Drowning Migrants: Where is the Italian Navy?

Vincent J. Curtis

30 May 2016

RE:  More than 700 migrants feared dead.  Largest loss of life since April, 2015.

Today, the Associated Press reported that more than 700 migrants drowned in the Mediterranean Sea because the boat carrying them was leaky and overloaded.  All the talking heads, from UN spokesmen to the Pope, are calling for means of enabling safer passage for these illegal migrants.  It occurs to no one, apparently, that the more you encourage something, the more you are likely to get of it.  If Europe made it clear that illegal migrants would be summarily returned to Africa, perhaps the flow, and the drownings, would cease.

The Italian navy is uniquely poised to do something about it.  It is Italy that the migrants are seeking when they leave Libya.  The Italian navy could protect Italian sovereignty and the rest of European civilization from this migrant crisis by sinking the migrant fleet in Libyan harbors.  There is nothing the so-called Libyan government can do about it.  But presently, the Italian Coast Guard is burdened with having to save thousands each week.  When do the Italians say, "enough!"?

Below is a commentary.

The refugee crisis in the Muslim world is getting out of hand when hundreds routinely drown while trying cross the Mediterranean Sea to get to Christian Europe.  It is up to the European powers, particularly Italy, to put a stop to it.

The Italian navy can stop the crisis immediately and at the same time protect Italy and Europe from this invasion by going into Libyan harbors and sinking every vessel capable of either transporting migrants or towing migrant vessels.  Libya is a state in name only, with no central government capable of exercising sovereign power over the country.  It can do nothing, and so Italy must.

The AP story correctly identifies the drowned as ‘migrants’ from Eritrea.  In no sense were these people, ‘refugees.’  Eritrea is a Muslim country that lies on the Red Sea near the Horn of Africa.  It obtained its independence from Christian Ethiopia in 1993.  The dead were not fleeing persecution at home, they were running into a war-torn failed state.  The dead were economic migrants looking for an Eldorado they believed was to be found in Germany.  This migration is like a gold rush for the German dole.

To get to Libya from Eritrea, one has to pass through the deserts of Sudan and Egypt, and then pass through hundreds of kilometers of harsh Libyan Desert to get to the Mediterranean coast.  They died because they thought their paid guides would get them across to Italy safely.

It’s high time Italy put these guides out of business and saved lives.

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Transgenders: It never seems to end

Vincent J. Curtis

19 May 2016

Transgenderism in the news never seems to end.  Yesterday, the Liberal Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould used a transgendered child as a prop to promote her newly introduced amendments to the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code.

These amendments are supposed to give transgendered children, and adults too supposedly, a better future, a “more accepting, joyful life.”  The amendments are designed to protect the legal and human rights of transgender Canadians by including gender identity and gender expression in the Act and Code.

The transgendered child was quite the prop.  His/her name was Charlie Lowthian-Rickert and is all of ten years old.  He/she is described as a “transgendered girl,” which logically is unavailing because the expression fails to specify what the person’s gender really is on account of ambiguity.  The child, wound up like a doll, delivered its lines perfectly, and made the Justice Minister look like a savior and a goddess.

My hometown newspaper went into progressivist overdrive in promoting the Liberal bill.  The editorial moaned about having “to live in fear that society will shun or even harm you because of who you are.  Not because of anything you’ve done, but just because of the vessel you were given at birth.”  The bill was “sadly, long overdue.”  It dismissed the possibility of predators taking advantage of children in bathrooms because “there is no evidence that such fears are founded.”  It finally wound up with that progressivist classic, “It is hard to comprehend how anyone could oppose a bill which would give people the freedom and security to live the life they want to live…it should be a slam-dunk.”

Being progressive means never having to meet the argument of the other side, because the other side is hideous and immoral.

Where to begin?  Let’s start with least obvious.  It was maintained that the child was wise.  It occurred to no one either present or in the press that the intelligence of adults was being insulted by proffering the child’s words as ones of wisdom.  Children are not wise because they are too young.  Neither, apparently, are many adults.

