Ukraine - Superthread

[daftandbarmy]

6 month deployments, rotating, and stand up a 3rd fighter sqn.

As long as the DEW line is gone and the NWS is oriented towards long range threats at altitude like aircraft or ballistic missiles, but not Chinese weather balloons, SLCM will be able to swarm or penetrate uncontested via the watershed valleys that feed the arctic ocean and get well into juicy target range.

There, FTFY

 

[GR66]

Is there an identified military need to have permanently manned, dispersed air bases in the far North? These forums are usually very quick to have SMEs call out the CAF on its shortcomings/weaknesses but I don't recall hearing anyone from the fighter community saying how much more vulnerable we are due to the location of our current fighter bases and FOB locations.

 

[Halifax Tar]

Alert has, what, low-to-mid double digits of CAF personnel. I don't know how many it takes to support half a dozen high-tech military aircraft but it strikes me as, not to use an overly-technical analysis, 'quite a few'. Constantly rotating people on a few months basis seems both costly and highly disruptive from operational and command perspectives.

If it were, say, a six month tasking, given the number of pilots we have, between here, Europe, maybe joint exercises in the US and whatever else pops up, how many days per year would each be actually home, and how long before they would go back?

I also wonder what the aircraft would do on a daily basis, except perhaps fly south to do training, exercises, etc. Negotiating a training area in Nunavut would probably take longer than the lifespan of the aircraft.

I imagine for many, particularly spouses and kids, it would have to be a lot.

Alert has been scaled down over years and we had a bigger foot print. Have a small det there on a 6 month rotation to maintain the kit and material and then FG and surge people in as required.

You don't need to keep transport planes there. Use the Boxtop format.

 

[Czech_pivo]

If you are CAF member and were posted to Resolute, would you and your family go?

It's great that people think we should have a permanent presence in all sorts of places, but how is that squared with a wide spread opinion that places like Cold Lake, Goose Bay or even North Bay are unmitigated hell holes and have a negative impact on recruiting?

The US staffs Thule AB 365 days of the year and has done so for decades.

I agree that for a family the places that you've mentioned as not ideal/suitable but I assume that the US has lot more unsuitable places than we do and they manage to continue staffing them. What, if anything, do they do better/differently that we can learn from?

If there is need going forward for new bases to be created in Resolute, Inuvik and such and we can't/won't do it - then its time to start allowing the US to do so. Maybe that will get the attention of the general Canadian voter......

 

[Czech_pivo]

Is there an identified military need to have permanently manned, dispersed air bases in the far North? These forums are usually very quick to have SMEs call out the CAF on its shortcomings/weaknesses but I don't recall hearing anyone from the fighter community saying how much more vulnerable we are due to the location of our current fighter bases and FOB locations.

Information/statements like what I've posted below may very well decide if the CDN military will need to have permanently manned air bases in the far north going forward.

"The American military had a “domain awareness gap” that allowed the three other balloons to transit undetected, the Pentagon general responsible for providing air and missile defense over North America said on Monday."

Exclusive: US intel assessment documents Chinese spy balloon incident under Trump

A US military intelligence report from last year that focused on China's use of high-altitude balloons mentioned sightings in Hawaii and Florida during the Trump presidency, according to an excerpt of the report reviewed by CNN.

www.cnn.com

If that 'domain awareness gap' is another, polite way, of saying 'Canada', then the rules of the game maybe changing on us and the US may very well lean on us heavily - as I think they should.

 

[GR66]

Information/statements like what I've posted below may very well decide if the CDN military will need to have permanently manned air bases in the far north going forward.

"The American military had a “domain awareness gap” that allowed the three other balloons to transit undetected, the Pentagon general responsible for providing air and missile defense over North America said on Monday."

Exclusive: US intel assessment documents Chinese spy balloon incident under Trump

A US military intelligence report from last year that focused on China's use of high-altitude balloons mentioned sightings in Hawaii and Florida during the Trump presidency, according to an excerpt of the report reviewed by CNN.

www.cnn.com

If that 'domain awareness gap' is another, polite way, of saying 'Canada', then the rules of the game maybe changing on us and the US may very well lean on us heavily - as I think they should.

