Is it time to disband the Canadian Armed Forces?

[The Bread Guy]

3) What would happen if Canada went back to combat? If this happened today, and tomorrow Parliament decides to send ground troops to fight ISIS, how would that be done? Does the Constitution allow people considered Peace Officers under the Criminal Code to participate in combat missions as LEOs? Would this weaken the national security, by not having dedicated, combat-ready troops, specializing in an array of ops?

And that brings back the point of:  if government wants a "smaller bayonet", so to speak, government also has to live with the fact that it may not be able to conduct "combat" ops as we know them now.

On the other hand, there's also recent examples of gendarmes working in combat environments (Italy in Iraq, for example), so it's not impossible, but different rules would have to be drawn up and different jobs may have to be undertaken.

Contrary to the buzz-word peddlers out there, you can't always do the same or more with less.

 

[Edward Campbell]

...

3) What would happen if Canada went back to combat? If this happened today, and tomorrow Parliament decides to send ground troops to fight ISIS, how would that be done?

...

We send these guys?

Private military contractors

After all, it's what Elizabeth I did when she needed to fight the Spanish ...

 

[George Wallace]

Or perhaps these guys:

German Motorcycle Club members join Dutch Bikers in fight against ISIS

 

[a_majoor]

Very thought provoking ideas here.

Amalgamating the various police and quasi police security agencies may or may not deliver efficiencies; remember the merging of various cities to create the GTA was supposed to eliminate duplication and save costs, but in the end all that happened was every civil servant in the various pre GTA cities ended up getting the same pay and benefits as Toronto (i.e. the highest), and without very much ion the way of reductions. Be careful what you wish for.

Private military contractors also have plusses and minuses; the first and most obvious is their resources are nowhere near that of a Nation State (no private entity could afford to buy C-17's, for example), so we may end up with lots of fragmented capabilities (although when talking about today's CAF there would not be much of a noticeable difference). High end military equipment and support needed to take on need peer opponents will be lacking. Even Sir Francis Drake could only muster up a handful of ships, Phillip II dispatched 130 ships from Spain to start, and they were expected to pick up an additional fleet of landing craft. Interestingly enough, Elizabeth 1 could muster a fleet of her own, and privateers like Drake apparently only provided 12 of the 200 ships of Elizabeth's fleet.

So there are a lot of variables to examine here, and I suspect that many of the proposed COA's will have negative second and third order effects. OTOH it is more than past time to take a serious look at Canada's defense.

 

[Cloud Cover]

Again, I would think it should be kept simple. No peacekeeping, no uniformed armed participation whatsoever outside of our borders by the RCMP type force either. If someone, or some people, are enough of a threat that it rises to be a concern of the Canadian government alone, and to no other government, then we quietly pay somebody to kill them, it is simple as that. If the bad guys are a threat to other countries, then let them deal with it and we can send a token cheque. We spent tens of billions on Afghanistan, lost too many good people when maybe what we should have done was simply funded the first billion worth of smart bombs dropped over there by the country that will never give up their right to bomb anyone, anywhere. We could have done that in retribution for the murder of our own people and been done with it.

Put all of the past polices, desires, responsibility to protect, being a good alliance member and all the other militaristic equipment, logistics, employment and other wishes in the closet for this thought experiment. Over the years, I have become more and more concerned that as a country, we have overspent beyond reason for what we have today, and I have absolutely no doubt that the situation will never rectify itself except by a complete paradigm shift that completely disrupts 20th century modalities of state actions under the guise of national defence.

National Security is a different matter, I am all for enhanced intelligence services of all kinds, the introduction of a very lethal mandate without any geographical limitations whatsoever, and laws that allow the quick and firm dislocation of internal security threats by sending those people on their way to some place that will take them and if the ocean bottom is their new home, too bad for them. 

As to the issue of disaster response etc, in all seriousness what real capability exists right now that could not be assumed by a non government entity that has a license to use drones for surveillance and reconnaissance? Our 4 C-17's and handful of helicopters will not really make that much difference when Vancouver splits into pieces and falls into the ocean.     

         

 

[Wanderingaimlessly]

Here is my $0.02.

We need an armed force as a nation to maintain credibility internationally and to claim sovereignty over our territory.  If we are unhappy with having to pay for it, we can always ask to become part of the US and have them take over the job. 

 

[Cloud Cover]

:highjack:

Now, the "new" RCMP would be much larger and would have one new division, something akin to the French Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité (CRS) and the Groupe d'Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale (GIGN), plus much expanded air and marine divisions.

