Posted on 05/29/2012 2:10:46 AM PDT by moonshot925
What do you think?
The Royal Navy and French Navy are similar in size.
Royal Navy (4 SSBNs, 7 SSNs, 4 assault ships, 7 guided missile destroyers, 13 frigates and 24 patrol vessels and 170 aircraft)
French Navy (4 SSBN, 6 SSNs, 1 CVN, 4 assault ships, 12 frigates, 16 patrol vessels and 208 aircraft)
The French Navy has a nuclear powered aircraft carrier.
Also take the Russian Navy, Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force and People's Liberation Army Navy into consideration.
The PLAN. If not now, then 2-3 years from now. Royal Navy heading into the toilet. Hard to believe it was the world’s strongest navy for hundreds of years. Also, do you realize how large & well-equipped the Canadian forces (Army, Air Force and Navy) were in World War II?
What’s hard to believe? When we had the world’s largest navy we also had an empire funding it that included a full quarter of the world’s land surface and a full third of the world’s population. During WW2 our American Allies did everything they could to ensure that when the war ended, as much of our remaining empire as possible was gone and so now we are back to being a small island with 60m people.
Howabout you try funding the US navy only using the eastern seaboard and see if you still get to buy everything you want?
Both pubbies and dems voted for the damn thing (though none of the pubs from MY state did)!
There is no logical reason for Canada to have a large powerful army.
The US won’t let anyone else attack Canada, for obvious reasons.
For even more obvious reasons, if the US ever decided to attack Canada, no conceivable Canadian force could do much to even slow it down.
So what would be the point of having a powerful Canadian military?
That was done under the guise of ending colonialism and neo-colonialism, something your Fabian/Laborites had no problem with, as I’m sure you know. We were then under FDR and his wife, the closest thing to Fabians we’ve ever had, until today. Those decisions were made at the SIS Building, Thames House and the Royal Institute for International Affairs as much as they were at Foggy Bottom, San Francisco and the Harold Pratt House. It’s now known that both governments were infested with communist agents and sympathizers, including the vice president before Mr. Truman, Henry Wallace.
Winter.
It's a force to be reckoned with at that latitude, especially from Alberta to Manitoba.
But I'm not sure why the US would conceivably want to attack Canada, unless it had been invaded and the invaders were posing a threat.
I wouldn’t put the PLAN up there just yet. I think SSNs are the key to a powerful navy, because they are the vessels that will kill the other side’s ships. The Astute class coming into service now is the most advanced in the world, and most importantly, the most stealthy. The Chinese SSNs are by many accounts very noisy in comparison and would not survive as long in a real shooting war...
Doesn’t the PLAN have some quiet diesels?
Also, the Americans would be facing the mother of all insurgencies in a vast landscape with a citizenry were gun ownership is almost as common as it is in the US....
They don’t use pump-jet propulsion, so the only way they can stay quiet is by not moving. Their sonars are based on early 90s technology. Not great when faced with opponents that can move faster and more quietly and with more advanced sonar tech...
And some of them are exceedingly good with them.
About half of my wife's kinfolk were up there when the governments settled on their border, and there are still considerable numbers on both sides. Being able to shoot well is a family tradition (on both sides of the family).
Demographically, Canada is shaped much like Chile, except running east/west along the US border in a band only a few hundred miles wide. Almost nobody lives in the frozen North.
Oh yes, I know exactly why it was done and by whom, but it doesn’t change the fact that what we could afford when we had the largest empire the world had ever seen, we can’t afford now.
Considering we’ve had 13 years of financially disastrous labour government to recover from, it’s amazing we’re bringing into service some of the world’s most expensive and advanced naval hardware such as the Daring class, Astute class and the Elizabeth class carriers, both of which it appears will now go straight into service with the F35B on.
Personally I think we’re doing pretty well to be fifth most powerful in the world currently and I expect military spending to increase again once we have a Conservative government in place of the current coalition one and our deficit is reduced significantly.
http://www.globalfirepower.com/
And at least we do use our forces, unlike many european countries who do nothing or send token support.
We get enough of the cold weather in North Dakota...
Vast but empty. Almost nobody lives in most of the country.
Technically, we are richer in absolute terms than we were when we had an empire and could certainly afford more. However, we have come far from the days when the public cried ‘we want eight and we won’t wait’. Spending on defence is not a vote winner and the budget is shaped accordingly....
Canada was fighting Hitler for TWO YEARS before the US was sneak-attacked into WWII.
I’m not so sure. The PLAN is not very good in the feilds of logistic support, technology and training. It has 1 aircraft carrier, 15 destroyers, 50 figates, 50 SSKs, 9 SSNs and no SSBNs. The DOD estimates that 5 Type 094 are under construction.
I think Taiwan and Japan have stronger navies than China.
“During WW2 our American Allies did everything they could to ensure that when the war ended, as much of our remaining empire as possible was gone and so now we are back to being a small island with 60m people.”
We lended you $31.4 Billion from March 1941 to August 1945 under Lend-lease. This is during a time when your GDP was $30 Billion in 1939.
35 American escort carriers were transfered from the US Navy to the Royal Navy from November 1942 to August 1944. Bririan only produced 6 escort carriers during the entire war.
We lended another $3.3 Billion to you from 1947 to 1951 to rebuild. Why did we lend you money during a time of need? Was it a mistake?
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