If you think that the passage of a bill is going to make the life of transgenders “more accepting and joyful” and they not having to “live in fear that society will shun or even harm you because of who you are,” then I have some wonder land in Florida I’d like to talk to you about.  There are laws against common assault and murder, but these don’t prevent assault and murder.  This new and improved human rights legislation, apparently, will work where ordinary law fails.  It’s a bill by the Trudeau Liberal government, so that must be it.

The point about the sum of the person being a “vessel that you were given at birth” is strange coming from the party of science.  As was noted in a previous posting, your fate is sealed at conception, not at birth.  Doctors don’t make arbitrary decisions about your gender, your personality, or any other aspect of you at the moment you are delivered from your’ mother’s womb.  The “at birth” formulation betrays an utter and inexcusable ignorance of biology, and biology is a science.  I don’t think its sustainable logically to hold that a person is a helpless vessel of genetics.  Nurture as well as nature plays a role in who we are.

Nobody seems curious as to how it came to be that a ten-year old boy came to desire being a girl.  His parents dress him up as a girl, and perhaps that provides a clue as to the real cause.  Genetic predisposition, i.e. the vessel he-she ‘was given’ at birth, doesn’t seem to be the cause because by genetic predisposition the child should be a boy or a girl.  Psychology is not found in genes. Nurture rather than nature seems to have played the major role.

Maybe mommy really, really wanted a girl, and this boy had to serve the turn.  Why did mommy buy girl’s clothes for him?  Why didn’t mommy say that “she” should try being a tom-boy and make “her” wear jeans and keep “her” hair cut short?  Parents do have that kind of power over an 8 year old.  These parents failed to do that.

At puberty, “she” might change “her” mind about who “she” wants to be.  Let’s hope that “her” parents allow the child to reach puberty without drug and surgery intervention that alter the course of nature.  Studies show that 90 % of the pre-pubescent gender-confused settle into their actual gender once the adult hormones kick in.

Transgenderism in 2016 has become the gay marriage of 2015.  Transgenders have profound psychological problems, as evidenced by their high suicide rates.  The cure advanced by progressives everywhere is to destroy norms, treat transgenders as special snowflakes, and throw another load of blame on normal society.  Normal society has to be made to play-pretend because we’re not supposed to hurt the feelings of special snowflakes.  And the feelings of members of normal society be damned.  (cf. being progressive means…..)

It’s worth repeating: it is cruel to play-pretend and tell a paranoid-schizophrenic that his demons are real.  It is just as cruel to play-pretend with a transgender and tell him that he is normal and that his/her lie goes unnoticed.  Transgenders need psychological help, and playing-pretend is not help.

The Liberal bill is an exercise in political posturing intended to make the government look good in the eyes of progressives.  The Bill can only harm society a little because it is destructive of human norms, and it fails to address the real cause underlying the troubles transgenders face.

 The transgender issue represents another opportunity for progressives to commit nihilism against good society, and they are taking full advantage of it.

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Transgenderism: Living a Lie

Vincent J. Curtis

18 May 2016

My hometown newspaper today published an Op-ed piece from one "Colleen" McTigue.  "Colleen" looks to be a very mannish looking woman writing on the subject of the victory of transgenders for their rights.  The piece was headlined, "Settlement is only the start."

RE:  Settlement is only the start.

The transgender community are the own worst enemy when it comes to acceptance.

Most people live in the world of realism.  They accept, in the first instance, what their senses tell them, and they reason on that basis.  The world of transgenderism begins by abolishing the realistic distinction between man and woman, i.e. anatomy, and then it seeks to re-impose that distinction when arguing about bathrooms.  This self-contradiction in argument concerns a matter in which the distinction abolished is palpably real and impossible to ignore.  Hence, reasonable people object when presented with these contradictory lines of argument.

The cause of public resistance and hostility concerning transgenders and bathrooms arises in part from the simultaneous sucking and blowing in argument from the transgender side.  If the difference between man and woman was one of mind only, as transgenders hold, then why are transgenders so fixated on physical anatomy?

And why can’t they just amuse the benighted general public and use the bathroom assigned by convention?  It would be so much easier.