The new RCMP air division will b e interesting. In the immediate aftermath of the Prime Minister's shocking announcement about disbanding the CF the US Ambassador would have come to call. "We respect your right to do as you think best, Prime Minister, in pursuing your national strategy for effective and efficient government but we must remind you that you have an obligation to help us protect our strategic deterrent; that's the main reason NORAD is here. If you're not going to have an air force then we must insist that we have a couple of sovereign bases in Canada ~ say at Cold Lake and Goose Bay and the absolute right to overfly Canada whenever we need to do so." But the PM will be ready for him; "No need, Mr Ambassador," he will say, we will still buy F-35s, the RCMP will fly them out of our current bases at Cold Lake and Bagotville, and we will replace out LRPA fleet, too to continue to provide integrated, continental support there, too. Our RCMP marine divisions will have new, fast corvettes to participate in regional anti-smuggling operations, including in the Caribbean, and it will have a flotilla of armed Polar 8 icebreakers, too. We'll meet our continental responsibilities." "What about NATO?" the US Ambassador will ask. "We will stay in, in a similar mode to Iceland."

There are issues, of course, like: who helps out in floods, etc, and what happens when we, as a nation, need to take some action in some remote, dark, dirty place, far, far from Canada? Shall we hire foreign 'contractor' to do our dirty work? Shall we allow 'private military contractors' to exist in Canada, to have 'bases' here?

I would let the US take over the bases and let their money fund/fuel the communities that surround them. Perhaps they might let Canadians join their armed forces and serve in Canada, but if they don't, that is no big deal either. If they wanted to, just like the Russians, they could overfly Canada every day right now, and we would seriously try to stop them (we never did stop the Russians during the cold war, did we?) so what is the difference? 

And the RCMP would probably need very little, but to be more precise, re-role the JTF and NBCD teams from CANSOFCOM into the RCMP, and maybe a couple of helo-equipped OPV on each coast and up north. 
 

 

[Cloud Cover]

Here is my $0.02.

We need an armed force as a nation to maintain credibility internationally and to claim sovereignty over our territory.[These two points are true, and Canada is failing at both and continues to reinforce failure with more failure] If we are unhappy with having to pay for it, we can always ask to become part of the US and have them take over the job. [Arguably in the main part, the US already has taken over the job?]

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

Very thought provoking ideas here.

Amalgamating the various police and quasi police security agencies may or may not deliver efficiencies; remember the merging of various cities to create the GTA was supposed to eliminate duplication and save costs, but in the end all that happened was every civil servant in the various pre GTA cities ended up getting the same pay and benefits as Toronto (i.e. the highest), and without very much ion the way of reductions. Be careful what you wish for.

Private military contractors also have plusses and minuses; the first and most obvious is their resources are nowhere near that of a Nation State (no private entity could afford to buy C-17's, for example), so we may end up with lots of fragmented capabilities (although when talking about today's CAF there would not be much of a noticeable difference). High end military equipment and support needed to take on need peer opponents will be lacking. Even Sir Francis Drake could only muster up a handful of ships, Phillip II dispatched 130 ships from Spain to start, and they were expected to pick up an additional fleet of landing craft. Interestingly enough, Elizabeth 1 could muster a fleet of her own, and privateers like Drake apparently only provided 12 of the 200 ships of Elizabeth's fleet.

So there are a lot of variables to examine here, and I suspect that many of the proposed COA's will have negative second and third order effects. OTOH it is more than past time to take a serious look at Canada's defense.

They don't have the resources of a Nation State now but what would happen if Nation States got out of the Military business?  Lets not pretend that Nation States "Monopoly of Violence" has existed forever.  It was only in the 18th and 19th centuries that States started maintaining large standing armies.  Before then, warfare was dominated by mercenary forces.  We are at a similar junction in history right now to what existed during the Wars of the Italian Renaissance.  States have been downsizing their armies since the end of the Cold War; however, the operational tempo hasn't decreased, quite the opposite it's increased.

If States were to disband their armed forces and the only way to fill the gap created was with PMC's, than the capability and size of PMC's would increase exponentially.  PMC's can be every bit as sophisticated as a modern military force.  Executive Outcomes in the 1990's was able to deploy units fully kitted out with tanks, apc's and attack helicopters as well as provide their own logistics and achieved success against a far larger rebel force in Sierra Leone after a British Military Operation in the country had already failed.  They also accomplished this at a far lesser cost.  So to say PMC's couldn't do the job isn't necessarily correct, if the demand was there someone would rise up to meet it.

 

[The Bread Guy]

If someone, or some people, are enough of a threat that it rises to be a concern of the Canadian government alone, and to no other government, then we quietly pay somebody to kill them ....

