Today is March 4th, and the conflict in Ukraine has been raging for a week. My website has been down for a week owing to some problems that appear to have been generated when a new version of the site software was issued. I’ve finally gotten it re-booted in a pretty plain looking format.

It’s February 21st when I started to write this article. At that time, 190,000 Russians were massed in a semi-circle around the Ukrainian border and were poised to invade. NATO was posturing and European nations were protesting. Diplomats from the USA and from France and Germany were whispering a never-ending stream of sweet nothings into Vladimir Putin’s ear in an attempt to dissuade him from his mad urge to go and conquer the world. At the same time, however, US President Joe Biden had assured his citizens (and Vlad the Invader didn’t fail to get the message) that he had no intention of sending soldiers to Ukraine and getting America involved in another foreign war.

Is that the right stance for NATO countries to assume? Should we be prepared to defend Ukraine against invasion? Would you vote for a Canadian government that decided to send armed troops to help defend a foreign country?

In 1938 Germany was poised to invade Czechoslovakia. Austria had already been absorbed into the Third Reich. Germany was now pushing to obtain control over Sudetenland, a portion of Czechoslovakia with a large German-speaking population. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain engaged in a round of urgent diplomacy and eventually returned with the Munich Agreement, in which Czechoslovakia ceded control of the Sudetenland to Germany, bowing to Hitler’s demands. Brittainica.com reports that “Chamberlain told the British public that he had achieved “peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time.” His words were immediately challenged by his greatest critic, Winston Churchill, who declared, “You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will have war.”

The parallels to the current situation are obvious. The question is, should we follow Neville Chamberlain again, or do we need a Churchill out there to stiffen our resolve? Given Putin’s threat to go nuclear if we interfere, the impulse to step up to the defence of Ukraine is a highly risky strategy. Although it pains me to watch what’s happening in Ukraine, I’m not sure that we wouldn’t precipitate a catastrophic disaster if we take up arms on their behalf.

But if Putin prevails in Ukraine, what is the likelihood that he will not go into Moldova? Or try to enter the Baltic states that are NATO members? What happens if Putin just won’t stop shoving? Are we in position to resist the aggressor at any point?

My original reaction was that the only answer for Canada today is “Hell no, we won’t go”, because I suspected that our armed forces are ill-prepared to engage an enemy, and to send my nephew (I don’t have a kid in the military) to fight is probably exposing him to unreasonable risk for dubious reward. In other words, if you don’t expect to win, maybe you shouldn’t fight until you’re better prepared. My brother, retired from a career in military endeavours, assures me that we could make a solid contribution, but not without limitations.

So, let’s take a quick look at Canada’s military might. Might being the operative word.

The Navy might put out to sea, but it might not. We bought four second-hand submarines from Britain in 1998, but they have “spent more time in dock for repairs and maintenance than at sea with…. problems and incidents including fires and faulty welding.” Since 2010, Canada has had a national ship building strategy which is upgrading our off-shore patrol capabilities. It includes some 32 support vessels, ice-breakers, Coast Guard patrol vessels and the like, as well as 15 surface combat ships. However, our National Shipbuilding Strategy leaves us relying on those clapped out British cast-offs for submarine capability. That seems distinctly off course to me, since submarine capability should be an important element in the defence of a long coast-line like ours.

If our surface elements did put to sea, they might not stay there long. A 2017 assessment of Canadian Armed Forces reported that “The Navy is in a state of … disastrous decline” and “Because of failures to replace supply ships and destroyers, Canada no longer has the ability to independently control events at sea [….] It no longer has the ability to independently sustain deployed task group operations, and must rely on others for at-sea refuelling and logistics support, even in home waters. The good news is that the ship building strategy does include both combat vessels and a significant level of supporting vessels. The bad news is that the scheduled start of construction (not delivery, but start of construction) for combat vessels is “early 2020’s”. So, the status today is that we have meaningful naval capacity only in the context of a joint operation with allies. Independent naval operations are likely beyond us at this point.

The Air Force might take to the air. Our helicopters might do OK, but our fighter planes might be over-matched against modern jet fighters.

We have been learning lessons from the war in Afghanistan. The 2017 Senate report said “When the Canadian military embarked on the Afghanistan mission, Gen. Hillier said, it looked at its Griffins and Sea King helicopters and decided they would be either ineffective or too difficult to maintain. So Canadian forces use helicopters owned by other members of the coalition.” The Senate committee recommended “That the Government of Canada prioritize the replacement of 55 of 95 Griffons with a non-civilian medium- to heavy-lift military helicopters with enough speed and lift capacity to support military needs, and add 24 attack helicopters which will be able to protect the Chinook fleet and military personnel during combat search and rescue.” A November 2021 report on Defence Procurement shows that we’ve purchased 15 heavy lift Chinook helicopters and 28 Cyclone attack helicopters. That hasn’t gone as far as the Senate Report recommended, but it’s a decent start. Fighter jets are another story.

Canada has been pursuing a new fighter jet capability since 1997. We’ve contributed $613 Million (US) to the development of the American F35, but have never managed to buy one. The Harper government committed to buying F35’s in 2008, but the bid became snarled in Canada’s bureaucratic webs and was judged to be “uncompetitive” and the decision has been kicked about like a political football ever since.

