still no action, these attacks could also shut down power grids, finical districts, anything that is run by computers, which pretty much covers almost everything. China makes most of our electronic equipment , chips etc, that are used in everything such as government computers, DND , RCMP, CSIS, you name it...maybe even our 5 g networks...all of which could compromise almost everything. 

The ability to influence elections also mentioned by CSIS, influence ex Chinese Canadian population by threats of harming family members still in China. The ability to heavily influence our economy, as most of our imports are from China, and a good portion of our exports go to China...China has been very busy purchasing a large chunk of our industries, influencing our housing sales, funding massive projects our own government will not...

Let me ask you this what do you think if several power grids for Ontario and Quebec where to go down, leaving the largest cities with no power for just a week or 2 in the winter...now what would happen if we combined all of that with cyber attacks , random terrorist attacks, knocking down a few airliners... shit,3 Newfies in a row boat armed with a couple shot guns and a drone could land on the beach in BC and take over...

A while Canada does not have a reason today to go to war with china, you could bet a years wage that if the US or any of the now 3 eyes get into a military engagement with China , we would be there within days.... and if it stayed conventional your sons and daughters will be enlisted and sent to the front to fight with what ever we still have on hand.. ships take years to build, planes months and to train a soldier properly months as well... we do not live in the 1940's where we could build a plane in a day, or a ship in a month train a soldier in a couple months... things are way more complicated than that...

Lets not forget for a second China is not a threat. The free world spends trillions on their militaries to ensure China among a few others blinks and has second thoughts before they do anything...Canada has very little defense against any of those above threats..

China is not a threat to invade Canada

and Canada is no threat to China

if Canada went to war with China, it would be useless dead weight to it's allies

Canada had no business fighting a war with China

and China gains nothing by going to war with Canada

the threats above that China poses to Canada cannot be stopped with military force

war is not the way to address these threats

Edited September 20, 2021 by Yzermandius19

[Argus]

2 hours ago, Queenmandy85 said:

To achieve what you and the others on this forum want, we need to be able to have air superiority over china and the western Pacific and sufficient navel forces to sink the Chinese navy. Any land engagement with the Chinese army is out of the question. 

You continue to embrace this 'all or nothing' approach, where either we need to be able to defeat China ourselves or simply not have a military. That is not what anyone here is calling for. We don't need to match China. We merely need to field a respectable military so that we will be taken seriously. Some of the new electric subs are even quieter than nuclear, and I'm willing to bet if we had a dozen of them - which Australia was ordering from France, we could deter any kind of Chinese adventurism anywhere near our coast.

Nor do we need conscription. I believe we could recruit enough people easily, if the government took measure to instill pride in our military - which includes not making them get by with forty year old, obsolete junk. We fielded a military twice the size it is now when we had half our population. We could field it again.

And what our self-serving politicians want is irrelevant to the discussion. We all know they place their own political interest ahead of what's best for Canada. The best we can do is vote for whomever seems friendliest to the idea of increasing the size and spending. Right now (as usual) that's the Conservatives. And at least their leader is a former CAF officer who presumably has more interest and respect for the military than a smarmy drama teacher like Trudeau.

 

 

[Argus]

1 hour ago, Queenmandy85 said:

I have campaigned to change that for fifty years without any change. I am out of ideas. My complaining about it won't accomplish anything. As you say, we are looking at 10 - 15 years to build, but that is after the years it will take to change the minds of voters. You have to convince people to be willing to pay a lot more taxes and young people to participate. 

The problem is that while in Australia all major parties agree on the importance of a strong military, the Liberals in Canada never have, and when in opposition use every opportunity to politicize any and all military purchase and actions. For example, they got us into Afghanistan, but once the Tories were in power they did everything they could to make Canadians want us out. They searched for 'scandal' in everything from how Americans treated prisoners we handed over to the cost of new equipment. The Liberals signed us onto the F35 purchasing program, but once in opposition they did everything in their power to make it seem like a complete waste of money.  every action, every death in combat was another opportunity for them to score points against the Tories.