Or, on a larger scale, pay another country already doing the killing a ton of money to help them carry on.

 

[George Wallace]

I would let the US take over the bases and let their money fund/fuel the communities that surround them. Perhaps they might let Canadians join their armed forces and serve in Canada, but if they don't, that is no big deal either.

Rerole the CAF as Marines and create a new Branch called the Canadian Armed Forces.    ;D

 

[a_majoor]

They don't have the resources of a Nation State now but what would happen if Nation States got out of the Military business?  Lets not pretend that Nation States "Monopoly of Violence" has existed forever.  It was only in the 18th and 19th centuries that States started maintaining large standing armies.  Before then, warfare was dominated by mercenary forces.  We are at a similar junction in history right now to what existed during the Wars of the Italian Renaissance.  States have been downsizing their armies since the end of the Cold War; however, the operational tempo hasn't decreased, quite the opposite it's increased.

If States were to disband their armed forces and the only way to fill the gap created was with PMC's, than the capability and size of PMC's would increase exponentially.  PMC's can be every bit as sophisticated as a modern military force.  Executive Outcomes in the 1990's was able to deploy units fully kitted out with tanks, apc's and attack helicopters as well as provide their own logistics and achieved success against a far larger rebel force in Sierra Leone after a British Military Operation in the country had already failed.  They also accomplished this at a far lesser cost.  So to say PMC's couldn't do the job isn't necessarily correct, if the demand was there someone would rise up to meet it.

Without trying to sound contentious, how would a PMC like Executive Outcomes be able to operate in Canada? They simply would not be able to get permits or have the ability to purchase military equipment of any quantity or quality, and even if they would be a boon to any former military base they settled into (needing ranges and training areas to keep up to snuff) I can imagine the fuss that would be put up against them. Hell, there is a guy who pickets the Meaford training base near Owen Sound because of the "excessive noise" (even on days when there is no training going on), and like ERC tells us, support for the actual, home grown volunteer Canadian Armed Forces is only a millimetre deep; there will probably be under constant attack from "activists" (most of whom would never stop and think about who would do the job then?).

Sending out trained teams of killers is one way to deal with one type of threat (read George Jonas book "Vengeance", about how the Israelis dealt with "Black September" after the 1973 Munich Massacre), but consider the evolved geopolitical situation we are living in now. We will need a means to deal with terrorist threats, "Unrestricted Warfare" as practiced by China and various forms of "4GW" directed at Canada and the West.

I will only say that *we* really need to have a very in depth discussion on a national level about how Canada defends itself and its national interests, but neither of the two major political parties seem prepared to do this, and there is no general interest from the Canadian public either.

 

[PPCLI Guy]

It would be interesting to see what sort of legal architecture would develop to constrain the activities of PMCs...

 

[GR66]

Maybe it doesn't have to be a case of the current CF model vs. NO CF at all.  Maybe another option would be to simply do a major rethink of what the CF is meant to do and how large it needs to be.

Currently we have several Divisional HQ's in the CF but realistically it's been known since the 50's that we can't honestly sustain a combat Division in high intensity combat.  It would stretch our capacity to maintain a fully self-contained Brigade Group in combat without having to rely on our allies for important support services (CAS, AD, supply of munitions, etc.).  However we maintain the facade of a Corps/Divisional sized army with the organizational structure (including the Reserves) and overhead to go with it.

How much less would the CF cost if we cut it back to a series of core capabilities that are required for the protection of Canadian territory (in all honesty that really means surveillance/protecting Canada and the US from asymmetrical attacks (since no nation has the military capability to actually invade North America with conventional forces) and protecting the nuclear deterrent forces of the United States.

Would a CF that has an Air Force consisting of good Maritime Patrol assets and enough 4th Generation fighters to shoot down Russian long-range bombers conducting a 2nd Strike against the US, an RCN consisting of a reasonable number of Maritime Helicopter carrying Corvettes with Mine Counter-Measure capabilities to patrol our waters and protect US supply ships supporting an American surge, and a Canadian Army capable of deploying a politically token single combined arms Battle Group or some special forces really be much less of a contribution than we can muster now?

 

 

[Edward Campbell]

It would be interesting to see what sort of legal architecture would develop to constrain the activities of PMCs...

That was a problem in 14th century Italy, too ... one they failed to solve.