From the realist perspective, a transgender is trying to present a lie.  A man “presenting” as a woman is, in a manner, lying.  It is one thing to lie to one’s self, but another to lie to others.  And that is another reason for the resistance to the transgender agenda: people, in general, don’t like being lied to.

Reasonable people understand that there are troubled individuals who should be accommodated.  But the transgendered community, in its selfishness, fails to see that fulfillment of their agenda could lead to greater evils than if it were not.  The realist foresees that people with other sex issues could take advantage of the transgender accommodation.  Women, especially feminists, may not like having anatomical males using their bathroom facilities, even if they aren’t predators.

The transgendered community is lecturing reasonable people about their moral right to be accommodated.  Some reasonable people respond by saying, “get real.”

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In its May 19 editorial, my hometown newspaper wrote that it could not image why people would oppose transgender rights.  It held that there was scant evidence of sexual predation in women's bathrooms on account of transgenders.

Obama Administration Forces Play-Pretend on US Schools

Vincent J. Curtis

16 May 2016

It began with the passage by the North Carolina state legislature of an ordinance specifying that “transgendered” people had to use the bathroom of the sex listed on their birth certificate in all state institutions.  This the Obama Administration had to destroy.

Within days the Administration threatened to withhold Federal funds for the State of North Carolina unless the governor of the state grovelled in public.

From there, almost immediately, the Obama Administration sent a “Dear Colleague” letter to all school boards in America stating that in their new interpretation of statutory language of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1972 Title IX entitlements, which guarantees equal treatment of the sexes for school facilities and sports, “transgender” was a new class of protection.  Unless schools and school boards bent to the will of the Obama Administration on transgenders, Federal funds would be withheld.

Never mind this action was flagrantly unconstitutional, illegal, contrary to Supreme Court precedents and contradicts previous interpretations of Title IX language.  This sort of action has been the standard operating procedure of the Obama Administration since the passage of the Affordable Care Act.  Faithless adherence of the oath of office - that the laws be “faithfully executed” - is of a piece with Obama’s handling of the illegal immigration issue.

When Barack Obama promised to fundamentally change America, reasonable people thought he would change America from a structure A to a structure O.  It turns out that structure O is indistinguishable from a heap, a heap comprised of the wreckage of structure A.

The ruling of the Obama Justice Department abolished the objective, distinguishing characteristics between male and female.  It held that only the subjective opinion in the mind of the person at issue mattered.  In abolishing objective standards by which one distinguished between male and female, the Obama Administration engaged in self-contradiction by asserting that one cannot engage in prejudice on the basis of sex, specifically transgendered sex.

In the first place, if there are no objection standards of difference, it is impossible to discriminate on the basis of sex because differences don’t exist on which to discriminate, having been abolished by executive fiat!  In the second place, if no objective standard exists to distinguish the sexes, then what is transgenderism all about?  Isn’t it about a person of one sex being highly desirous of actually being of the opposite sex?  If no objective standards of maleness and femaleness exist, then what exactly is that person’s problem?

More contradiction is found in the expression, “transgendered male.”  What does that mean?  Is it a male who pretends to be female, or a female who pretends to be a male?  Is it confined to chromosomal males who have had their parts removed, or chromosomal females who have had parts added?  And if so, which?

That there are some psychologically disturbed and confused people, there is no doubt.  But it is a wonder how, from “Caitlyn”, concern for the so-called transgendered engulfed the school systems of North America and society as a whole.  For the sake of ‘inclusiveness,’ actual women are going to have to allow physiological males who pretend to be women to use their bathrooms.  Women are going to have to share bathrooms with men who have sex issues.  It only has to be said to be laughed at, but this is the public policy being forced on society by the avant garde who earnestly believe that playing-pretend is the correct way of dealing with these disturbed individuals.  And woe betide anyone who says that there is something wrong with being disturbed in a transgendered way!  By extension, the way of dealing with a schizophrenic is play along and tell him that his demons are real.

This is what happens when ideology takes control of everything, and actual, sensible reality is intellectually abolished.  This is Orwell's 1984 being played in the United States of America, not the Soviet Union.

