European Militaries Don't Need US? Oh Really??

[Asher]

If I wasn't so lazy I'd start a troll about how desperately the US needs Canada for:

1) Oil
2) Natural gas
3) Electricity
4) Uranium
5) Brains



Cutting off the supply of 3 of those would cripple vast swaths of your country in short order. Feel free to continue bragging about how many bombs you have -- but you don't have what matters most.

[Asher]

Also, who the **** seriously quotes an article who calls the Orion a SPY PLANE and takes it seriously?

What the **** is wrong with you people? The credibility of the article is beyond shot.

[Lonestar]

(blahblah, Canada had what, the 3rd largest Navy by the end of WW2, etc).

It had a ****load of small ships, yes. In Tonnage I think the Russkis still had a larger navy.

[giblets]

3rd largest navy doesn't mean much if only two major naval powers didn't get wrecked by the war.

[Asher]

It had a ****load of small ships, yes. In Tonnage I think the Russkis still had a larger navy.

At the end of WW2, Canada has the 3rd largest Navy in the world and 4th largest Air Force as well as the largest volunteer army ever fielded.

Quibble all you want. The point is your arguments about the size of peacetime militaries is ridiculous, because in wartime history has shown the nation can get its ass in gear and shift priorities. Right now making bombs to bomb secular forces in Libya in favour of Islamic extremists should not be a priority.

The navy began the war with six destroyers, five minesweepers and two vessels used specifically for training. In 1945, Canada's Navy had 373 fighting ships, and 113,000 personnel.
In 1939, the RCAF was Canada's smallest service at 3,100 personnel, but by 1945, over 249,500 Canadians had served.

[Asher]

3rd largest navy doesn't mean much if only two major naval powers didn't get wrecked by the war.

It means a lot considering Canada was involved in the war from the beginning and was extremely heavily involved in the Naval war with all of the Atlantic patrols and convoys...it's not like Canada just built ships that stayed at home, they were constantly in combat.

[giblets]

It means a lot considering Canada was involved in the war from the beginning and was extremely heavily involved in the Naval war with all of the Atlantic patrols and convoys...it's not like Canada just built ships that stayed at home, they were constantly in combat.

Yes, that makes more sense than making a ****load of weapons during peacetime and then trying to find a use for them.

[Kuciwalker]

Europe (and Canada) need a kick in the pants here to realize they shouldn't be ****ing bombing Libya in the first place.

You guys are missing the point completely. You're complete idiots if you think in wartime these nations couldn't ramp up their military production and allocations (blahblah, Canada had what, the 3rd largest Navy by the end of WW2, etc). The simple fact is we're not at a state of war, and it's ****ing retarded to spend money on building massive stockpiles of bombs that will become obsolete in a decade and SHOULDN'T BE USED ANYWAY.

It's a problem of missed priorities. This isn't about how ****ing fantastic the US is for spending so much money on stockpiles of munitions instead of providing basic healthcare for its citizens, it's about how the politicians in the Uk, Canada, France, etc are too ****ing stupid to know enough to mind their own business. Adjust your arguments accordingly.

I have a solution to everyone's problem: Get the **** out of Libya; Get the **** out of Iraq; Get the **** out of Afghanistan

Suddenly this problem just goes away.

QFT.

[BeBMan]

Militarily, Germany is free-riding vs. everyone, not just the US.

[Lonestar]

At the end of WW2, Canada has the 3rd largest Navy in the world and 4th largest Air Force as well as the largest volunteer army ever fielded.

Quibble all you want. The point is your arguments about the size of peacetime militaries is ridiculous, because in wartime history has shown the nation can get its ass in gear and shift priorities. Right now making bombs to bomb secular forces in Libya in favour of Islamic extremists should not be a priority.

I didn't know that Canada was a manufacturing powerhouse in 2011 like it was in the late '30s. Obviously the two situations are completely analagous.

Of course, the RCN in WW2 were a collection of small vessels that were mass produced. Having a ****load of trawlers and nothing bigger than a CL isn't really that impressive. And nowadays you don't want ****ty little OPVs if you're fighting a high intensity conflict at sea.

Mind, I'm not advocating that Canada up it's military. It's freakin' Canada, you can only squeeze so much out of a country that small. But if you have two members of the UNSC(France, UK) peevishly saying that they can't bomb a third rate country like Libya without raiding US weapons stocks, then maybe we need to re-assess their position in global affairs.

[MikeH]

Also, who the **** seriously quotes an article who calls the Orion a SPY PLANE and takes it seriously?

What the **** is wrong with you people? The credibility of the article is beyond shot.

It's The Sun, tabloid owned by Murdoch... 'nuff said.

[BeBMan]

The spy plane which loved me.

[Lonestar]

It's The Sun, tabloid owned by Murdoch... 'nuff said.

Cool. So let's see what the Washington Post has to say:

NATO runs short on some munitions in Libya
By Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe, Friday, April 15, 8:46 PM
Less than a month into the Libyan conflict, NATO is running short of precision bombs, highlighting the limitations of Britain, France and other European countries in sustaining even a relatively small military action over an extended period of time, according to senior NATO and U.S. officials.

