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51. Canadian Defence Commitments: Overview and Status of Selected Acquistions and Initatives

Author:
Elinor Sloan
Publication Date:
12-2013
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Canadian Global Affairs Institute (CGAI)
Abstract:
For years, successive Canadian governments have been overpromising and under-delivering on defence procurement. Timetables have slipped even as repair and maintenance costs for aging equipment have soared, while elaborate rules have obscured the acquisition process in a bureaucratic fog. This paper assembles information from a wide range of official sources and cuts through the confusion. It surveys 15 Canadian defence acquisitions and initiatives, each anticipated to cost more than $100 million, to account for the delays. Final replacements for the ancient Sea King helicopters are no closer to arriving — after almost 30 years — because the DND failed to recognize that it asked for technology that is still in development. The Joint Support Ship project is years behind schedule because, as originally conceived, it sought to integrate so many capabilities that it was unbuildable. The Integrated Soldier System Project is almost as far behind because Ottawa’s procurement rules are so complex and niggling that no bidder could fulfill every single one. Canada faces evolving threats, but efforts to equip the Canadian Forces to meet them have been marked by a long litany of failures — failures of communication, of organization and of vision. This paper sets out the military procurement process, and concisely explains the most egregious flaws, making it essential reading for anyone interested in the future of Canada’s military.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Procurement, and Military
Political Geography:
Canada and North America

52. Defence After the Recession

Author:
David Perry
Publication Date:
04-2012
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Canadian Global Affairs Institute (CGAI)
Abstract:
With unfortunate timing, the Harper government released a well-intended plan pledging “predictable, long-term funding”1 for the Department of National Defence (DND), mere months before the collapse of Lehman Brothers signalled the onset of a global recession. The Canada First Defence Strategy (CFDS) built on the defence budgetary renaissance begun under Paul Martin’s tenure as Prime Minister and promised the Canadian Forces the resources to project leadership abroad over the next twenty years. Economic circumstances quickly intervened, however, and in 2011 the government launched a Strategic and Operating Review (SOR) to reign in government programs. As a result, defence spending has peaked in 2011/2012 and will decline for the next three years. For DND, this fiscal retrenchment presents a significant problem. Although defence funding increased 54 percent nominally between 2003/2004 and 2010/2011, the CFDS was never adequately funded. While its capital investment plan was long rumored to be insufficient, the Report on Transformation 2011, led by Lieutenant General Andrew Leslie, acknowledged this openly.2 As a result, DND faces a perfect fiscal storm as its already inadequate funding is battered by deficit fighting measures and the results of the departmental Strategic Review announced in Budget 2011, which both take effect April 1, 2012.3 This combination of factors means the CFDS is likely no longer viable, at least in its original twenty year timeframe. Although a lack of detail makes the full impact of Budgets 2011 and 2012 difficult to discern, enough information is available to provide a preliminary assessment of the probable impact on the Canadian military.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Budget, Military, and Recession
Political Geography:
Canada and North America