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

Without trying to sound contentious, how would a PMC like Executive Outcomes be able to operate in Canada? They simply would not be able to get permits or have the ability to purchase military equipment of any quantity or quality, and even if they would be a boon to any former military base they settled into (needing ranges and training areas to keep up to snuff) I can imagine the fuss that would be put up against them. Hell, there is a guy who pickets the Meaford training base near Owen Sound because of the "excessive noise" (even on days when there is no training going on), and like ERC tells us, support for the actual, home grown volunteer Canadian Armed Forces is only a millimetre deep; there will probably be under constant attack from "activists" (most of whom would never stop and think about who would do the job then?).

 

No contention required, here is my rebuttal:

They wouldn't need to operate in Canada, they could be based offshore and Canada could pay them when we required their service.  They are mercenaries after all, so who really cares where they came from or how they conduct their training and operations, as long as they are willing to get the job done with the money we give them.  As for equipment, well with all States disbanding their armed forces, getting surplus military equipment of a high quality shouldn't be too much of a problem.  If a ragtag group like IS can get their hands on GPS Guided Artillery, Abrams Tanks and Up-Armoured Humvee's, it shouldn't be too difficult for a mercenary group supported by a legitimate government to acquire state-of-the-art military hardware.  With regards to not being able to get a permit to operate in Canada, one of the largest Private Security Companies in the world, Garda World, is headquartered in Montreal so the PMC business is already firmly entrenched in Canada.

As for the political fallout from using mercenaries/PMC's/PSC's/whatever the latest buzzword is, I believe it would be minimal.  Canadians are isolationist, we all think that what is going on outside our borders is bad and that something needs to be done about it; however, we don't think we should be the ones that have to do something.  With this in mind, we would be quite content to sit on our behinds, drink a beer and watch someone else do the heavy lifting.  We are even willing to pay big dollars to make sure we don't need to get our hands dirty.

Our mining companies already use PMC's extensively, just google "Canadian Mining Companies in the Congo" or "Coltan Wars" and you'll uncover a plethora of information.

Sending out trained teams of killers is one way to deal with one type of threat (read George Jonas book "Vengeance", about how the Israelis dealt with "Black September" after the 1973 Munich Massacre), but consider the evolved geopolitical situation we are living in now. We will need a means to deal with terrorist threats, "Unrestricted Warfare" as practiced by China and various forms of "4GW" directed at Canada and the West.

This is where our increased investment in the State security apparatus would come in.  Domestic Terrorism isn't really a military problem anyways, it's a police force problem.  Increasing the strength of the RCMP and giving them increased powers to conduct internal security operations would achieve the effect.  Also, if we want to deal with China and 4GW, we would be better served by significantly beefing up our intelligence capabilities, both offensive and defensive.  Triple the size of CSEC and CSIS et voila, problem solved.

I will only say that *we* really need to have a very in depth discussion on a national level about how Canada defends itself and its national interests, but neither of the two major political parties seem prepared to do this, and there is no general interest from the Canadian public either.

I absolutely agree with this last statement.

 

[Cloud Cover]

That was a problem in 14th century Italy, too ... one they failed to solve.

And here is a place where Canada could lead... goodness knows we have many armies of lawyers to try and figure it out. 

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

That was a problem in 14th century Italy, too ... one they failed to solve.

This is where the water would get murky but in any event, if we give up our ability to conduct military operations externally should we really have a say in how they are conducted?  If we actually disbanded our Armed Forces and gave up our "Monopoly of Violence," I don't think we would have any legal basis to tell a PMC how they should be conducting their operations.

It would be kind of like a retired person coming back to tell the organization he used to work for 20 years ago how they should be conducting their business even though he hasn't got a clue how anything works anymore.  I think our Air Force is trying something like this right now  >

 

[Cloud Cover]

to add to what Royal Drew states above, Canada could take the position that the law of contract in private international law applies as between the Crown and the PMC or other form of triggerman. It would be a simple matter of drafting to impose compliance with the established laws of armed conflict as a contractual duty on the PMC. Of course, in the absence of a declaration of war, there is the minor issue of infringing the rights of others specifically the right to life and security of the person. Trudeau strikes from the grave. 

 

[daftandbarmy]

This is where our increased investment in the State security apparatus would come in.  Domestic Terrorism isn't really a military problem anyways, it's a police force problem.  Increasing the strength of the RCMP and giving them increased powers to conduct internal security operations would achieve the effect.  Also, if we want to deal with China and 4GW, we would be better served by significantly beefing up our intelligence capabilities, both offensive and defensive.  Triple the size of CSEC and CSIS et voila, problem solved.

Having worked a lot with police forces who were supposed to be the 'front line' against terrorism, I am all for more military involvement in this game.

At least the friggin' cordon won't go home at the end of shift due to union rules. You can also trust a 24 year old NCO to properly secure a prisoner vs. a 58 year old donut slayer.  :