Well if this reverse trajectory map of the path the Chinese balloon is estimated to have followed is even remotely accurate then it would have crossed Alaska first (with its US air bases) then ended up crossing Southern Alberta...much closer to Cold Late than Resolute...so I'm not sure that would directly relate to US pressure for a more Northerly presence for our fighters.

I'm fairly confident that if the US felt it was in its vital national interest to have Canadian fighters permanently stationed in the Arctic that this desire would have been pretty forcefully communicated to our government long before now. The Cold War lasted 45 years and Russia has been a growing threat again for at least a decade + so I doubt the military need for such a deployment wouldn't be something new.

 

[Czech_pivo]

Well if this reverse trajectory map of the path the Chinese balloon is estimated to have followed is even remotely accurate then it would have crossed Alaska first (with its US air bases) then ended up crossing Southern Alberta...much closer to Cold Late than Resolute...so I'm not sure that would directly relate to US pressure for a more Northerly presence for our fighters.

I'm fairly confident that if the US felt it was in its vital national interest to have Canadian fighters permanently stationed in the Arctic that this desire would have been pretty forcefully communicated to our government long before now. The Cold War lasted 45 years and Russia has been a growing threat again for at least a decade + so I doubt the military need for such a deployment wouldn't be something new.

You are making the assumption that the other 3 (known as of now) balloons followed the same route as the last one. I'm not willing to make that assumption as of now.

 

[brihard]

Information/statements like what I've posted below may very well decide if the CDN military will need to have permanently manned air bases in the far north going forward.

"The American military had a “domain awareness gap” that allowed the three other balloons to transit undetected, the Pentagon general responsible for providing air and missile defense over North America said on Monday."

Exclusive: US intel assessment documents Chinese spy balloon incident under Trump

A US military intelligence report from last year that focused on China's use of high-altitude balloons mentioned sightings in Hawaii and Florida during the Trump presidency, according to an excerpt of the report reviewed by CNN.

www.cnn.com

If that 'domain awareness gap' is another, polite way, of saying 'Canada', then the rules of the game maybe changing on us and the US may very well lean on us heavily - as I think they should.

So what closes that gap? Is it simply a matter of putting in sensors that are largely operated remotely? Given NORAD’s integration, is there a true hole in the fighter coverage between Elmendorf and Cold Lake that would be fixed by a permanent sick pack of F-35s somewhere in Yukon or NWT?

There were some… fanciful comments earlier about a hypothetical swarm of Russian missiles coming in to hit vague ‘infrastructure’ targets in the Canadian prairies. I’m not sure what conceptual and realistic adversary war plan this fits into, but I’m pretty confident that if Ivan was leaning towards a strike on North America and a war on NATO, there would likely be enough of an intelligence heads up that we’d see forces postured further north, both ours and American. If the Russians want to sail a boomer into James Bay, I think that’s more of a Bagotville problem than an Inuvik one… But I’m not a mapologist.

It’s fine to say that CAF members signed up to go anywhere. Yup, got it. CAF isn’t the only federal or provincial agency that needs people in more remote places, and frankly other than ALERT, CAF isn’t actually much of a player in that game… Yellowknife and Cold Lake are relatively ‘remote’ if you’ve never worked far from a southern CFB, but you’re still talking places that have at least some opportunity for families and spouses. Very different if you start talking seriously about permanently dropping a unit somewhere like Inuvik or what have you. Other government organizations that have to staff such places (OPP and RCMP come to mind, plus some health agencies) usually do so on a relatively short duration basis, and with people whose skill sets - cops, nurses etc - can pick up, move, and hit the ground running easily, so rotating them is easy. Not sure CAF could duplicate that model with all the techs needed to keep fighters in the air. @Quirky and maybe a few others could speculate from an informed standpoint on CAF’s ability to attract and (more likely problem) retain techs if permanent basing even farther afield than Cold Lake or Bagotville were part of the deal. I think CAF would struggle with that.

