The plan, which defence officials say includes the largest pay raise in nearly three decades, is part of Canada's effort to meet its NATO commitments and boost recruitment.
If the arms are clearly superior and Canada owns and is able to maintain them, AND they are not integrated into other systems, I don’t see why Canada should buy US arms.
If any one those conditions are not true, Canada should refrain from purchase. F-35, anybody?
Well, yes, although not that many. Small arms in Canada are almost all domestically produced. Armoured vehicles are domestically produced with the exception of the Leopard, which is German. Even stuff that has an American name on it, like Textron, gets built up here (Textron stuff for Canadian use is all made in Quebec). Our ships are built by Irving. We use the Carl G and the RB-70, both from Saab. Our M777 artillery pieces are from British Aerospace. Even American sounding weapons like the M2 Browning (which is only used by reservists, not reg-force) are actually made by FN Herstal, a Belgian company. Despite the oft-touted fact that Canada maintains a lot of weapons compatibility with the US, that doesn’t mean we’re sourcing everything from them.
When it comes to the things we do buy from them, like, say, the M72 LAW, or our night vision systems, you can’t just turn that stuff around overnight. This shit with the US has only been going down in earnest for less than a year. Military procurement requires massive standardization; if you replace one soldier’s night vision with a new model, you replace it for every soldier, because everyone has to be using the same kit. So swapping out something like the M72 means evaluating options until we find something that has enough firepower, is light enough, reliable enough, accurate enough, easy enough to use, doesn’t cost too much, and comes from a supplier we can trust (or can be produced domestically under license) and then replacing our entire stockpile of M72s with that new weapon. That’s no small task.
The main area where we rely far too much on the US is aircraft. That’s tricky, because finding better options isn’t as easy as it sounds. The F-35 is the only fifth gen fighter on the market. That matters, and at the time that we made the original commitment to buy it really was the best option going. No, it does not in fact have all the issues that Russia Today claims it does (wow, I wonder why they would lie about that?), and yes, stealth does in fact really, really matter in air to air combat; if you detect your enemy before they detect you, you win. It really is that simple.
Obviously, we now have to re-evaluate that choice, based on the very serious questions that have to be asked about the reliability of the supplier. But where does that leave us? The CF-18 is also America, and desperately out of date. The Gripen, or any other similar option, are 4.5th Gen at best. Good planes, but already out of date. There are several 6th Gen fighter projects already in the works. There’s no good choice here. I suspect the least bad option is to buy the Gripen as a stopgap and then immediately start evaluating both European 6th Gen projects, but that’s just me. I don’t envy anyone having to make that decision.
And that’s not even considering all the other aircraft that we source from the US. It’s one of the very few areas where they have actually managed to maintain a serious lead. Finding better options will not be easy, and as I mentioned above, it’s not just a matter of changing who we buy from; we’d have to switch out entire fleets, in order to maintain manageable logistics and training. There’s no way of solving that which doesn’t come with massive costs.
Every western country needs to boost their military spending if they’re to keep the imperialist powers of the US and Russia in check.
Yeah, I don’t want to become Poland in 1939 or Czechoslovakia in 1938.
I’m okay throwing money at an existential threat.
We still buy arms from the usa
Time to start looking into other suppliers or begin producing domestically, then.
If the US continues its 51st state rhetoric, what weapons will Canada defend itself with during an occupation?
If the arms are clearly superior and Canada owns and is able to maintain them, AND they are not integrated into other systems, I don’t see why Canada should buy US arms.
If any one those conditions are not true, Canada should refrain from purchase. F-35, anybody?
While I under your reasoning, that is still enabling the aggressor by giving them loads of cash.
deleted by creator
Well, yes, although not that many. Small arms in Canada are almost all domestically produced. Armoured vehicles are domestically produced with the exception of the Leopard, which is German. Even stuff that has an American name on it, like Textron, gets built up here (Textron stuff for Canadian use is all made in Quebec). Our ships are built by Irving. We use the Carl G and the RB-70, both from Saab. Our M777 artillery pieces are from British Aerospace. Even American sounding weapons like the M2 Browning (which is only used by reservists, not reg-force) are actually made by FN Herstal, a Belgian company. Despite the oft-touted fact that Canada maintains a lot of weapons compatibility with the US, that doesn’t mean we’re sourcing everything from them.
When it comes to the things we do buy from them, like, say, the M72 LAW, or our night vision systems, you can’t just turn that stuff around overnight. This shit with the US has only been going down in earnest for less than a year. Military procurement requires massive standardization; if you replace one soldier’s night vision with a new model, you replace it for every soldier, because everyone has to be using the same kit. So swapping out something like the M72 means evaluating options until we find something that has enough firepower, is light enough, reliable enough, accurate enough, easy enough to use, doesn’t cost too much, and comes from a supplier we can trust (or can be produced domestically under license) and then replacing our entire stockpile of M72s with that new weapon. That’s no small task.
The main area where we rely far too much on the US is aircraft. That’s tricky, because finding better options isn’t as easy as it sounds. The F-35 is the only fifth gen fighter on the market. That matters, and at the time that we made the original commitment to buy it really was the best option going. No, it does not in fact have all the issues that Russia Today claims it does (wow, I wonder why they would lie about that?), and yes, stealth does in fact really, really matter in air to air combat; if you detect your enemy before they detect you, you win. It really is that simple.
Obviously, we now have to re-evaluate that choice, based on the very serious questions that have to be asked about the reliability of the supplier. But where does that leave us? The CF-18 is also America, and desperately out of date. The Gripen, or any other similar option, are 4.5th Gen at best. Good planes, but already out of date. There are several 6th Gen fighter projects already in the works. There’s no good choice here. I suspect the least bad option is to buy the Gripen as a stopgap and then immediately start evaluating both European 6th Gen projects, but that’s just me. I don’t envy anyone having to make that decision.
And that’s not even considering all the other aircraft that we source from the US. It’s one of the very few areas where they have actually managed to maintain a serious lead. Finding better options will not be easy, and as I mentioned above, it’s not just a matter of changing who we buy from; we’d have to switch out entire fleets, in order to maintain manageable logistics and training. There’s no way of solving that which doesn’t come with massive costs.