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Contributor: codc01
Date: 2003-04-22 13:47:51
Regarding the 400 Million dollars, I don't know, the reports (available on the DND site - called plans and priorities), indicates that this is the total expenses including bonuses transports and everything...
Regarding transport of our equipment and troops, well, from reading newspapers (the Ottawa Citizen is very well informed about all this), it seems that the Air Force Brass wants to buy some C-17 planes - which has worldwide range, I disagree with this, its much too expensive (180 million US$ each!). It seems that Mr. McCallum has also the same point of view as me.
On the other hand our CC-130 aircraft, which can fly at most up to Western Europe without refuelling should be replaced (they are getting old - 40 years), for domestic use at least, lets say there is an emergency and we must distribute goods to western Canada VERY rapidly, you need to have military transport planes... Same is true when we need to evacuate Canadians stuck someowhere in another country, you must do this rapidly, and leasing a charter plane in thoses cases can be very complex.
Thats why I simply don't understand why Canada was not involved in the European partnership for purchasing A400M transport planes, they cost much less than C-17's (80 million euros each), and have greater range and capacity than our CC-130... Like it or not our CC-130 planes will need replacement one day or another - and we need these for domestic use at least.
We are already shipping some equipment via private cargo, no? Well, the minister of Defence is currently discussing about creating a pool of C-17's which would be available to all NATO members on short notice. Thats a good step, and that is good, but we still need shorter range transport planes for ourselves. And for greater deployments, i agree that lease is a good idea (for example, leasing planes and cargos for transporting our regular troops to Afghanistan is the good way imo)
"a lot of waste is still in ‘Procedures for countering the Soviet Union’ mentality."
Thats probably true in some branches of the military, but i really suggest you read these documents :
http://www.army.forces.ca/strategy/English/tomorrowcapabilities.asp
And you will surprised that land forces in Canada seem to agree with your statement!
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