Writing in the "The Dispatch" Stephen Saideman has reviewed the defence review and noted that there is
a split between the academic defence community which has been advocating hard
choices and those who speak for the retired military community whom he believes
wish to avoid those decisions.
It is his belief
that many retired military speakers think that "combat capable" means
the same as “full spectrum” or "flexible" and that they assume that
any choice to have less of one kind of capability would mean that the Canadian
Armed Forces would not be able to do combat.
No matter what the
conclusions of the Defence Review, the missions will not change nor, it seems
likely, will spending patterns. The Defence Minister has already indicated
that there will be no major changes on the issues of personnel and bases.
So the DND and the
CAF will need to make decisions about where and how funds available are going
to be spent and hard choices will have to be made and, as Saideman points out,
there are no advocacy groups for spending money on readiness, exercising, and
maintenance. Yet these are the areas that will get cut, if no hard
decisions are made, and getting those choices wrong will get people
killed.
Examples are not
hard to find. As Paul J.Doyle makes clear in a paper entitled "Canada’s Air Force
Kinetic Capability for the 21st Century: What Is Needed?" published in
"Canadian Aerospace and Joint Studies, the Curtis papers Vol. 1 •
Book 1: 2009 | 2010 – Select Masters in Defence Studies"the Canadian Army
was not prepared for combat in Afghanistan.
The stand-up of 1
Canadian Air Division, along with the dissolution of the air groups in 1997, started the disengagement of the fighter force from the Canadian Army which
accelerated through the 1990s. The end of the brigade-level Exercise RENDEZVOUS
in 1997 also limited the large event training exercises for CF-18s with Army
brigades. As the fighter force concentrated on independent missions the
number of fighter pilots qualified as FACs (Forward Air Controllers) steadily
decreased.
The unintended
consequences of these incidents led to the tragic events in September 2006
where a USAF A-10 mistakenly fired on Canadian troops, killing one soldier and
wounding over 30 in a single strafing pass. As detailed in the DND inquiry into
the incident there were many individual occurrences that led to this tragic
event, from obscured visibility to fatigue, but one key contribution was the
lack of a tactical air control party (TACP) with the Canadians at the brigade
or battle group level.
As subsequent
investigations discovered, by 2006 the Canadian Forces was not following
doctrine, and TACPs had not been formed or deployed into the theatre of
operations In the end it took this accident to bring this deficiency to light.
This is not just a
case of each service following it's own path with no attempt at
'jointness". It is not enough to mandate cross-service
cooperation in all stages of the military processes, from research, through
procurement and into operations and hope that it works. Hard choices have to be made about priorities, The events of September 2006 show what happens when the hard
choices are not made.
There
is no constituency in the DND or the CAF for "jointness" any more
then there is for readiness,
exercising, and maintenance. This has to provided by civilian and military
leadership. If the Defence
Review concludes that 'business as usual' results in more then political
embarrassment, that the consequences are combat deaths, then it will not have
been a waste of effort.
Reviewing the
Summer of the Defence Review by STEPHEN SAIDEMAN
Canadian Aerospace
and Joint Studies, the Curtis papers Vol. 1 • Book 1: 2009 | 2010 –
Select Masters in Defence Studies Paper
Chapter 5 –
Canada’s Air Force Kinetic Capability for the 21st Century: What Is Needed?
Major Paul J. Doyle
Inquiry: A-10A Friendly Fire Incident 4 September 2006, Panjwayi District, Afghanistan Department of
National Defence, Board of Inquiry Minutes of Proceeding http://milnewstbay.pbworks.com/f/A10_BOI_Report_e.pdf
