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. 
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Thomas Barclay
Instructor, CST 6304 (TCP/IP programming for the Internet)
kaladorn@fox.nstn.ca 
http://fox.nstn.ca/~kaladorn/CST6304
http://stargrunt.ca/tb/CST6304
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