Drilling down, what actual, concrete military need exists, and what are realistic events and realistic response times? What do you need to see, what do we need to kill, and where and when do we need to kill it? I suspect most of the answers to that would support beefed up forward staging options, but not punching some of our fighter community up further north on a permanent basis.

 

[RangerRay]

Well if this reverse trajectory map of the path the Chinese balloon is estimated to have followed is even remotely accurate then it would have crossed Alaska first (with its US air bases) then ended up crossing Southern Alberta...much closer to Cold Late than Resolute...so I'm not sure that would directly relate to US pressure for a more Northerly presence for our fighters.

I'm fairly confident that if the US felt it was in its vital national interest to have Canadian fighters permanently stationed in the Arctic that this desire would have been pretty forcefully communicated to our government long before now. The Cold War lasted 45 years and Russia has been a growing threat again for at least a decade + so I doubt the military need for such a deployment wouldn't be something new.

Looks like it followed the Rocky Mountains on its way to Idaho. Much of that area where people live would be socked in with inversion cloud layer so not many people would see that ballon unless it they were above the inversion. Once it hit the Eastern Slopes and Prairies, the skies would have been clearer to more people to see it.

I admit my gut reaction was to shoot it down (the same reaction I had when I saw someone’s drone hovering over my backyard) but I am not a GOFO with NORAD and was never in any Air Force, so I will defer to the SME’s on the subject.

 

[Quirky]

I don't see the need for 6-8 F-35s stationed in Inuvik when you can just plop them into Eastern Europe, right on Russia's doorstep. Easier to support logistically than constantly wearing down people and planes ferrying supplies back and forth to Inuvik. Re-open a fighter squadron in Germany and you'll see no shortage of people, and families, volunteering to go.

 

[Blackadder1916]

The US staffs Thule AB 365 days of the year and has done so for decades.

I agree that for a family the places that you've mentioned as not ideal/suitable but I assume that the US has lot more unsuitable places than we do and they manage to continue staffing them. What, if anything, do they do better/differently that we can learn from?

If there is need going forward for new bases to be created in Resolute, Inuvik and such and we can't/won't do it - then its time to start allowing the US to do so. Maybe that will get the attention of the general Canadian voter......

The US military population at Thule had probably been much higher in the past than it is now. But decades ago (I transited through there in the 1980s) it wasn't much greater than discussed in this article from 2014.

This Is What Its Like To Live At The US' Most Remote Air Base

"Mother Nature has her own schedule of 'three day weekends' for us."

www.businessinsider.com

Today, the base typically is used for allied surveillance of the northern polar region and has a stripped-down presence of approximately 400 Danes, 50 Greenlanders, 3 Canadians, and 140 American military and support staff.

What would a comparative percentage be for the CAF to task to an isolated location for one year unaccompanied (that's the US tour length)? Also, the US doesn't base any aircraft or aircrew there; they're transients just like CAF a/c on BOXTOP.

 

[Kirkhill]

Is there an identified military need to have permanently manned, dispersed air bases in the far North? These forums are usually very quick to have SMEs call out the CAF on its shortcomings/weaknesses but I don't recall hearing anyone from the fighter community saying how much more vulnerable we are due to the location of our current fighter bases and FOB locations.

Dont know about permanent fighters in the FOLs anymore than the need for permanent fighters at Comox. But there has been a demonstrated continuing desire for FOLs in the North.

How about starting with suitable runways, hardened hangars with cots, heads and galleys and padlocks?

 

[GR66]

Dont know about permanent fighters in the FOLs anymore than the need for permanent fighters at Comox. But there has been a demonstrated continuing desire for FOLs in the North.

How about starting with suitable runways, hardened hangars with cots, heads and galleys and padlocks?

