Lesson 2: Buy enough military gear to win a war

Canada needs to stop buying just enough military equipment to fill the shop window.

A Leopard 2A4 tank at Wainwright Training Centre in 2021. PHOTO: S1 Camden Scott, CF Combat Camera

Every day we see new images of damaged and destroyed military vehicles in equipment littering Ukraine. The reality is that military weapons and equipment are consumed and expended in combat. As vehicles are destroyed, new ones are required to maintain the pace. As guns and equipment fails, gets damaged or ruined, soldiers need replacements.

Yet, when Canadian defence planners procure major pieces of gear for our troops, we rarely think about how we’ll replace them in combat. Because, quite frankly, we rarely think about using them in combat.

When Canada buys ships and fighter planes and military vehicles, we buy as many as we can afford today. Then, we either develop doctrine around that number – to rationalize how we will use what we’ve got – or we simply pretend to have more gear than we really do. That’s how we trained during the Cold War: we routinely pretended our 6-wheeled light armoured “Cougar” vehicles were tanks and taught our infantry how to line their equally armoured “Grizzly” troop carriers behind them as if benefit from protection that would have existed if the Cougars were tanks. But, they weren’t. It was ridiculous and we knew it. But, that was life in an army that was never really expected to fight.

Canada bought 125 Leopard I tanks during the Cold War because that was how many we could afford. We then trained a generation of tankers in the tactics they would use if we had more tanks. But, we didn’t. We still don’t.

Don’t ask me how many times my troops and I lined up in a “landing zone” awaiting helicopters that were, in fact, canvas-topped trucks while training for air assault operations. Canada didn’t have enough helicopters to fight the way we trained. It has even fewer now.

When Canada, or any country, operates fighter planes in peace or in war, they occasionally crash. When they do, Canada makes do with fewer planes. When other nations lose planes, they’re replaced. Because the enemy isn’t going to cut us a break just because we pranged a plane.

When Canada bought M777 light howitzers to equip the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery, we didn’t buy enough to fully equip the RCHA. We bought enough so each regiment could have enough to train with – as if they would get more during wartime. No one has yet explained how these mythical cannons will magically appear if the shooting starts.

And now, some politicians are even suggesting we give away what few guns our artillery has. To Ukraine. Because, hey, why would Canada’s soldiers need guns? Ukraine, apparently, thought the same.

Except Canada needed guns in Afghanistan. Canada needed tanks in Afghanistan too. Canada will need weapons to protect the troops we’re sending to bolster NATO and prevent further Russian aggression in Europe.

It’s time to buy gear as if we’re planning on using it

When Canada buys military gear, we should assume we’re going to use it sometime. In combat. For real. And, a lot of it will be destroyed, in combat or in training, and need to be replaced. If we need 100 tanks, we should buy extras to replace those that get destroyed. Ditto for fighter planes, artillery pieces, rifles and other equipment modern militaries require to protect their nations.

And, for God’s sake, when we buy weapons we also need to buy ammunition for them. When I commanded an anti-armour platoon back in the 1990’s, we were equipped with a number of then state-of-the-art TOW-under-armour* vehicles. These weapon systems fired an expensive guided missile that could destroy a tank up to 4.5 km distant. But, the missiles were so expensive we rarely fired any in training. In fact, there were few missiles in stock in the event of war. I imagine the bean counters in Ottawa assumed we could pop into Missles-R-Us on the way to WWIII.

Likewise, when we deployed our CF-18 fighter jets to participate in the 1991 Gulf War, we had to borrow missiles from the US as Canada didn’t have any in stock.

What Canada should do

This year, we’ve seen (again) that war comes when you’re least expecting and least prepared for it. We’ve seen (again) that Canada may need to contribute to the collective defence of ourselves and our allies and the democracies of the world by actually contributing to that defence – with real men and women and real arms.

For too long, we’ve neglected to offer even lip service to our military preparedness. Now, we must make up lost ground, and do so quickly. As we look to provide our military with the equipment, arms and ammunition it needs to make a credible contribution to our security, we must do so with the expectation our soldiers may actually have to fight with this gear. Soon.

So it must come quickly and it must come in sufficient quantity to win on the battlefield. We must expect to lose gear during operations. We must have spares on hand and contracts signed to accommodate rapid replacement of damaged and destroyed materiel. And, we must be able to buy more quickly so we can scale up follow-on forces with the same quality of weaponry and war-fighting kit.

When it comes to equipping our military, we must buy more than enough gear to look sharp in the shop window. We must plan to replace and replenish everything we buy under combat conditions. Canada’s soldiers, as few as they are, deserve this from us at the very least.

Come back tomorrow for Lesson 3: Canada’s military should learn to fight like Ukraine.

*Tube-launched, Optically-sighted, Wire-guided anti-tank missiles. “Under Armour” meant they were mounted on armoured vehicles (Refurbished M113A3s in our case) and could be operated from inside the vehicle without exposing the gunner.