Something interesting I found online while I was looking at Canada's ability, or lack thereof, to move DART to South Asia:

Canada is stuck on the ground

Colin Kenny
National Post


November 6, 2004



Canadian troops have two options when they want to move quickly to emergencies. They can hitch-hike. Or they can hail a cab. Sometimes they can't do either.

This isn't just embarrassing. It's stupid.

Developing a first-rate strategic lift capacity for our Armed Forces would allow Canadian troops to move rapidly and safely to where they need to be. It would also have the valuable side effect of restoring Canada to the list of international players -- a list that any country needs to be on if it expects to advance its own interests at international bargaining tables.

Begging rides isn't the way to exert influence. Most recently, Canada couldn't even manage to get its Disaster Assistance Response Team to Haiti in the wake of the devastating tropical storm Jeanne. In 1992, we relied on the U.S. Air Force to transport armoured vehicles to Somalia. In 2002, we had to depend upon a combination of civilian rentals and U.S. military aircraft to deploy infantry to Afghanistan.

It gets more humiliating closer to home. During the devastating 1998 ice storm in eastern Canada, we had to rent planes and turn to the Americans to move our troops and equipment across our own country. Poor, bedraggled Canada.

Yes, we do have some planes that can carry troops. Little planes. Little antique planes. The Canadian military has between 16 to 24 Hercules tactical lift transport planes (out of a fleet of 32) available on any given day.

Admittedly, the C-130 Hercules tactical lift transport plane isn't tiny, the way an executive jet is tiny. But it is tiny in the context of carrying troops and equipment. It takes 26 separate Hercules lifts to move the Disaster Assistance Response team, compared to the six lifts it would require if Canada operated the Boeing C-17s used by the United States and Britain. It has been estimated that hundreds of pieces of Canadian military equipment cannot be fitted into a Herc without being dismantled.

The most elderly of our Hercs, which first flew for us in the 1960s, have the dubious distinction of being the oldest operating Hercules used for military purposes anywhere in the world. Canadian military people shudder to recall the deployment of Canada's peacekeeping force from Canada to East Timor several years ago -- the plane was forced to return to base three times because of faulty equipment before finally lumbering to its destination.

Moreover, Hercs don't have the range to get our troops to far-off places quickly. So, if they can't hitch a ride, the Canadian Armed Forces rent transport planes -- often old, rickety planes from suppliers in Russia and the Ukraine. The planes we rent -- mostly Antonovs -- have uncomfortable similarities to the Yakovlev-42 that crashed in Turkey last year, carrying 62 Spanish peacekeepers to their death.

It would only take one crash like that one to wipe out more of our troops than have been killed on a single deployment since the Korean War. It is one thing to put our troops in harm's way in a theatre of conflict. It is another to do so on aircraft past their prime.

Canada requires large, new, military transport planes. We don't need to fiddle around endlessly trying to decide which model to buy: the two options are the Boeing C-17 and the incipient European Airbus A400M, but the Airbus won't be ready until 2010 at the earliest, and by the time Canada's turn on the waiting list comes around -- given inevitable production delays -- it will probably be 2015.

The C-17 is in production, and it's good. Ten C-17s would cost us $340-million annually, including all costs associated with 800 flying hours a year on a rent-to-lease agreement. The U.S. Air Force would likely be willing to give up some of its own priority spots on the order line so we could have these planes flying for us in two years. They did so for the British recently.

Meanwhile, we could retire our entire fleet of Hercs, saving about $265-million a year and we would not have to rent commercial strategic lift, saving about $50-million a year. Bottom line: the net annual cost to the Department of National Defence would be around $30-million a year. This amounts to peanuts in terms of the kind of money Canada should be spending to modernize its military.

Very few countries have a strong airlift capacity. Many need to get their troops from place to place to perform UN missions. They, like Canada, are forced to rent. With our own C-17s, we could rent them out to other countries when we do not need them and make a little money, while offering a safer option than the ageing Antonovs and Yakovlevs.

Having a formidable airlift capacity would mean that Canada, whether it was sitting around the NATO table, the UN table or just conferring with allies, would feel less pressure to come up with ground troops when crises arise. When we chose to, we would be able to help -- and help quickly, which we cannot do today.

The Senate committee on national security and defence is conducting a review of Canada's defence policy. It will complete hearings by June and report by the end of the summer.

There are some initiatives that need to be taken now to reinvigorate our Armed Forces that are so obvious that they don't need to wait for a review. This is one of them.

Let's get our thumbs out of the air, put our hands in our pockets and come up with a modest sum of money to help restore Canadian military respectability, help ensure our troops' safety and help the world deal with its emergencies. We need strategic airlift - and the sooner, the better.

© National Post 2004

Something we should think about the next time the military asks for a few bucks for new gear.