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Walt

This may dovetail with the Army Reserve Restructuring thread, but I felt it was different enough to put separately.

CHRISTIAN LEUPRECHT
CONTRIBUTED TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL
PUBLISHED 1 DAY AGO

The deployment of 1,700 regular force and reserve military members for duty in long-term care homes in Ontario and Quebec has been widely applauded by Canadians. At the same time, we seem ambivalent about the decision to scale back or suspend several of the Canadian Armed Forces’ (CAF) international commitments. As far as the public is concerned, the military’s away game is discretionary – a distraction used to keep busy when forces are not needed at home.

The problem is that the country’s stability, prosperity and harmony have long hinged on an expeditionary military force. The CAF asserts the country’s geostrategic interests by bolstering allies and promoting stability abroad. With the globalization of transnational threats, many of Canada’s allies have adopted a similarly expeditionary posture, and our allies have just as much difficulty selling the necessity of these actions to their domestic constituencies as Canada does.

But other countries’ civil-military relations differ from Canada in an important respect: under their social contract, there is a broad consensus to keep the military out of domestic operations. The sentiment they hold is that just because the military can do a job at home does not mean that it should.

These countries want their military to defend their interests; so, in response to a non-security-related emergency, their civil society largely has to cope on its own. That functional logic has informed Canada’s allies and partners in creating organizations that jointly address civil defense and disaster preparedness. Examples include the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in the United States, State Emergency Service (SES) in Australia, the Technisches Hilfswerk (THW) in Germany, the Sécurité Civile in France and the Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) in Sweden. These organizations provide surge capacity across a broad spectrum of expertise, as well as trained volunteers and equipment to assist with disaster response.

Canada has no equivalent. Provincial emergency measures organizations have no deployable operational capacity. So, the CAF ends up backstopping emergency response. That is the consequence of a peculiarly Canadian anachronism.

[More at link]

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-canada-must-divide-its-military-resources-along-foreign-and-domestic/

This is a real message to Russkies (and Finns exercised with USAF too last year, see "Arctic Challenge" https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/1870898/169th-fw-wrap-up-arctic-challenge-exercise-in-sweden/ ), further links at original:

Norwegian and Swedish fighter jets in joint training with US B-1B bombers

This is the first time that American strategic long-range bombers are exercising in Swedish airspace, Dagens Nyheter reports.

Norway’s Defense command says Wednesday’s exercise is “one of the largest of its kind, and several allied and partners trained along with the US B-1B.”

The B-1B bomber is one of the three types of US strategic bombers. The two others are the B-2 stealth aircraft and the B-52.

Norwegian F-35s were flying together with the B-2 in March this year in Icelandic airspace and over the North-Atlantic. Last November, Norwegian F-16s followed three U.S. B-52 bombers all north to the Barents Sea.

The Norwegian military says such joint flight missions are of high priority.

“Today we have conducted complex flight operations with advanced systems, both on the ground and in the air,” says Lieutenant Colonel Ståle Nymoen. He is the commander of the 332 squadron which operates the F-35s from Ørland airbase.

In Sweden, the exercise included refueling of the Jas 39 Gripen fighter jets from an American KC-135 tanker [emphasis added].

“The sortie was conducted by the Swedish air combat command,” the Swedish Armed Forces informs.

Sweden is not a NATO member but is a partner country. In 2014, Sweden signed a host country agreement with NATO allowing for the allied forces to conduct joint training exercises in the country [emphasis added]...

Nordic, U.S. air force cooperation

U.S. Air Force is normally participating in the bi-annual exercise Arctic Challenge, where Norway, Sweden and Finland train together in the skies over northern Scandinavia. The northern airbases of Kallax, Bodø and Rovaniemi are then hosting the planes.

Earlier this spring, the U.S. Air Force deployed two B-1 bombers from the Ellsworth Air Force in South Dakota to Europe. The planes fly out of Fairford base in the United Kingdom and were earlier in May on several missions in the Baltic overflying Denmark, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

“Training with our NATO allies and theater partner nations contributes to enhanced resiliency and interoperability. Strategic bombers contribute to stability in the European theater by sending a clear deterrence message to any potential adversary,” a May 6 statement from the U.S. Air Force in Europe said [emphasis added--NO KIDDING, with a neutral country].
https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/security/2020/05/norwegian-and-swedish-fighter-jets-joint-flight-training-us-b-1-bombers

Mark
Ottawa

Check out Deadpool on the Soldier On site:

https://www.soldieron.ca/

This topic has been moved to Thoughts and Prayers.

https://Army.ca/forums/index.php?topic=132326.0

Navy sailors back at home after spending seven weeks in isolation off coast

While they weren’t greeted with the usual fanfare of ship homecomings, nearly 500 sailors on three Royal Canadian Navy ships returned to their home port at CFB Esquimalt Friday after seven weeks in isolation off the coast of Vancouver Island.

HMCS Calgary, HMCS Regina, each with a crew of 225, and the smaller maritime coastal defence vessel HMCS Brandon, with 45 sailors, have been cruising through domestic waters in a self-quarantine exercise to ensure they’re ready to deploy while staying free of COVID-19.

https://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/navy-sailors-back-at-home-after-spending-seven-weeks-in-isolation-off-coast-1.24132380