By Scott Taylor
There has been an almost steady drumbeat of bad news stories revealing the numerous shortcomings and challenges facing the Canadian Armed Forces. The combined recruiting and retention crisis over the past decade has resulted in a crippling shortage of personnel. In some key trades – particularly in the Royal Canadian Navy and RCAF – the trade vacancy rate tops 40%.
Overall the combined Regular and Reserve forces are facing a 17% shortfall of an authorized personnel strength of 115,000.
This situation has been acknowledged by the senior brass who have advised the Canadian public that, like it or not, they will simply not be able to achieve their operational requirements through the foreseeable future.
To face this crisis the Canadian military have focussed their efforts on the obvious. In an attempt to increase recruiting and encourage retention the CAF lifted all regulations on tattoos, piercings, hairstyles, facial hair and gender specific uniform items.
The RCN have also created a special one-year Naval Experience Program wherein would be recruits only have to commit to twelve months of service.
The hope is that within that initial period, the excitement and adventure of Navy life will convince these individuals to sign up for a full career.
However the current shortage of qualified personnel means that fewer RCN warships can be put to sea. As a result, the one year wonder recruits may find their twelve months to be a boring stretch of doing general duties such as cleaning barracks and mending equipment. But I digress.
The approach the CAF leaders should consider would be that of downsizing the military to keep pace with the diminished number of recruits.
I know this will sound like heresy to the Colonel Blimps out there, but before you start thumping your tubs, I will remind you that this is nothing new.
With advances in technology we have seen a complete evolution of the modern battlefield. We went from close-packed rank of hundreds of soldiers firing muskets in volleys to a machine gun able to generate more firepower from a single soldier.
Close observers of the current conflict in Ukraine will have realized that uninhabited drones are now the masters of the battlefield. They can be used to observe and also to directly destroy enemy weapons and formations. The skill set for piloting or programming such drones does not require the same level of fitness and physical strength as that of conventional combat soldiers.
I think that if Canada were to invest in a boatload of cutting edge fleets of hunter-killer and kamikaze drones, operated by just a handful of talented gamers this would have more tactical impact on a modern battlefield than three battalions of conventional mechanized infantry.
At sea, the war in Ukraine has also exposed the vulnerability of Russia’s surface fleet to the uninhabited, water borne attack drones of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
It is also true that with the advent of technology, crew sizes in conventional warships can be drastically reduced.
The French navy currently operates their larger FREMM frigates with crews of just 140, while the RCN still puts their Halifax-class frigates out to sea with over 220 sailors crammed aboard.
The RCAF has a crippling shortage of pilots despite a decades-long drastic reduction in the number of combat planes operated by Canada.
In terms of fighter aircraft, in the early days of the Cold War, Canada purchased over 1,100 CF-86 Sabre fighters. To replace them, Canada bought a mixed fleet of 200 CF-104 starfighters and 145 CF-5 fighters.
This was, in turn, downsized to a fleet of just 120 CF-18 Hornets in the 1980’s. There are currently 86 CF-18’s still in service with the RCAF, and the government has signed a contract to replace these with 88 F-35 Joint Strike fighters.
The real future of military aviation however, as demonstrated by the war in Ukraine is not dog-fighting Top Gun jet jocks: it is unmanned drones programmed by high-tech engineers.