Stripped of all ideology, what is being foisted on society is the game of playing-pretend.  For the alleged sake of not hurting the feelings of a tiny minority, society as a whole is being forced into playing-pretend about sensible, readily perceptible facts of reality.

The further object of this game of playing-pretend over gender is to further break down objective standards of morality and good conduct.

Before Christianity, from the time of Aristotle, it has been known that a happy human life is one lived in reason and moral virtue.

The four moral virtues are: prudence, temperance, justice, and courage.  Prudence and temperance are attacked and undermined by allowing men and boys to shower with 14 year old girls.

Reason is sapped when public policy requires that self-contradictory holdings undermining of moral virtue be held as a public good.

Obama and his core supporters are unhappy people.  They are determined to make everyone else live a life of unhappiness as well before they go down in flames.

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P.S.  Where are all the feminists??????? 

Mental Health Workers to be Sent to Attawapiskat

Vincent J. Curtis

3 May 2016

The Canadian Press issued a news story that announced that two more mental health workers were going to be sent to Attawapiskat to help deal with the suicide crisis in that community.

Putting a couple more mental health workers into Attawapiskat in order to deal with the suicide crisis in that aboriginal community is another waste of money.  The problem in Attawapiskat is not a crisis in mental health, it is a moral crisis.  (As outlined in a previous posting)

You can’t solve a moral crisis with trips to the shrink.

The strongest tool in the mental crisis workbox is psychotropic drugs.  Tranquilizers and other mental pain killers are the strongest, temporary solution to mental crises.  I’ll bet good money that many of the people in Attawapiskat are already self-medicating, and the suicide crisis broke out because the supply of drugs was cut off.

At best, the mental health workers can treat the symptoms of mental health problems with legally prescribed psychotropic drugs.  But when the cause of the crisis is moral, not biological, drugs can only mask the problem for as long as they are effective.

The crisis in Attawapiskat is moral, not mental.  What Attawapiskat needs is spiritual health workers, not mental health workers, and drugs.

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Canada Repositions Itself on Indigenous Peoples

Vincent J. Curtis

10 May 2016

In removing Canada’s status as a permanent objector to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples the Trudeau Liberal government replaced principled objection with a patronizing lie.

As noted in the CP article of that headline, the previous Conservative government feared the 2007 declaration could not be reconciled with Canadian law.  The reason it cannot be is that Canada is a constitutional democracy.  Aboriginal rights are recognized in the Charter, but in a democracy everyone has rights and that would include the vast majority of Canadian citizens who are not aboriginal.  Parts of Canada have been settled by peoples of European descent for over 400 years, and their rights cannot be held absolutely for naught just because an aboriginal says so.  This would be the legal peril of Canadians in general if the UN declaration became law in Canada.

Article 19 of the declaration would require the government of Canada to secure Aboriginal consent regarding matters of general public policy.  Articles 26 and 28 would enable the re-opening or repudiation of settled land claims.

On November 12, 2010, Canada officially endorsed the declaration while holding that insofar as Canada was concerned the UN Declaration was aspirational.  Its spirit will be honoured when it make sense.  But the declaration cannot be pleaded in court.

The Trudeau government obviously has no intention of obtaining aboriginal consent for the conduct of Canadian foreign policy, defense policy, fiscal policy, infrastructure spending, and a host of other matters of general concern to Canada and to Canadians as a whole.  Yet the legal acceptance of the UN declaration would seem to require it.  Democratic rights are not balanced against group rights in the UN declaration, though they are in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In trying to obtain political credit for his sympathy for aboriginal matters, the Trudeau government are implying one thing to aboriginals and another to ordinary Canadians.

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It is not hard to find the reasons why Canada, along with the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, voted against the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.  They are found in the Wikipedia entry on the subject.

But, as Ben Rhodes proved and bragged about, most journalists are 27 year old know-nothings who are too lazy to do their own research.  It is easy to fool them, especially if they like you and what you stand for.

The objections the Conservative government had in 2007 did not just disappear because Stephen Harper is a mean-spirited bloke.  Trudeau is lying, but it will take time and attention for non-aboriginal Canadians to realize it, if they ever do.

