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Canadian military will rely on public servants to boost its ranks by 300k

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Re: Canadian military will rely on public servants to boost its ranks by 300k

#251

Post by pyuser583 »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #157
mig39 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if you've been paying attention, but the head of the USA has threatened on numerous occasions to invade Canada.

I mean yeah we've famously even had full on invasion war plans drawn up in the past that leaked. Canada isn't going to do anything that changes the USA's ability to steam roll over the country.

Canada's plan was to encourage the US to invade, so the British Navy could attack the US from the Caribbean. The US would get bogged down in the icy Canadian winter, while the Royal Navy took the Eastern seaboard, Mississipi river, and Panama.

The American plan was to throw everything we had at Canada, so it was probably a very good plan.

I don't think it would work anymore.

More practically - in the aftermath of the 1812 War, the US and British North America agreed to demilitarize the border. During WWII, this was preventing mobilization in the Great Lakes region, and Canada proposed undoing the treaty. The US diplomat in charge felt the treaty had historical value and should be kept in tact.

So the US-Canadian border is very demilitarized, by design.

Re: Canadian military will rely on public servants to boost its ranks by 300k

#252

Post by I-M-S »

dragonsky67 wrote: post #237
asdff wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't really what happens. The unit would just surrender. That's how it went down in WWII early in the pacific campaign. Western nations don't go down to the last man.

Don't count other nations the way you do the US, and don't compare the behaviour of troops defending some piece of jungle on the other side of the planet with those defending their homes.

The average cost of a home in Toronto is $1.2M CAD. The only home young able-bodied Canadians are defending is their landlord's.

Re: Canadian military will rely on public servants to boost its ranks by 300k

#253

Post by mrguyorama »

nradov wrote: post #226
cogogo wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The largest volunteer army in the world is the US Army. Please provide evidence that enlistees can specifically be truck drivers if they choose to be.

What a silly question. I don't need to provide you any evidence. Just walk down to your local recruiting office and ask. If you tell them that you want to enlist but will only do so if they guarantee a truck driver MOS on your contact then they'll absolutely take you unless they've already hit their limit for that fiscal year. HN is so weird sometimes. Like half the users seem to be aggressively ignorant of stuff tha…

>If you tell them that you want to enlist but will only do so if they guarantee a truck driver MOS on your contact then they'll absolutely take you unless they've already hit their limit for that fiscal year.

(I think this is right, I've heard conflicting info about what recruiters can promise you)

If they are official military, then the truck driver HAS been through Basic and knows the absolute minimum of combat.

You don't have to trust me, this is literally what tons of women did during WW2 in most countries (except germany, who used slavery). Betty White and Bea Arthur both signed up for service as literal truck drivers. In fact, they both worked as truck drivers in different services set up to recruit women to replace men in non-combat roles to free them up for other service. Bea Arthur even went through some form of "Boot camp".

The UK used women heavily, especially in things like running the logistics of the air war. WRNS even did activities like fly transport planes and shuttle fighter aircraft around.

>In December 1941, Parliament passed the National Service Act, which called up unmarried women between 20 and 30 years old to join one of the auxiliary services.... by 1943 about nine out of ten women were taking an active part in the war effort.

The US uses a lot of civilian contractors for logistics, and that is the same idea. However, if the US ever deals with real, serious industrialized warfare again, I would bet on those civilian contractors being consumed by the military.

The US Women's Army Corps alone had 80k women serving, so not exactly millions, but it was a significant effort.

So not only is it the norm for a serious war to often push leadership to free up people doing non-combat duties by replacing them with people "not fit" for combat, it literally went to the extent that in WW2 we pretended to ignore sexism to make it happen and literal women were put in harms way and other "not technically front line combat but in danger of taking fire" roles.

> Like half the users seem to be aggressively ignorant of stuff that's common knowledge in the real world outside the tech industry.

