Canadian Units

Since Adrian didn't want to put everyone to sleep, I'll take over!

A few points:

1) Adrian, I think your Franglais bites. (Sorry friend). I think the 12e
Armoured (that's what Blinde is) is the Douzieme not Deuxieme which is 2nd.

2) The RCR is (if I'm not mistaken) the Royal Canadian Regiment. Not Rifles.
(God knows, this is an easy one to get fouled up... once I even
called my own Unit - Princess of Wales Own
Regiment - with the same confusion....
embarassing). And as for the RCR, a piece of apocrypha: If you ever want to
get the cr*p kicked out of you by someone from the RCR, ask them about the
Chicken. (RCR == "Run, Chicken! Run!".... something to do with an old story,
don't know if it is true, about some lonely soldiers and an innocent barnyard
creature....
but that was years ago - the problem is these
kind of nicknames stick around even though your unit does great things!
Reminds me of the story of the Scotsman named MacDonald.).

3) Someone mentioned the Canadian Airborne
Regiment. It is no more (1/2/3CDO are no
more, at least not by that name). It was broken up after some nastiness that
came out of the Somalia deployment (a dead prisoner who was tortured). The
shock to the public and the powers that be was enough that the Airborne was
disbanded. Truth is, anyone who'd run across some of the less savory members
of this unit for a long time knew that they weren't a
choice unit for peacekeeping - break glass in
case of war types. But to John Q. Public (and officially to the Brass, though
they'd have to have had their heads stored in their nether regions to not
know) this was a horrible shock. So down goes a unit with a lot of great
history. I think this effort also affected the SSF (Special Service Force).
(See the Movie "Devil's Brigade" for where this proud formation came from! It
originally had both Canadian and American members.).

4) The Canadian Rangers are interesting. Experts in snowmobile warfare, they
often train with members of regular Canadian forces sent up for Arctic
training. The pace of warfare up there is waaaay different. For example, the
weather and exposure play a huge role. Working up a sweat while putting up
tents can kill you. And yet you have to be able to fight. Used to be they were
issued a Lee Enfield (Mk IV or V I think) and something like 75 rounds a year.
They were expert shots. Now they have C7s and are still good shots. The C7
just won the competition for the chosen weapon of the
SAS over the SA-80 and the M-16 (latest
variant) because the Canadian Manufacturer has made some small but significant
improvements in quality and in maintainability in bad conditions. Part of that
was, I suspect, a concession to the need to operate in the Far North regions.
Anyway, the Canadian Rangers would do a pretty good job of engaging in a
guerilla war with anyone attacking the Canadian North. Though the question
remains as to who in their right mind would want to..... It's too cold to even
play hockey on outdoor rinks a lot of the time up there! I mean, really.......

5) Canada (for the size of its military, not necessarily population as we
underfund our forces) has maintained a very large number of deployments on UN
missions (I can get hard data if anyone is interested) and NATO missions
and other US-led missions over the years. We
are very good UNMOs (we train foreign peacekeepers at the Canadian Peace
Support
Training Center - I can get you the link if anyone
is interested... my buddy is the Standards Warrant there and teaches AFV
recognition and sometimes small arms and runs scenario training for
peacekeepers), peacekeepers, and support soldiers (medical support groups,
combat engineers, etc). We have good intel people too, though mostly HUMINT
and liaison
types as we lack the zoomie eye-in-the-ether
the US forces have access to. And our small unconventional warfare force is
considered quite respectable though they don't have the history or experience
of the SAS or US SF.

We do okay in the fighting branches (the army is fairly good but suffers from
morale issues
and underfunding for live-fire training and large
brigade sized warfighting excercises, the air force has got aging fighters in
need of upfits
and an older-than-old Hercules fleet (we serve
as an example of long-service that the
manufacturer uses to show others what will happen to their planes as they age
and how to deal with it), and our Navy has some excellent ships (could use a
few more missiles and something to replace the damn Sea King deathtraps...)).
But we have hopes that the new security oriented budget will drop a few
billion into the pot for the military over the next few years.... our reserves
are currently more active than ever on Operation Apollo (the ME deployment and
the accompanying homeland security initiatives). If we could actually pay
soldiers respectably, and they looked like they had a future, we'd get
recruiting up (a current problem).

I actually think Canadian Forces will be a good contribution to the NAC force
structure AND I suspect there will be a lot of former Canadians (or dual
citizens) including a fair number of NAC veterans in the UNSC military forces.

And that, in a rather overdone way, is where we're at. You can wake up now
(especially the Vac heads).

Tomb.