Save Money and Get a Big Ship

Vincent J. Curtis

13 April 2016

The Battle of the River Plate took place on December 13, 1939, in the South Atlantic.  On the German side was the pocket battleship Graf Spee, while on the British side were HMS Ajax, HMS Exeter, HMNZS Achilles.  They were later joined by HMS Cumberland.

The Graf Spee displaced 16,000 tons, had a top speed of 29 kt, and her main armament consisted of six 11” guns in two turrets.

The Ajax (after which the town of Ajax, ON is named) and Achilles each displaced 7,400 tons, had top speeds of 33 kt, and their main armament consisted of eight 6” guns in four turrets.  The Exeter, 10,500 tons, 32 kt, and six 8” guns in two turrets.  Finally, the Cumberland 13,500 tons, 32 kt, and eight 8” guns in four turrets.

The outcome of the battle is well-known.  The Exeter suffered fearsome damage, and retired.  The Ajax and Achilles were also damaged.  The Graf Spee suffered damage to her water desalination system and crippling damage to her fuel oil filtration system.  The Graf Spee made for Montevideo harbour, a neutral port.  Three days later, the Spee was scuttled in the River Plate estuary.

What is remarkable about these facts is that the speed and power of any one of these ships – built over eighty years or more ago - was superior to every ship the RCN has and will have when the new construction program is complete.

A Halifax class frigate displaces 4,800 tons, mounts a single 57 mm Bofors gun, and has a top speed of a leisurely 29 kt, less than any British cruiser and equalled by the German pocket battleship.  Yes, the Halifax class carry anti-ship missiles and torpedoes.  But, an anti-ship missile is less versatile than a shell, and a ship with a phalanx Gatling gun can destroy an incoming a missile.

Canada’s new frigates, insofar as there is a plan for them, are unimaginative replacements of the Halifax vessels.  Yes, there will be technical updates, but, qualitatively, the entire new construction amounts to worked-over convoy escort vessels for the North Atlantic should WWII ever break out again.

The RCN is forsaking power and quality for numbers.  If sixteen ships cannot be had, then the job will be done with only twelve, or ten.  What no one seems to grasp is that if half the cost of a frigate is tied up in all the electronics, then you could put one electronic suite into a single, big vessel that displaced the weight of four frigates and recoup the cost of one and a half frigates through savings of electronics!

Four frigates could be merged into one really capable ship that displaces 19,000 tons at a cost potentially less than that of four frigates.  This capital ship could carry all the armament of four frigates, cruise missiles, and naval guns of large calibre.  The electronic suite would have to cover a perimeter less than that of four frigates, which is where you save money.

Yes, we need frigates.  But for Canada to possess an independent, strategic strike capability, she needs a capital ship.  The RCN is not even thinking about one.

It is fashionable in small naval circles to say that the age of the battleship is over, having been superseded by the aircraft carrier.  This is true if your battleship engages unescorted against a modern navy.  But the power of naval gunfire and of cruise missiles is undisturbed if your enemy doesn’t have a carrier, or an air force.

A capital ship is versatile.  Battleships were used for shore bombardment in Normandy, in the Pacific, Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, and fired Tomahawk cruise missiles off Kuwait during Operation Desert Storm.  To this day, the U.S. Congress requires that the USS Wisconsin (a WWII battleship displacing 52,000 tons, 30 kt top speed, and nine 16” guns) be maintained in a state of readiness.  Big calibre guns still have great utility even to the US Navy, and big ships carry really potent weapons systems.  In artillery, there is no substitute for calibre.

Canada’s new naval construction seems to take no cognizance of the enemies the RCN may actually face in the next thirty years.  There is a role for frigates, but real strategic power is found in versatile big ships, not little ones.

Canada today has vastly more economic power than Britain of the 1930s, which had entire fleets of capital ships.  We’re going to spend $26 Billion and get nothing but a fleet of slow-moving dwarfs.

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 A version of this was published in Esprit de Corps magazine.

A Return to Peacekeeping?