Seriously agree though. That's not a slight, or a "take that", it's a real problem for HN. Tons of people here think they are smarter than average for choosing to browse orange reddit.

Re: Canadian military will rely on public servants to boost its ranks by 300k

#255

Post by AngryData »

observationist wrote: post #49
groby_b wrote: post #21

Just in case people miss the core message: This is something you do if you have a credible risk assessment that you think a big conflict is a possibility within the next decade or so. And, as much as I'd like to focus on deteriorating Canada/US relations, it's likely a dual purpose. The Ukraine/Russia/NATO situation would be the second factor. OK, a triad, China/US is also on the radar. Whatever the weighting, it's p…

Any rational assessment of Canada's military capabilities, its funding capabilities, and population will lead to a determination that they're not in any sort of position to have any sort of meaningful defense or offense without the US running point. For that to change would require generational shifts in culture and revenue generation and so on. If the US chooses not to defend them, they're exposing themselves to una…

If they arm and empower a significant local population, they do have a credible defense, because the vast majority of leaders in the world knows fighting a decently armed insurgency is extremely costly. They watched the US itself, a military that dwarfs the entire rest of the world's militaries, do it multiple times, along with Russia and a few other countries. The "cheapest" way to win against an insurgency is to literally blow the entire country up until nothing is standing à la North Korea, but that also destroys 95% of the value of taking a country which defeats the entire point of taking it.

Re: Canadian military will rely on public servants to boost its ranks by 300k

#256

Post by I-M-S »

asdff wrote: post #223
throwway120385 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they might legitimately be worried about an invasion from the south.

I'd be surprised if they'd last longer than a week if the US were really committed.

That's what Putin thought as well.

Re: Canadian military will rely on public servants to boost its ranks by 300k

#257

Post by Retric »

stirfish wrote: post #195
Retric wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Useful for what role? It’s not obvious if someone has near significant or near zero training when they are acting as a stationary guard at a checkpoint etc. Which enables trained troops to preform more useful roles. They are significantly less likely to do the correct thing if attacked, but a war isn’t going to just be over in 24 hours either so they can be trained up on the job.

More likely driving trucks, cooking meals, filling out spreadsheets, etc

Cooks and similar supporting roles are often preformed by civilians without firearm training. Preforming background checks on people beforehand makes sense, but there’s little point in firearms training if they aren’t expected to carry a weapon.

Re: Canadian military will rely on public servants to boost its ranks by 300k

#258

Post by motohagiography »

im of two minds, where on the one hand having some basic physical competence and responsibility can only improve civil servants, but on the other, the civil service is now stacked with radical partisans, and arming them and organizing them as paramilitaries is going to go exactly how you'd expect.

Re: Canadian military will rely on public servants to boost its ranks by 300k

#259

Post by fn-mote »

sigwinch wrote: post #247
potato3732842 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A week is gonna be mostly "here's how to function in our organization, this is our trade specific vocabulary, here's a rifle and how you use it" You use your D-grade troops like that for behind the lines security. You use them to check papers at checkpoints, round up dissidents, keep people from taking pot shots at your supply lines, etc, etc, the kind of stuff you don't need expensive professional infantry[1] or eve…

I think you’re discounting what a physically-unacceptable soldier can do with a drone.

That D rating isn’t for physically unacceptable. It’s for complete incompetence or at least just punching the time clock. A lifetime of working for a bureaucracy that doesn’t care for you isn’t going to bring out the best anywhere else, either. Especially not if that’s a one week a year mandatory service. (I didn’t read tfa.)

Re: Canadian military will rely on public servants to boost its ranks by 300k

#260

Post by TriangleEdge »

This reminds me of the movie 300 where an army shows up with potters and other tradesmen, while the army of Sparta were all soldiers.

Opinion: as an expat, I'm not sure who would join the CAF nowadays. Not much to be proud of in my opinion. Without exaggerating, not a single person I grew up with is doing well, and I had to leave Canada to start my family.

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