Canada’s Military–A Shameful Shadow of Its Once Glorious Past

Caption: Destroyer HMCS Athabaskan (iStock.com/OlegAlbinsky)

 

Canada’s military services can no longer defend the nation’s borders—much less its citizens. According to the new commander of the Royal Canadian Navy, Vice Adm. Ron Lloyd, Canada’s last destroyer, hmcs Athabaskan, will be retired from service in the spring of 2017, leaving the nation to rely on its allies for defense for at least the next seven years. Over the previous decades, Athabaskan and other similar vessels provided the capabilities of command and control for both the Royal Canadian Navy and the area air defense. By next spring, the Navy will be left with only 12 frigates, 12 coast defense vessels and 4 submarines. Canada will need to rely on the United States for its area air defense.

PLA targets Vietnam in S China Sea exercise, US in E China Sea

The People’s Liberation Army Navy last week held large-scale military exercises in the East China and South China seas, according to Sina’s military news web portal.

…

The targets of the two military exercises were not announced in the PLA press release. Military affairs websites have suggested that the South China Sea exercise is likely aimed at territory within what China calls the “first island chain” — the term the Chinese military uses to refer to the string of archipelagos extending from the Kuril islands south through Japan and its Ryukyu islands, Taiwan and the Philippines — likely in preparation for a potential scenario in which a US aircraft carrier war fleet break through the first island chain. Although this is a reasonable assumption, in a real combat scenario, relying on anti-ship missiles, conventional submarine-launched missiles and air-launched cruise missiles with a range of just 300 kilometers to take on a carrier fleet means that all the warships, planes and submarines would have to penetrate the carrier fleet’s outer defenses and approach its inner defenses to fire their payload. This kind of scenario is hard to imagine playing out in reality, given the naval power of the US.

PLA VTOL fighter could turn reefs into ‘unsinkable carriers’

China is planning to continue developing its short-range vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) fighter, according to Russian state-owned news agency Sputnik International, cited by the military news web portal of China’s state-run Reference News.

…

Vasily Kashin, a researcher with the Moscow-based non-governmental research organization the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, said that the aircraft will be mainly used for maritime combat.

Theoretically the fighter could be used in areas without airports, including difficult and mountainous terrain, according to the report. The Soviet Union tried to use vehicle-towed platforms to allow its VTOL Yakovlev Yak-38 strike fighter to operate in Afghanistan in the 1980s. However, in mountainous regions the aircraft’s lift jets were ineffective, so such a large aircraft found vertical take-off difficult, according to the website.