And now in power they've pushed all capital projects to the rear burner because Trudeau only cares about spending money on improving his popularity. And he figures the Canadians who care most about the military probably don't vote Liberal anyway.

[Yzermandius19]

America already deters China

adventurism along Canada's coast gains China nothing

Canada doesn't need a large military

waste of money

Edited September 20, 2021 by Yzermandius19

[Aristides]

1 hour ago, Yzermandius19 said:

why? the Monroe Doctrine

Canada is incapable of enforcing it's own territorial claims against any major naval power

and the value of doing so wouldn't be worth the cost even if Canada could afford it

better to leave the heavy lifting to the Americans

and Canada is doing just that

Only because we can and if they want to. And we wonder why they don’t respect us and form alliances with Australia who is spending twice as much on defence with 2/3 our population

[Army Guy]

57 minutes ago, Yzermandius19 said:

America already deters China

adventurism along Canada's coast gains China nothing

Canada doesn't need a large military

waste of money

Which is why recently the new 3 eyes have provided more naval power and presence to the pacific region at the US request. note 3 eyes use to be 5 eyes, but because we have nothing of any importance to contribute we have been voted off the island. 

Actually China claims Near artic state status...let the adventurism begin...

https://ketagalanmedia.com/2020/11/19/inconsistencies-within-chinas-arctic-policy/#:~:text=The historical appeal to the “Near-Arctic State” status,Republic of China (Taiwan) that

I agree Canada does not need a large military, but 65,000 people is not enough, you could boil that down to this ground forces we have 4800 infantry troops in 9 Regts... 2 under manned and under equipped Armor Regts, with 82 tanks , but only 40 are battle tanks  (20) Leo IIA4M and (20) Leo IIA6M, these tanks were rode hard in Afghanistan , 42 are training tanks...arty we have maybe 24-30 M777 arty guns... maybe we could atleast double those numbers.... 

Waste of money, matter of opinion i guess, most insurance policies are, but no one knows for sure if they are going to be used or not. Considering most Canadians do not know just what our military brings to the table...

[Queenmandy85]

2 hours ago, Army Guy said:

Conscription was not a major problem with exception of Quebec,

No, Saskatchewan made up a large number of zombies. It was Saskatchewan zombies that mutinied in Terrace BC in 1944.

[Queenmandy85]

The flaw in relying on allies is sometimes they don't share our objectives. We face off with Russia in our territorial waters. We discover a Russian submarine in the Arctic. After several warnings, the sub refuses to leave and the RCAF sinks it.

The confrontation between Canada and Russia escalates. But, since the US doesn't recognize Canada's sovereignty in the Arctic, they sit back and watch, just as they did in the Great War and the Second World War. We need to be able to stand on our own, especially since the last few years, the US has become unreliable.

In the case of invasion, as has been pointed out, the only country that can logistically invade Canada, the most likely course is to absorb the invasion and then bleed them white. The US has a dismal record when it comes to invading countries like Afghanistan, Iraq and Viet Nam. I know this will not happen in the foreseeable future, but it only takes one knuckle dragging moron in the Whitehouse to change everything. If it did, happen, I am a disciple of the Keyser Soze school of resistance. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[bush_cheney2004]

2 hours ago, Queenmandy85 said:

The flaw in relying on allies is sometimes they don't share our objectives. We face off with Russia in our territorial waters. We discover a Russian submarine in the Arctic. After several warnings, the sub refuses to leave and the RCAF sinks it.

 

Nope...not going to happen.  Canada is not going to "sink" a Russian submarine in the Arctic during peacetime, even if it could do so.   U.S. and Russian submarines have operated with impunity in the "Canadian" Arctic for decades with Canada granting permission for passage after the fact, because that is all it can do.

Canada cannot run with the big dogs...and never will.   That's OK.

[Queenmandy85]

No argument. My point is when you present force as a deterrent, you better be prepared to use it. We have a wonderful neighbour but we can't expect them to back us up every time.Our allies have their own interests to manage.