Vincent J. Curtis

16 February 2016

It would be a waste of scare defense dollars for Canada to return to UN peacekeeping in a major way.

With the election of Justin Trudeau and the Liberal party, noises have been heard in the media fondly recalling the days of UN peacekeeping under previous Liberal governments.  People not noted for their expertise in foreign affairs think it right that Canada turn away from peace-making operations in Iraq and devote itself instead to some ill-defined, sentimental UN mission somewhere like we enjoyed in the 1970’s in the Middle East, or the 1990’s in Somalia and Bosnia.

Facts rarely get in the way of sentimentality.  But let’s throw out a few facts anyhow.  UN peacekeeping missions are now dominated by countries of the third world.  While this arrangement certainly reduces racial tensions, there is also a financial reason.  Third world countries use UN peacekeeping missions a means of paying part of their national armed forces.  The UN pays peacekeepers in U.S. dollars at western pay rates, and this income helps the home country a lot.  In addition, UN peacekeeping missions provide the opportunity for professional development of the armed forces of those third world countries.

If Canada became deeply committed again to UN peacekeeping, we would in effect be taking bread out of the mouths of third world countries and depriving their armed forces of professional training opportunities.

Another reason offered for Canada to become involved again in UN peacekeeping is to “spread Canadian values.”  What exactly are those “values?”  Well, Canadian values are Western values that are Judeo-Christian in origin.  Our values are found in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  We believe in fair-play, decency, and being “sporting.”

In a place like Afghanistan, that is 99 % Muslim, what is the use in trying to spread “Canadian” values: Judeo-Christian, Western values?  Any Afghan that adopted them would be killed as an apostate to Islam.  Any place in the world where peacekeeping would be useful are in places torn by conflict that somehow involves Islam: Darfur, Northern Africa, the Middle East, and decency in any of those places is looked upon as a sign of weakness.  If the world adopted Canadian values, the world would become a better place; but exposure to Canadian values in Afghanistan melted no hearts.

Another fact that routinely goes unnoted is that UN peacekeeping tends to keep the underlying political problem from being solved.  Look at Cyprus, for example.  A UN peacekeeping mission has been present in Cyprus since 1964.  Nothing has changed, and nothing will change.

We noticed in Bosnia that the presence of UN peacekeepers were beneficial to the local economy, and whenever it seemed that peacekeepers were pulling out, a few incidents were arranged to keep them in place.  Peacekeeping tends to have the unintended consequence of corrupting the political process that leads to a lasting settlement.  The pressure brought by suffering, starvation, and death to make a political settlement is removed, and the locals can nurse their grievances forever if they want.

Another problem with peacekeeping is that it places undeserving pressure on the young soldiers on the ground.  The rise of the “strategic corporal” that started the theory of “The Three-Block War” turned on the actions of a 22 year old that kept a deliberate provocation in a small, third world hell-hole from blowing up into a major world political crisis.  This abdication of political responsibility by world leaders and placing it upon the shoulders of a young, Junior NCO is plain wrong.  What is remarkable is that worked on account of the strong discipline of western armies.  But it failed in Somalia because of the neglect of the army by Canadian politicians.

Which brings us to peacekeeping today.  Though we think of ourselves as a young country, Canada is one of the oldest established political regimes in the world.  We understand something about governance that few other countries do.  We could do more for peace and decency in the world if we apply our scarce defence and foreign aid dollars and our political capital judiciously on the right leverage points.

The danger points in the world today are found in the Ukraine, in the Baltics, in Iraq and Iran, and in North Korea.  Iran is looking to violate the weapon sanctions that have been placed upon her by the UN.  North Korea is testing missiles and nuclear explosives also in violation of UN sanctions.  Russia grabbed the Crimea in violation of an international treaty to which it was a guarantor, and today continues to press in eastern Ukraine so that it can obtain a direct land bridge to the Crimea.  Russia is pressing NATO in the Baltics.  ISIS threatens to destabilize more of the Middle East and send more waves of refugees into Europe.

We need to conserve our political capital and defense power for the important crises, the ones that directly affect us and our allies.  A return to peacekeeping in a major way would disperse those resources.

