Category: Military

Canadian Style Military

Military Ukraine 21 Comments

Spiegel- Only 150 puma tanks operational

As a reaction to the Russian attack in Ukraine , Germany must now strengthen its own defenses, said the SPD politician. An example: “On paper, for example, we have 350 Puma infantry fighting vehicles, of which 150 are actually operational,” reported the minister. “It’s no different with the Tiger attack helicopter. Only nine out of 51 machines can take off.

Google translate will give you an English option to read this.

Justin’s New Woke Military

Military 27 Comments

The long awaited report is out.  Among the highlights is that racism is running rampant in the military. More blacks need to be recruited because of all the white men currently serving. Muslims and other faith groups need sacred spaces. Nursing mothers need safe spaces. Minority groups need to be represented at the command level. Warning: CBC link. Some more information.

How NATO Lost Its Way

Historical Events Military What He Said 64 Comments

Peter Hitchens;

In the 1980s, I sometimes thought I was the only university-educated person I knew who thought deterrence was a good idea and NATO a good thing. Nowadays, it is all the other way round. I am one of the few educated people I know who thinks that the West bears some blame for the appalling conflict raging in Ukraine, though I can name a string of diplomats and academics, from George Kennan and Henry Kissinger to Yegor Gaidar and Noam Chomsky, who have long warned that NATO expansion was a terrible mistake, certain to strengthen the worst elements in Moscow. I have pursued a lone heresy of wondering why NATO even survived the end of its enemies, the USSR and the Warsaw Pact. Do we still maintain alliances against Austria-Hungary or the Ottomans? I can find no trace of them. Perhaps, overlooked in some elegant Paris street and living off ancient funds, elderly, learned men still occupy these joyous sinecures, hoping that they will not be found out.

But the political inheritors of the anti-cruise campaigners are today all hot for NATO, which I am sure they would have despised in the old days when it preserved the freedom of Western Europe through masterly inaction. These enthusiasts, for instance, desire to impose no-fly zones on Ukraine, a policy guaranteed to spread bloody war even further over the continent of Europe. The successors of the left-wing academics who once apologized for the USSR are now severe enemies of non-Communist Russia. The herbivores of 1982 are the warmongers of 2022.

How did this happen?

A Short History Of The F-35 Debacle

Military Shiny Pony 54 Comments

Mitch Heimpel;

The news that Canada intends to buy the F-35 fighter jet, almost 12 years after it first announced that it intends to buy the F-35 fighter jet, might actually be the most Justin Trudeau thing Justin Trudeau has ever done.

Canada’s investment in what was initially called the “Joint Strike Fighter” program actually started under the Liberals. The program has undeniably run into major, embarrassing development problems, but began as a pretty good concept. The NATO alliance had just undertaken a series of air campaigns over Bosnia in the five years between 1992 and 1997, which included air-to-air combat and strikes on ground targets. These missions, both in the air and on the ground, revealed stark discrepancies between the capabilities of the various allied militaries in the wake of the end of the Cold War. Interoperability of alliance forces became a necessary focus. A jet that would be used in large numbers by the United States and across the alliance was an obvious advantage. […]

As early as 2008, the Department of National Defence was telling the government that the F-35 was the only plane that could do what our air force needed a fighter jet to do. They continued to do this for seven more years. Almost 14 years ago we were all told this was the only plane that fit our needs as a next generation fighter aircraft. A child born when the memo to report that conclusion was delivered is now a teenager.

When we announced plans for an order of 65 F-35s in 2010, that should have been the end of it. All the lessons of past procurement disasters should have told everyone with any serious aspirations of national leadership that reversing this contract could cripple an air force that was already flying planes past their best-before date. Instead we got five years of hand-wringing that put on display the worst of Ottawa’s ability to talk only to itself. It started under the Harper government; stung by criticism over the cost and accusations it had rushed to sole-source the deal, the Conservatives wavered, and then folded: they cancelled the plan to buy the 65 F-35s and chose to hold a competition instead. In the next election, the Trudeau Liberals ran against purchasing the F-35, won the election, and did nothing to pick an alternate successor plane, as the CF-18s got older and older.

This continued for seven years. Bringing us to today.

Your morning flashback.

New Frontiers In The Diversity and Inclusion Arms Race

I, Napoleon If Women Ran The World Military 49 Comments

The Hill;

Following a three-year review, the Army has scrapped plans to use the same physical fitness test for all soldiers, choosing instead to have some reduced standards to allow women and older soldiers to pass, the service announced Wednesday.