The shortage of European munitions, along with the limited number of aircraft available, has raised doubts among some officials about whether the United States can continue to avoid returning to the air campaign if Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi hangs on to power for several more months.

U.S. strike aircraft that participated in the early stage of the operation, before the United States relinquished command to NATO and assumed what President Obama called a “supporting” role, have remained in the theater “on 12-hour standby” with crews “constantly briefed on the current situation,” a NATO official said.

So far, the NATO commander has not requested their deployment. Several U.S. military officials said they anticipated being called back into the fight, although a senior administration official said he expected other countries to announce “in the next few days” that they would contribute aircraft equipped with the laser-guided munitions.

Opposition spokesmen in the western Libyan city of Misurata, under steady bombardment by government shelling, said Friday that Gaddafi’s forces had used cluster bombs, and Human Rights Watch said its representatives on the ground had witnessed the explosion of cluster munitions in civilian areas there. The Libyan government denied the weapons had been used.

A spokesman for the Misurata City Council appealed for NATO to send ground troops to secure the port that is the besieged city’s only remaining humanitarian lifeline.

The opposition has also repeatedly called for an increase in NATO airstrikes. The six countries conducting the air attacks, led by Britain and France, were unsuccessful at a meeting this week in Berlin in persuading more alliance members to join them.

NATO officials said that their operational tempo has not decreased since the United States relinquished command of the Libya operation and withdrew its strike aircraft at the beginning of April. More planes, they said, would not necessarily result immediately in more strike missions.

But, they said, the current bombing rate by the participating nations is not sustainable. “The reason we need more capability isn’t because we aren’t hitting what we see — it’s so that we can sustain the ability to do so. One problem is flight time, the other is munitions,” said another official, one of several who were not authorized to discuss the issue on the record.

European arsenals of laser-guided bombs, the NATO weapon of choice in the Libyan campaign, have been quickly depleted, officials said. Although the United States has significant stockpiles, its munitions do not fit on the British- and French-made planes that have flown the bulk of the missions.

Britain and France have each contributed about 20 strike aircraft to the campaign. Belgium, Norway, Denmark and Canada have each contributed six — all of them U.S.-manufactured and compatible with U.S. weaponry.

Since the end of March, more than 800 strike missions have been flown, with U.S. aircraft conducting only three, targeting static Libyan air defense installations. The United States still conducts about 25 percent of the overall sorties over Libya, largely intelligence, jamming and refueling missions.

Other NATO countries, along with the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Jordan, have contributed planes to enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya to prevent Gaddafi’s use of airpower, but so far have declined to participate in the strike missions.

After the Berlin meeting, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rassmussen said that 10 more aircraft were needed and that he was confident they would be supplied. A U.S. official said that Italy — which earlier in the week said it was not interested — may contribute planes to the ground attack mission, and that the Arab participants might also do so.

But with Gaddafi’s forces and the rebel army locked in a stalemate, Obama has resisted calls from opposition leaders, and some hardline lawmakers in this country, to move U.S. warplanes back into a leading role.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and other have called on Obama to redeploy U.S. AC-130 gunships, which are considered more effective over populated areas.

Although the gunships flew several missions early in the operation, Gen. Carter Ham, who commanded the mission before it was turned over to NATO, said last week that they were frequently grounded because of weather and other concerns.

The slow-moving aircraft, which flew as low as 4,000 feet over Libya, are also considerably more vulnerable than jet fighters to surface-to-air missiles. While much of Libya’s stationary air defenses have been destroyed, Ham said Gaddafi was believed to have about 20,000 shoulder-held SAMS at the beginning of the conflict, and “most” of them are still unaccounted for.

Concerns that supplies of jet-launched precision bombs are growing short in Europe have reignited long-standing controversies over both burden-sharing and compatibility within NATO. While allied jets have largely followed the U.S. lead and converted to precision munitions over the last decade, they have struggled to keep pace, according to senior U.S. military officials.

Libya “has not been a very big war. If [the Europeans] would run out of these munitions this early in such a small operation, you have to wonder what kind of war they were planning on fighting,” said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defense think tank. “Maybe they were just planning on using their air force for air shows.”

Despite U.S. badgering, European allies have been slow in some cases to modify their planes and other weapons systems so they can accommodate U.S. bombs. Retooling these fighter jets so that they are compatible with U.S. systems requires money, and all European militaries have faced significant cuts in recent years.

Typically, the British and French militaries buy munitions in batches and stockpile them. When arsenals start to run low, factories must be retooled and production lines restarted to replace the diminished stock, all of which can take time and additional money, said Elizabeth Quintana, an aerospace analyst at the Royal United Service Institute in London.

Also, there are versions of the Orion that are spy planes. What do you think the PLAAF took down in 2001?

[MikeH]

We've been sustaining a relatively small military action in Afghanistan for over 10 years.

[MikeH]

Our latest defence spending review was retarded though.