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 An abbreviated version of this was published in Esprit de Corps magazine.

SOS – Save Our Ships!

Vincent J. Curtis

11 Jan 2016

The Canadian Surface Combatant ship program looks to be in trouble and it’s going to take political oversight by the Prime Minister’s Office to make sure this program doesn’t go completely off the rails.

The CSC program is designed to replace all of Canada’s current fleet of surface combatant ships: the entire fleet of twelve Halifax-class frigates as well as the HMCS Athabaskan, the last tribal-class destroyer.  But how many ships will the program actually put into the water to replace these thirteen?

The program was originally planned to produce “sixteen or seventeen.”  That number has since been downgraded to “up to fifteen,” but, as reported in Esprit de Corps, some retired naval officers believe the number acquired get as low as eight to ten.

The program appears to be whipsawed by three factors in conflict: cautiousness, a “kid-in-a-candy-store” fascination with capability, and a budget cap said to be $26.2 billion.  The project is in such a state of confusion that Esprit de Corps could actually report that the current envelop is $26.2 billion for up to 15 ships, but the actual cost and number of vessels to be built will not be known until the definition phase is complete!

The basic plan is to order one single type of hull and then staple various modules onto one.  One grouping of stapled on modules will create a ship that provides area air defense and Task Group Command and Control capabilities, while another grouping will create a direct replacement for a Halifax-class frigate.

When you get into the proposed capabilities you begin to see the combination of caution and kid-in-a-candy-store fascination.  The core-capabilities include anti-submarine, anti-air, and anti-surface capabilities, combined with maritime interdiction and naval fire support.  The area air-defense C-and-C would add sophisticated electronic suites including capability for fighter control.

None of this planning appears based on a vision of the kind of real-world enemy the RCN expects to encounter.  Based on this list, the RCN brass are simply carrying on with the comfortable niche they filled during the Cold War.  But the Soviet Union is now defunct, and the existential threat to Europe over the next thirty years does not look like it is going to come from Russia.

Being able to convoy ships across the North Atlantic does not look like it is going to be the priority over the next thirty years.  Thus anti-submarine, anti-air, fighter-coordination capability for battle in the North Atlantic, while it may once have been a core-competence of frigates, looks like a poor place to invest our scarce fighting dollars over the next thirty year time-frame.

We will need some anti-submarine, anti-air capability on ships for defense of Canadian waters, but these are needed to keep the Russians honest rather than to repel a serious onslaught.

This is why supervision by the PMO is going to be important.  Left to their own devices, the RCN brass are going to reprise the safe things they have done in the past, but with the latest bells and whistles so that they can hold their pride across the mess table at dinner with their colleagues from the naval services of other countries.  Canada has a chance to change world diplomatic calculus with this acquisition program, and the PMO needs to ensure that old convention doesn’t win by default.

If old convention does win, that should be a conscious political choice. Changing world diplomatic calculus is a political decision, which Admirals can propose, but one that is taken by the Prime Minister.  Plainly, by going with frigates from the start, the RCN brass is not adventurous enough even to propose something new and daring to a Prime Minister and cabinet quite unfamiliar with naval and military power and their beneficial effects on peacetime diplomacy.

It would be useful for civilian and political figures of the PMO to visit friends high up in the Pentagon and get a perspective how the United States Navy develops new programs.  They are the real experts, with the scars to prove it.  Canada is going to be getting much of its weapons systems from United States suppliers anyhow, so the welcome mat ought to be out.

An American Arleigh Burke class missile cruiser displaces twice as much as a Halifax-class frigate, and has warfighting capabilities undreamed of for Canadian ships.  It costs the United States about $1.9 billion to build one.  Do the math.

PMO support for unconventional thinking may help deliver a worthwhile program.

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A version of this was published in Esprit de Corps magazine

Procurement Policy and the Future of Canadian Military Power

Vincent J. Curtis                                                                                                                                

7 December 2015                                                                                                                              

                If there is one thing that Canadian military procurement policy does for the critic, it is to provide him with abundant grist for the mill.  With a new government comes a new opportunity to change procurement aims for the better.  Procurement, or lack thereof, during the lifetime of the new government will largely, short of a major war, decide Canada’s military capabilities for the next generation or two of war fighters (as they would be called in America).