53. Lessons Learned? What Canada Should Learn from Afghanistan

Author:
David J. Bercuson, J. L. Granatstein, and Nancy Pearson Mackie
Publication Date:
10-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Canadian Global Affairs Institute (CGAI)
Abstract:
Lessons Learned? What Canada Should Learn from Afghanistan Canada fought for a decade in Afghanistan, its troops sustaining casualties and inflicting them. The war became progressively more unpopular at home, even while Canadian troops, well trained and well equipped, scored successes in the field. But what were the lessons of the war for Canada’s leaders? Did we secure more influence with our Alliance friends? Were there factors that made battlefield success more difficult to achieve? Were there flaws in the government’s organizational structure? In the goals it sought? Canada first went to Afghanistan in December 2001, dispatching some forty members of its secret Joint Task Force 2 to operate against al Qaeda. Early in 2002, the 3rd Battalion of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry began serving in Kandahar Province with a United States Army division and after six months returned home. In July and August, 2003, the Canadian Forces began to return to Afghanistan in force with some 2000 troops, becoming the largest troop contributor to the Kabul Multinational Brigade under the stillnascent International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), operating in the Afghan capital while the United States’ Operation Enduring Freedom had operational control in the rest of Afghanistan. The Canadian role there would last for over two years, and it included key leadership positions in ISAF Headquarters. In late 2003-04 policymakers in Ottawa began to consider a transfer of Canadian troops as part of ISAF’s expansion out of Kabul to cover all of Afghanistan with either civilian- or military-run Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs). The PRTs would be accompanied by NATO troops tasked to secure them and to train the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). In general, ISAF’s PRT mission aimed to improve the lot of rural Afghans and thus to build closer relations between the people and the Hamid Karzai government in Kabul. Another component of the effort to improve Afghan governance was the SAT-A, the Canadian-provided Strategic Advisory Team—Afghanistan that from 2005 to 2008 placed Canadians in key advisory roles with Afghan government ministries. For a variety of reasons, including advice from the Canadian diplomatic, aid, and military leadership in Kabul, the Departments of National Defence and Foreign Affairs and International Trade in Ottawa believed that Canada ought to establish a Battle Group and PRT presence in Kandahar, beginning in 2006, in order to play a more central, more visible role in Afghan reconstruction. There were some dissenters and the two lead departments jockeyed for control over the Afghan file – and where DND, providing the boots on the ground, including the vast majority of those in the PRT, naturally enough assumed that there should be no contest. But there was general agreement that, with this deployment, Canada would raise its profile in the international community and among its NATO partners (especially the United States) and signal an end to the “human security agenda” period of the Chrétien government. For the Army leadership as well, the Kandahar commitment provided the opportunity to strike squarely at the mythology of peacekeeping. Nonetheless, the desire to help Afghanistan and to achieve political and status gains may have overridden the fact that the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan was wide open and the Taliban insurgency was beginning to grow in Kandahar and Helmand provinces by late 2005. This was largely ignored until Canada took its first casualty in the new campaign on January 15, 2006 – even before the Canadian area of operations moved south - when diplomat Glyn Berry, who was to run the Canadian PRT from Camp Nathan Smith in a northern suburb of Kandahar City, died in a suicide bomb attack. In total, some 157 Canadian servicemen and women have been killed in Afghanistan, along with an undeclared, but large, number of soldiers wounded.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Conflict, and Military
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, South Asia, Canada, and North America

54. Foreign Policy in the Election

Author:
Derek H. Burney
Publication Date:
04-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Canadian Global Affairs Institute (CGAI)
Abstract:
Foreign policy rarely plays a major role in Canadian elections and, CDFAI Senior Research Fellow, Derek Burney contends 2011 will be no exception. Differences about the purchase of new fighter aircraft to replace the aging CF-18 Hornets will surface during the campaign. The Liberals have adopted a preference for “butter” instead of “guns” and should there be a change of government, defence equipment purchases could be curtailed more generally. While other differences are evident, e.g. on Middle East issues and Climate Change, the two major parties are essentially on the same page on the key issues of war and peace – Afghanistan and now Libya. The new bilateral initiative for a security perimeter with the US has attracted little opposition to date, primarily because it is a process not a result, yielding little to attack or defend. Uncertainties about the global economy may simply reinforce public concerns about Canada’s economic prospects. The Conservatives have delivered on what they said they would do: strengthening the military to give more capacity for a global role, engaging constructively with the US and enhancing relations in our hemisphere, notably with a substantial contribution to Haiti. The Liberal alternative seems more rhetorical than prescriptive, citing grievances with the Conservative record along with nostalgic calls for a return to Pearsonian emphasis on peace-keeping and multilateralism. Regardless of who wins, and excepting the possibility of different commitments to defence, the main lines of Canadian foreign policy are unlikely to change significantly.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Elections, Weapons, and Military
Political Geography:
Middle East, Canada, and North America