We have four FOLs currently which to my understanding will be upgraded to support the F-35.

The purpose of these upgraded facilities was to ensure adequate facilities existed for NORAD to defend the Northern Canadian frontier. Accommodations for up to six fighters in hangars were built, space for up to 200 support personnel, and storage facilities. Five locations were originally investigated, but only four locations were built.[

Are there more than the four required? If so, what additional locations? The existing four locations would house almost 1/3 of our active fighter fleet.

 

[brihard]

We have four FOLs currently which to my understanding will be upgraded to support the F-35.



Are there more than the four required? If so, what additional locations? The existing four locations would house almost 1/3 of our active fighter fleet.

Inuvik would almost seem to moot Yellowknife, although the latter would be much easier to sustain and put a larger footprint into. I could see Yellowknife being a forward sustainment hub for fighters deployed to Inuvik. Though maybe Cold Lake to Inuvik is easy enough to render Yellowknife unnecessary in that model?

 

[Prairie canuck]

excerpt from NORAD mission:
1 Canadian Air Division is responsible for providing CANR with combat-ready air forces to meet Canada’s commitment to the defence of North America and maintain the sovereignty of North American airspace.

NORAD assets are positioned strategically throughout Canada and the U.S. and can respond to any air sovereignty threat in a matter of minutes. CANR CF-18 Hornet fighter aircraft are on continuous alert to respond to any potential aerial threat to the safety of Canada and Canadians.

A CF188 out of Cold Lake is at max speed 2+ hours from Alert but will fall into the ocean just before Prince of Wales Island after it runs out of fuel.
Canada, even with an F35 cannot meet this obligation. Even 2+ hours its impossible without tankers being based out of Yellowknife or Churchill or Thule. Basing fighters in Resolute cuts that down to 1/2 an hour or less to any point on the northern shores.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

You could station two fighters up north in proper hangers and setup. Then you rotate pilots and maintainers in every two weeks and they fly in a charter aircraft.

 

[daftandbarmy]

You could station two fighters up north in proper hangers and setup. Then you rotate pilots and maintainers in every two weeks and they fly in a charter aircraft.

There are 5 star hotels North of 60... right? (and don't count the Frobisher Inn)

 

[Skysix]

I don't see the need for 6-8 F-35s stationed in Inuvik when you can just plop them into Eastern Europe, right on Russia's doorstep. Easier to support logistically than constantly wearing down people and planes ferrying supplies back and forth to Inuvik. Re-open a fighter squadron in Germany and you'll see no shortage of people, and families, volunteering to go.

Flight paths from eastern Russia over the pole not easy to interdict from Finland or Poland without transiting a long way over hostile airspace

 

[Skysix]

Dont know about permanent fighters in the FOLs anymore than the need for permanent fighters at Comox. But there has been a demonstrated continuing desire for FOLs in the North.

How about starting with suitable runways, hardened hangars with cots, heads and galleys and padlocks?

Yes.

The FOL's have been left unattended for the most part for decades with 4 or more of the hangers being repurposed and not quickly returned to their designed use and one of the remaining two often used as temporary storage. Most fire suppression equipment is out of date, the barracks somewhat useable but in need of deep cleaning and repair, the comms outdated, security fencing marginal, arrestor gear not always there and even then inoperable for unplanned arrivals (gets checked or brought in before pre-planned exercises then forgotten about). And that is at YZF where there are permanant RCAF and RCMP aviation units.

 

[Skysix]

Inuvik would almost seem to moot Yellowknife, although the latter would be much easier to sustain and put a larger footprint into. I could see Yellowknife being a forward sustainment hub for fighters deployed to Inuvik. Though maybe Cold Lake to Inuvik is easy enough to render Yellowknife unnecessary in that model?

YZF would be best as the maintenance hub with a pair of birds ready go replace OOS birds at the other locations.

Also don't forget it is not just to house our figters, but NORAD supplementary units like F15C Guard from Oregon etc. (and until they get their F15EX in a few years they break a LOT)