But, we could sink a Russian submarine. It just isn't a great idea. 

 

Edited September 21, 2021 by Queenmandy85

[Yzermandius19]

1 hour ago, Queenmandy85 said:

No argument. My point is when you present force as a deterrent, you better be prepared to use it. We have a wonderful neighbour but we can't expect them to back us up every time.Our allies have their own interests to manage.

But, we could sink a Russian submarine. It just isn't a great idea. 

Canada isn't prepared to use it

especially in a lame attempt to sink a Russian submarine

America are the one's deterring things

no matter how much Canada spends on it's military

it isn't going to deter anything

Edited September 21, 2021 by Yzermandius19

[Zeitgeist]

We only need to be able to destroy the entire planet once over, or even a large country once over, to deter an existential attack.  Canada has sat on and demurred on that tech for 70 years.  Really all we need to be able to do is shoot any missiles or aircraft out of the sky, identify attacking ships/subs from space, and vaporize them.  You don’t need a big army or lots of tanks for that.  Fast well equipped ships, planes, drones, and missiles are plenty.  Canada has the technical know-how and uranium for all of it.  Much of it is available off the shelf through NATO and other partners.  It’s a matter of will and financial priority.  Canadians don’t care enough.  

[Yzermandius19]

3 minutes ago, Zeitgeist said:

We only need to be able to destroy the entire planet once over, or even a large country once over, to deter an existential attack.  Canada has sat on and demurred on that tech for 70 years.  Really all we need to be able to do is shoot any missiles or aircraft out of the sky, identify attacking ships/subs from space, and vaporize them.  You don’t need a big army or lots of tanks for that.  Fast well equipped ships, planes, drones, and missiles are plenty.  Canada has the technical know-how and uranium for all of it.  Much of it is available off the shelf through NATO and other partners.  It’s a matter of will and financial priority.  Canadians don’t care enough.  

that would actually just make Canada a target

America deters them anyway

no need for the redundancy

the juice ain't worth the squeeze

[Zeitgeist]

20 minutes ago, Yzermandius19 said:

that would actually just make Canada a target

America deters them anyway

no need for the redundancy

the juice ain't worth the squeeze

Well that’s pretty much where we are.   I actually don’t think the Yanks want us to beef up militarily.  They want the support of coalition and to use the kinder, gentler maple leaf when their hard power diplomacy falls short.  It’s a lot of political theatre.   But let’s not pretend that Canada has an independent defense or foreign policy.  Maybe that’s better anyway because it saves us from our rose-coloured approach.  I do personally think we need a minimum level of totally independent destructive power to deter invasion, however, because sometimes the US struggles to manage itself.  Trust no one.

Edited September 21, 2021 by Zeitgeist

[Army Guy]

6 minutes ago, Zeitgeist said:

Well that’s pretty much where we are.   I actually don’t think the Yanks want us to beef up militarily.  They want the support of coalition and to use the kinder, gentler maple leaf when their hard power diplomacy falls short.  It’s a lot of political theatre.   But let’s not pretend that Canada has an independent defense or foreign policy.  Maybe that’s better anyway because it saves us from our rose-coloured approach.  I do personally think we need a minimum level of totally independent destructive power to deter invasion, however, because sometimes the US struggles to manage itself.  Trust no one.

Thats not the message that the US has been sending via their presidents for decades now, including Obama... we just have not listened to any of it... the last time a US president / NATO "told" not asked,  Canada to pony up, was Pierre snr Trudeau, they ordered him to modernize it's ground forces in Germany or leave Germany. 

[Zeitgeist]

2 minutes ago, Army Guy said:

Thats not the message that the US has been sending via their presidents for decades now, including Obama... we just have not listened to any of it... the last time a US president / NATO "told" not asked,  Canada to pony up, was Pierre snr Trudeau, they ordered him to modernize it's ground forces in Germany or leave Germany. 