In 2017, the Standing Senate Committee on Defence recommended that the Government NOT pursue its plans to purchase second-hand F18’s from Australia. (Does that plan sound at all like the decision to purchase second-hand submarines from Britain?) The Senate report recommended “That the Government of Canada immediately commence a competition to replace the fighter jets and make a decision by June 30, 2018; and,
That the Government of Canada cancel the interim fighter jet replacement plan”. Of the interim fighter replacement plan (buying second hand from Australia), it said “we would likely be the only country in the world flying it beyond the 2030 timeframe. Inevitably, the long term costs of supporting the software, replacing worn out parts, and attempting to upgrade the aircraft against obsolescence will far outweigh any potential savings at the time of initial purchase given that we’ll be on our own.”

The Trudeau government didn’t listen to that advice. On December 22nd, 2021, the government provided an update advising that 18 operational F18’s and seven to be used as spare parts have all been delivered. But delivery of the jets doesn’t mean they are capable. All of the Aussie planes need to have out-dated radar systems removed and upgraded. These aircraft are not scheduled to achieve full capability until December of this year. The Auditor General condemned the F-18 plan in a 2018 report, that “the purchase of Australian aircraft will not help to solve the biggest problems facing the air force: a pilot shortage and an “aging fleet” of CF-18s.” How would you like to send your son to Ukraine or any other country to fight in a jet that is pretty much obsolete?

Justin Trudeau vowed, in 2015, that if elected he would cancel the contract for F35’s committed by the Harper government. Seven years later the government procurement process has failed to decide what plane to buy, much less place an actual order. And the problem now is that the Liberal government cannot purchase F35’s without opening themselves to criticism that they finally arrived where the Conservatives were in 2008. Thus, there is every possibility that they will pursue a flawed procurement process and buy inferior fighter jets.

On January 3rd, 2022, Murray Brewster of the CBC reported that the Trudeau government might decide this year on which fighter jet to buy. I’m sure that as our fighter pilots fly off to fight in their obsolete F18’s, they’ll be saying “Wish I had a better plane, but thank God at least we are following a rigorous procurement process.” What a disgrace! Since the Battle of Britain, air superiority has been the key to every conflict on our war-torn planet. And our timorous, penny-pinching, poll-guided, vote-sucking government can’t get off its ass and join the 21st century.

Our land forces seem to get decent marks for Leopard tanks and light armored vehicles. I confess that my quick research efforts haven’t given me a good handle on how well we’re doing in this regard. There is a plethora of articles written by the Government of Canada and/or by the Armed Forces itself. Those articles describe procurement plans and provide descriptions of what a terrific army we have, but I have largely been unable to find corroborating information from independent sources.

Are we really incapable of contributing meaningfully to allied operations in some foreign land? Probably not. We can likely help in some meaningful ways. Journalism doesn’t do well with stories about things that are going OK, which means that we’re more familiar with our military shortcomings than we are with our successes. So, we’re probably doing OK.

But are we doing as well as we should? I was surprised to learn that the Dept of National Defence is the largest spending slice in the Canadian federal budget. In 2020-21, we were spending 7.7% of the budget on defence. Is that enough? Well, the NATO target for defence spending is 2% of GDP. Canada’s spending fell below 1% of GDP in 2014, and has risen slowly to be 1.42% in 2020, still about 25% below target. Note that, in light of the Russian aggression, that target might not actually be enough. We probably need to rapidly invest a lot more in our military, and we need to do it effectively. The history of Canadian effectiveness in military procurement in the last fifty years has been pretty dismal.

I think we should have a guiding philosophy for what we’re going to buy. I think we should think small, not big. Consider, for example, the wisdom of Canada investing in a large aircraft carrier. We currently have none. The latest American aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R Ford has a price tag of about $13.3 Billion. The United States, with a population approximately ten times ours, has twenty aircraft carriers, and one might argue that we should therefore be able to muster two carriers. But consider what happens if we sent such a beast into a hostile theatre beside an American carrier. They’d be risking 5% of their capability – we’d be risking 50% of ours. So big aircraft carriers and monster battleships probably aren’t for us.

I think we want to be investing in ordnance and technology so that we can project power with the least possible risk to our personnel. Cruise missiles, missile defense systems, weoponized drones, surveillance capability – it seems to me that we need to be able to strike from a distance with speed and accuracy. I think we want the military equivalent of Mohammed Ali – float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.

Just as a side note, I read a document about why we have both a Canadian Coast Guard and a Royal Canadian Navy, and I can’t say I found it very compelling. I’d like to see those two units combined and integrated so that we gain some efficiencies.

My conclusion is that the world has revealed itself, once again, as an unfriendly place. The war in Ukraine should be a wake-up call for us all. If it weren’t Putin now, it would be somebody else at another time. There is every reason to believe that sooner or later some chucklehead will decide to be an aggressor. And there are only three things we can do with an international aggressor.

We can play the politics of appeasement, back down and join the ranks of the oppressed.

We can assume a strong posture and convince him that he doesn’t want this fight.

Or we can take him on in a scrap and beat the crap out of him.

Those last two options both require that we have a high-tech, modern, well-equipped military. And that means that we should all be pressuring our government to upgrade and modernize our military at high priority and damn the cost. If we’re going to ask our soldiers, sailors and airmen to put themselves in harm’s way, we should do our best to ensure that they are among the best equipped in the world.