55. Budget 2011 – Restraining Growth in Defence Spending?

Author:
Brian MacDonald
Publication Date:
08-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Canadian Global Affairs Institute (CGAI)
Abstract:
The Canada First Defence Strategy (CFDS) was tabled on June 19, 2008. Among its promises was “A Military with Stable, Predictable Funding,” which was to be delivered through a twenty year “new long term funding framework for the Defence Department,” which had not been the practice of previous White Papers and Policy Statements. The framework included the promise of an increase in the annual inflation adjustment from 1.5% to 2%, plus a “Real Growth” adjustment of 0.6% annually for a total of 2.6%. The CFDS also forecast an increase in the total defence budget “from approximately $18 billion in 2008-09, to over $30 billion in 2027-28. In total, the Government planned to invest close to $490 billion in defence over this period.” In addition, the Government committed to fund separately the incremental costs of any expeditionary deployments such as that in Afghanistan. The CFDS also promised “A Military with the Right Equipment and Training.” The first new equipment tranche would include the already purchased four C-17 strategic airlifters, plus maritime helicopters, plus “17 new CH47F Chinook helicopters, three replenishment ships, 2,300 trucks, up to 100 Leopard 2 tanks and 6-8 Arctic/Offshore patrol ships.” Further down the road the second tranche would add “15 ships to replace existing destroyers and frigates, 10 to 12 maritime patrol aircraft, 17 fixed wing search and rescue aircraft, 65 next generation fighter aircraft, and a fleet of land combat vehicles and systems.” The CFDS also proposed to increase the Regular Force strength to 70,000 and the Reserves to 30,000. The CFDS planned to allocate the total budget to the following categories: Personnel – 51%, Equipment – 12%, Infrastructure – 8%, and Readiness – 29%. Over the 20 year period personnel expenses would amount to $250 billion; the first tranche of equipment purchases would account for $15 billion of capital; the second tranche of major fleet acquisitions would account for $20 billion; Infrastructure would account for $40 billion and Readiness would account for $140 billion.
Topic:
Budget, Defense Spending, and Military
Political Geography:
Canada and North America

56. Neither Pigs nor Parrots: A Military Culture that Can Win the Peace

Author:
Ryan Close
Publication Date:
05-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Public and International Affairs (JPIA)
Institution:
School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA), Princeton University
Abstract:
As ongoing operations in Iraq illustrate, the nature of warfare is changing: peacekeeping and warfighting are converging as the space between military and humanitarian activity erodes. Because of the vastly different challenges of fighting wars and handling post-conflict challenges, militaries traditionally train soldiers to be either warriors or peacekeepers. This new type of conflict, however, requires soldiers who are both of these simultaneously. Unfortunately, current organizational culture – focused almost entirely on combat – may prevent the ideological shift within the military that is necessary for molding a new soldier identity. This article addresses this challenge and proposes policy measures that would help transform military culture and better match combat prowess with broad intellectual, political, and social vision. To this end, this article considers how the security environment is evolving, examines how such an environment will severely stress the U.S. military, and offers recommendations for cultural change that concern force structure, operational planning, and the selection, training, and promotion of soldiers.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Military Strategy, Culture, and Military
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

57. Too Good to be Legal? Network Centric Warfare and International Law

Author:
Erik Dahl
Publication Date:
05-2004
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Public and International Affairs (JPIA)
Institution:
School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA), Princeton University
Abstract:
America’s military today faces new challenges that appear resistant to conventional solutions. The concept known as Network Centric Warfare (NCW) promises to use speed, precision, and information technology to win conflicts more quickly with minimal force. But many of the advantages that look beguiling to a commander can create problems for a military that focuses too much on speed and effects, at the expense of deliberation and law. This article argues that both the U.S. military and the American public will lose if new tools and technologies make war seem too easy. It calls for a reassessment of NCW in light of international law and offers recommendations to help guide that effort.
Topic:
International Law, Science and Technology, War, and Military
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America