Canada Rising

My Thoughts

Canada is a growing middle power but let us not make the mistake that the UK has. The UK still has its military trying to do everything and has ended up not being able to do anything well. After retiring 2 of its landing crafts, UK can now only deploy a rapid action force of 1 battalion of light armour. While Italy has a military of roughly the same size but without nukes at a budget of almost a third. Italy is able to do this because it is focused on the Mediterranean area and North Africa.

Canada needs to focus its limited forces on the North. We need to procure those things that will be the best fit for northern operations, not what will work best in Germany or the arid hot climates such as the Middle East. Our priorities must be to NATO and more specifically the Nordic regions. This may require us to look at a minimum, acquisition of 3 arctic capable landing RORO crafts in the 120 meter size (Damean’s LST 120) upgraded to handle seasonally freezing ice. These could aid in moving light tanks (CV90120) and the armour of 1-3 battalions over to the Nordic/Baltic region and also service small northern communities in peacetime.  Canada must get involved in UN missions again, where Canada needs to be seen once more, (We seem to be abandoning the UN even though the majority of Canadian’s believe in a stronger UN presence) then we can truly say, “We are back“. Canada also needs to pick a specialty, so that our military really has something to offer our allies, such as electronic warfare for this new age of the “Wizard Wars” as British academic Mary Kaldor would say. 

AI, bots, jammers, spoofers, crypto, radar, drones and satellites are all possible areas that Canada should grow into, so we could offer our friends something they need. Because we are never going to be a nation that puts large numbers of our boots on someone else’s soil even if it is an ally, we just do not have the numbers, so lets have something else we can offer.

Canada is finally doing what it should have been doing all along, have a credible military force. Ensuring Canadian sovereignty, while living up to our NATO commitments. Canada has in the past, had a real military. Now we are building a military for a new world order. Tough choices I am sure, but the one thing that we should have learned from the war in Ukraine is, your military must have depth. Having a few high end toys is not going to accomplish anything. You need to stockpile enough weapons to be able to carry you through the beginning of any crisis, till you can up production. Let me repeat myself, having depth and choice should be part of any military let alone a wealthy G7 member. Let me be as clear as possible about this, having just one type of fighter jet, one type of artillery system, one type of missile, is a plan for failure.

Canada is planning on purchasing an arctic tracked vehicle shortly, we are planning on buying basically the same thing we had before. It was great for moving troops around in a box on tracks linked to another box on tracks. I say yes, we need those built in Canada to protect our troops from our harsh arctic environment. However, the Patria TRACKX will do that, and protect our troops from small arms fire. If we really are going to be part of a Nordic alliance then lets get on board for real. Which means we need to be able to operate with them. Some of them are moving over to the Patria TRACKX, which is a lot faster and has light armour (2 things in combat that are nice to have). If not the TRACKX then something similar like a light aluminum hulled stripped down CV90, Redback or Lynx fighting vehicle. (Which would be smaller but we could build here in Canada, along with the tracked CV90, Redback or Lynk IFV) Then we could keep up with the Nordic TRACKX when involved in fast moving joint combat missions with our Nordic allies. Another purchase that will be happening shortly that Canada is looking into now is expanding our fleet of tanks. Modern war doctrine is pushing in a direction away from heavy armour and until the war in Afghanistan Canada had done away with heavy tanks and wanted a 105mm on a wheeled LAV. This proved unrealistic the gun was to much for the wheeled platform. We had to beg for tanks from Germany to deal with the IED  and walled fortifications. However, our small fleet of heavy tanks is getting updated and now we realize we need more. The idea of a lighter tank with a 120mm smooth bore is available in the CV90120 and is built specifically for the Nordic battlefield. This would be a radical move for Canada, but the right move. I hope our military sees this path clearly, when moving forward in our new tank procurement and IFV from the same designer. (You need tracks and not wheels in the North)

The one piece that Canada’s navy needs very soon are arctic capable corvettes. Our frigates are getting very old and our new (River-class) destroyers, will number only between 3-6 by the time we have retired ALL of our frigates. I think our navy brass knows this all to well, lets quit playing politics. Let’s look at what we can do and do it. I realize we have only a limited amount of capacity for building ships and that we are actually churning some out (far better than the Americans are doing).  Let us bring in the Ontario Shipyards and put them to work on the arctic capable corvettes which do not require any type of specialty steel under the supervision of Irving Shipyards. Let us not waste 7- 10 years designing these from scratch, Finland’s modern naval fleet centers around the Pohjanmaa-class multi-role corvettes, which is exactly what we need. It would be great if we had the same interoperable sub hunting and subs in the North Atlantic as other Nordic’s have so we can cross train our people, along with the Brits and Germans filling in the gaps.

On a side note about our new River-class Destroyers, these ships are not what most navies consider to be a destroyer. A destroyer is capable of taking the fight to the enemy by itself. Because it has about 100 VLS missile tubes, which our River-class ships do not have. Our ships have 24, but why we call them destroyers is that they have the Aegis Combat System which acts like a football superstar quarterback. But we still need someone to hand the ball to. Without the arctic corvettes our command ships are exposed to being swarmed. Let us get real and get building cost effective fighting ships;  arctic corvettes in meaningful numbers.

About our destroyers: The River-class (Type 26) are really an excellent sub-hunting frigate, designed from the hull up to do just that, hunt and destroy subs, while defending itself with the Aegis combat system.

One last thought:

Canada is a leader in small modular reactor development. However, we do not produce the enriched fuel they need. So we will be reliant on the US and France. If we are really going to lead in SMR then we need to make their fuel also. The only thing holding us back on this is optics, our peace love dove, woke reality. The real reality is we need to put on our big boy pants and build our own enrichment facilities in the next 10 years before the demand for this fuel spikes. We need to take a leading role and not be held back from moving forward in our SMR development, which the world will need for clean energy in remote locations.