When Canada developed the fastest aircraft, the Yanks pressured Diefenbaker to shut it down, give them the tech, and dump the ruined prototypes in the lake.  Canada cannot hold a candle to US militarily might.  We can offer support.   Yes we do need to beef up the military to make it viable.  The problem for us now is that the support we’re offering instead of hard power is basically resettlement.  We take the refugees that are the fallout of geopolitical messes.  Lucky us.  

[Army Guy]

Our military industrial complex has been allowed to dry up, today ship building project is a hand out of bils of dollars to the  major companies like the Irving's, Davies ship yard. we could have got much much more if we had them built off shore... and used the bils that where saved to provide tax breaks or pay or actually fix our health care system, something...

[Yzermandius19]

1 hour ago, Army Guy said:

Our military industrial complex has been allowed to dry up, today ship building project is a hand out of bils of dollars to the  major companies like the Irving's, Davies ship yard. we could have got much much more if we had them built off shore... and used the bils that where saved to provide tax breaks or pay or actually fix our health care system, something...

Canada's military is dead and it's never coming back

Humpty Dumpty has fallen

all the king's horses and all the king's men

couldn't put Humpty together again

[cannuck]

11 hours ago, Yzermandius19 said:

Canada's military is dead and it's never coming back

Humpty Dumpty has fallen

all the king's horses and all the king's men

couldn't put Humpty together again

My own Son-in-law left a senior post in the military since he did not want to see his regiment destroyed under his watch.   Our political anti-military will (started by PET, augmented by Hillier, perpetuated by the current band of cabinet morons) was enough to destroy a lifetime of his work.

Procurement here has been a political pork barrel dedicated to pandering to Quebec and rewarding political supporters for a very long time.  Couple that with being over 2 trillion in debt and even if we could straighten out the graft and corruption we can't pay the bills anyhow.

[Aristides]

Let the Americans do it. National security, Canada style.

[Army Guy]

11 hours ago, cannuck said:

My own Son-in-law left a senior post in the military since he did not want to see his regiment destroyed under his watch.   Our political anti-military will (started by PET, augmented by Hillier, perpetuated by the current band of cabinet morons) was enough to destroy a lifetime of his work.

Procurement here has been a political pork barrel dedicated to pandering to Quebec and rewarding political supporters for a very long time.  Couple that with being over 2 trillion in debt and even if we could straighten out the graft and corruption we can't pay the bills anyhow.

I used to pray that things would get better ,with the next government, and in 34 years our military it was never a question on the ballot box. Serving was very frustrating, with the lack of training opportunity's, Equipment built before i was born, a broken procurement system designed to not work on purpose....,

A government that did not give a rats ass about any of military members welfare, being sent around the globe with little to no equipment needed.  thats liberal and conservative alike, and the public was the same with one exception remembrance day ..., I remember there were years where we could not wear our uniforms out in public that included drive to and from work... god forbid you went to the bank or something in public... without getting spit on or a fight breaking out and NO that was not during the Vietnam war.. that was in the late 80's...

It did not take me and many others long to figure out that i did not serve my country, or Canadians for that matter . I served the men and women on the left and right of me, we were in the same boat, loved the job, just hated the way we were treated. Change is not coming any time soon. 

[Argus]

This puts it quite well, I think.

When news broke last week that the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia — Canada’s closest allies and national security partners for six decades in the “Five Eyes” intelligence sharing network — had agreed on a new security pact called AUKUS aimed at containing China’s global ambitions, Canada’s exclusion from the arrangement was disappointing but not devastating. One might have assumed that our federal government considered this deal carefully and concluded it was not in Canada’s national interest to be part of it. After all, Canada has chosen to be non-existent in the Indo-Pacific region for many years.

But when government sources leaked that Canada was not even consulted on the agreement and knew nothing about it until hours before the announcement, something much more serious is afoot. The message from Washington, London and Canberra to our capital seems rather direct: Canada is irrelevant and unreliable, if not a pain in the ass when it comes to meeting the national security challenge of our times, namely checking China’s aggressive, confrontational global ambitions.

https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/lang-new-pact-between-australia-u-s-and-u-k-shows-canadas-waning-global-relevance