It has been the assumption of Canadian policy since World War II that Canada would not be attacked by a foreign power, except as an accident in the exchange of nuclear weapons between the United States and Russia.  The end of the cold war made Canadians feel safer ensconced as they were in North America, far from trouble and protected by three oceans and the United States.

The rise of ISIS and of deliverable nuclear weapons by such hostile and unpredictable countries like North Korea and Iran ought to be noticed by Canadian policy makers.  It is now possible for Canada to be struck by a bolt from the blue.  We will not be invaded, but nevertheless acts of war against Canada will become more possible in the next decade or two.

One diplomatic means of reducing Canada’s exposure is to adopt a policy of neutrality with respect to the United States and ISIS, North Korea, and Iran.  Military weakness is one means of making effective that diplomatic approach, though the economic repercussions Canada might suffer at the hands of the United States as a result of being neutral or at least ineffective could be considerable.  The cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline is one example of America harming Canadian economic interests.  Tougher scrutiny at the border of Canadian travellers and goods is another.

In any case, it would be wiser for Canada to possess the means of striking a telling blow against anyone, state or non-state actor, who would make themselves our enemy than to be utterly defenseless and dependent upon others.  And this is where procurement comes in.

Canada should possess the means of striking offensive blows independently of any assisting power.  Since the rise of NATO, Canada has always been prepared to strike her blows as part of a coalition of powers, as was done in Afghanistan and is presently being done in Iraq and Syria.  Being able to strike a blow independently means that Canada won’t have rely on any other power to complete the mission.  Such capability gives Canada greater flexibility on the world stage, and also a greater respect for her power.

Given financial constraints, Canada’s diplomatic position in the world, and the capabilities of the various elemental services, the navy is the service best positioned to possess that strategic strike capability.  It won’t get it under the current procurement plan of acquiring nothing but frigates.

In terms of sheer tonnage, the procurement plan for the navy is to acquire sixteen of four thousand ton frigates.  What has been proposed instead is to acquire twelve such frigates, and put the remaining tonnage into a nuclear-powered battle cruiser armed with cruise missiles and big guns for offensive punch.  A cruiser in the twenty thousand ton range would have the size to deliver a solid blow, and being nuclear powered, it would be able to cruise indefinitely without the need to refuel on a mission.

The argument against battleships has been that they are vulnerable to air power.  However, the enemies against which that cruiser would be deployed have no air power to speak of, and as a part of a naval task force with allies the air cover would be provided by the other contributors.  The vulnerability argument fails against the proposal.

The RCAF is the other service in need of new, major procurement.  The CF-18s will reach the end of their service lives starting about the year 2020, but the proposed replacement, the F-35, won’t be ready in time and may not be available at a price Canada is willing to pay.  There are alternatives.

The F-16 is still being built and will continue to be a first or second line fighter and fighter-bomber in use by the United States and NATO allies for another decade or two.  The fly-away cost of an F-16 Is in the range of $24 million dollars.  The acquisition of 65 or so F-16s would fill the twenty year gap between the time the F-35 first becomes available and the time it is a mature aircraft whose development costs have been depreciated.

The other alternative represents a decision against the F-35, and it is the F-18 Super Hornet.  This aircraft is capable of operating seamlessly with the CF-18s presently in service, and except for stealth is just as capable an aircraft as the F-35 would be.  A number of EA-18 Growlers would have to be purchased as well, as these aircraft provide the electronic jamming that make up for the Super Hornet’s lack of stealthiness.  Is the RCAF brass up to developing the tactics for integrating the Super Hornet with CF-18s and the Growler?

This is being written on the 74^th anniversary of Pearl Harbor.  The idea of a bolt from the blue from across an ocean was just as unthinkable to the United States government then as one would be today to the Canadian government.  Canada is not an irresponsible power, and can be trusted with actual striking power.

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A version of this was published in Esprit de Corp magazine