The decision follows a RAND-led study that found men were more easily passing the new, more difficult Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT) compared to women and older soldiers, who were “failing at noticeably higher rates.” That six-event test developed in 2019 was an expansion from the three events — pushups, situps and a run — soldiers had done prior.

“This test is an essential part of maintaining the readiness of the Army as we transform into the Army of 2030,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said in a statement announcing the changes. “The revisions to the ACFT are based on data and analysis, including an independent assessment required by Congress. We will continue to assess our implementation of the test to ensure it is fair and achieves our goal of strengthening the Army’s fitness culture.”

The Army first changed its fitness test to include dead lifts, power throws, pushups, planks, a run and a sprint-drag-carry event, as well as a leg tuck that was eventually eliminated.

Service leaders hoped the newer test — the first such change in more than 40 years — would better replicate tasks needed for combat while reducing the risk of injuries.

But the new fitness curriculum was quickly criticized after it became clear women, older male soldiers and National Guard and Reserve troops had difficulty passing it.

About 44 percent of women failed the test from October 2020 to April 2021, compared to about 7 percent of men, Military.com found at the time.

From Theory to Fact

It's Probably Nothing Military 30 Comments

Glenn Greewald- Victoria Nuland: Ukraine Has “Biological Research Facilities,” Worried Russia May Seize Them

The neocon’s confession sheds critical light on the U.S. role in Ukraine, and raises vital questions about these labs that deserve answers.

For all the dismissive language used over the last two weeks by self-described “fact-checkers,” it is confirmed that the U.S. has worked with Ukraine, as recently as last year, in the “development of a bio-risk management culture; international research partnerships; and partner capacity for enhanced bio-security, bio-safety, and bio-surveillance measures.” The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine publicly boasted of its collaborative work with Ukraine “to consolidate and secure pathogens and toxins of security concern and to continue to ensure Ukraine can detect and report outbreaks caused by dangerous pathogens before they pose security or stability threats.”

NATO: “We’re Good, Thanks for Asking”

Military 40 Comments

NATO: Our commitment to Article 5, our collective defence clause, is iron-clad. We will protect and defend every inch of NATO territory.

NATO is a defensive Alliance. We do not seek conflict with Russia. Russia must immediately stop the war. Pull out all its forces from Ukraine. And engage in good faith in diplomatic efforts. The world stands with Ukraine in calling for peace.

NATO Allies provide different types of military support: material, anti-tank weapons, air defense systems and other types of military equipment for Ukraine, humanitarian aid and also financial support. But NATO is not to be part of the conflict. NATO is not going to send the troops into Ukraine or move planes into Ukrainian airspace.

President of Poland Andrzej Duda- we are not sending any jets to Ukraine because that would open a military interference in the Ukrainian conflict. We are not joining that conflict. NATO is not a party to that conflict. However as I said, we are supporting Ukrainians with humanity aid. However, we are not going to send any jets to the Ukrainian airspace.

BBC- Sanctions round-up

Mark Steyn- War in Europe: Day Five

Which brings us to this last day of February 2022. Which is beginning to feel like late February 2020, don’t you think? That is, in the stampede to impose the suffocating blanket of “the narrative” to the exclusion of all else. There is certainly a real country called Ukraine, where real people are being killed by real missiles hitting their apartment houses. Just as there was a real virus called Covid-19, which emerged from a real lab in a real city in China and began killing real people all over the world. Yet “the narrative”, then as now, seems designed to obscure any serious consideration of the underlying causes.

In 1938, when Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, the Prime Minister went on the radio and described it as “a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing”. For America, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the precise opposite: a quarrel in a far-away country of which their leaders know everything. Because they’ve been up to their neck in it for years.

Francisco- My two cents. Given the bumbling idiots and incompetent institutions we have in charge these days all over the western world I don’t have a lot of confidence in them resolving this problem in a way that doesn’t make it worse or drags the rest of us down with it. Innocent people everywhere are already getting hurt in one way or another. 

We got a quick glimpse of what kind of chaos economic sanctions can cause last week when Ottawa pulled them on its own citizens. The notion that we can just “unplug” Russia from everything without inflecting any kind of harm on ourselves seems naïve.  It’s doubtful that anyone even knows how that will all play out given how complicated and interconnected global finance and economics are these days. It also doesn’t take Russia’s nuclear weapons off the table, if anything it gives them more reason to be in play.

I don’t have a solution to this but all sides need to be able to claim some kind of victory and encouraged to de-escalate. Also, Canada is pretty much irrelevant here. We don’t have any hard power, or soft power, or the economic clout to do anything meaningful. It would be nice if our politicians stopped pretending like we do.    

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