[2Cdo]

Lemmy Lemmy:

bootlegga bootlegga:

I truly believe that if someone backed Canada up against a wall, they'd get a far bigger fight than they expect.

Two world wars last century proved that. We don't need a standing military. History tells us we can whip one up pretty quickly if we need it.

You do realize that the troops had over 2 years of training before any of them seen combat. I also highly doubt the rush to volunteer from today's males.

[Lemmy]

2Cdo 2Cdo:

You do realize that the troops had over 2 years of training before any of them seen combat.

In WW2, yes, not so much in WW1. But both of those conflicts required physically moving men and machine across vast oceans to fight. That wouldn't be necessary in a war on North American soil. Also, our troops, in both wars, were there and ready to participate long before they were actually employed.

2Cdo 2Cdo:

I also highly doubt the rush to volunteer from today's males.

And we also employed conscription in both world wars. I'd have no qualms in introducing conscription if we were invaded.

[stratos]

You also had mass disruption of conscription efforts in WWI. Towards the end of that war you also were having serious issues filling the needed ranks.

Canada's ability to maintain an effective fighting force with attrition style of fight is very limited. Most likely any fight on your home ground would be at least 3 to 1 odds in the enemies favor. You would inflect serious casualties on said enemy but would be worn down after 2-3 years of sustained fighting. Gorilla fighting and local uprisings would be hampered from happening because of the strict limitation on guns currently in place on the populace.

All the above assumes you are fighting on your own. I do not see any scenario where if Canada was invaded they would end up fighting on their own.

[DrCaleb]

stratos stratos:

All the above assumes you are fighting on your own. I do not see any scenario where if Canada was invaded they would end up fighting on their own.

Unless we were attacked by another Commonwealth member who is also a NATO member (England!) we'd be backed up by one organization or the other.

And don't forget, we are #12 in the world in per capita gun ownership!

[Lemmy]

stratos stratos:

You also had mass disruption of conscription efforts in WWI. Towards the end of that war you also were having serious issues filling the needed ranks.

There were lots of reasons for that. Partly is was a regional thing that, presumably, wouldn't exist if the war was on our home soil. Partly it was the false estimation of "need". Many generals hadn't learned, even by the end of WWI, that massing forces and attacking entrenched machinegun positions wasn't a good use of infantry.

stratos stratos:

Canada's ability to maintain an effective fighting force with attrition style of fight is very limited. Most likely any fight on your home ground would be at least 3 to 1 odds in the enemies favor. You would inflect serious casualties on said enemy but would be worn down after 2-3 years of sustained fighting. Gorilla fighting and local uprisings would be hampered from happening because of the strict limitation on guns currently in place on the populace.

I'm not sure how you could estimate that our enemy's odds of success would be 3-1 in their favour when we haven't even established who that enemy would be. But Americans, of all people, ought to have learned the folly of trying to subjugate a civilian uprising against an invading force, even when that force has significant military superiority.

stratos stratos:

All the above assumes you are fighting on your own. I do not see any scenario where if Canada was invaded they would end up fighting on their own.

And I don't see a scenario where Canada would be invaded in the first place, but you're right. That's the whole point of the UN...collective security.

[stratos]

$1:

I'm not sure how you could estimate that our enemy's odds of success would be 3-1 in their favour when we haven't even established who that enemy would be. But Americans, of all people, ought to have learned the folly of trying to subjugate a civilian uprising against an invading force, even when that force has significant military superiority.

I was thinking along the same line of who would invade. Came to the conclusion only a country with far more population then Canada's. The 3-1 odds was in man power not ability or any other factor. Just a minimum of 3 enemy solider for every Canadian.

[peck420]

stratos stratos:

I was thinking along the same line of who would invade. Came to the conclusion only a country with far more population then Canada's. The 3-1 odds was in man power not ability or any other factor. Just a minimum of 3 enemy solider for every Canadian.

So...China? Maybe India?

The US doesn't have the capability to drop 105 million military personnel here (3:1 odds). If they did, there wouldn't be enough able bodied Americans left in the US to maintain the war effort.

Realistically speaking, even the world's most powerful military would have to dedicate itself to just Canada, if they wanted to conquer and maintain. A position I doubt they would ever put themselves in.

That leaves everybody else. Well, their combined might is about par with the US...so, if the rest of the world gangs up on little old Canada, we will need to be afraid.

[stratos]

$1:

The US doesn't have the capability to drop 105 million military personnel here (3:1 odds). If they did, there wouldn't be enough able bodied Americans left in the US to maintain the war effort.

That's exactly what Hitler said. It didn't work out for him that well. You are missing the point it is not 3-1 total but at point of attack.

[Guy_Fawkes]

Conscription would not work out for Canada; as 2Cdo has said it takes years to create an effective basic front line soldier. Grabbing a random millennial off the street and tossing a weapon in their hand, rushing them through basic training and putting them into theater will result in massive casualties.

[bootlegga]

Canadian_Mind Canadian_Mind:

Lemmy Lemmy:

bootlegga bootlegga:

I truly believe that if someone backed Canada up against a wall, they'd get a far bigger fight than they expect.

Two world wars last century proved that. We don't need a standing military. History tells us we can whip one up pretty quickly if we need it.

We might not need a standing military to fight wars on foreign soil. But we'dbe hooped if the country was invaded. As big as Canada is, you can't whip up a significant fighting force in the amount of time it'd take a Russian, Chinese, or American Mechanised corp to roll from one end of the country to the other.

In the case of the Russians or Chinese, we would see a large build-up of sealift ships to carry that mechanized corps across the ocean, which would give use more than enough time to adequately build up our ground and even air forces. That's because even though a modern tank takes a few months to build (compared to a day or two in WW2), it takes much longer to build ships. Even converting regular merchant vessels to allow them to carry assault forces takes significant time.

And if they chose to invade with a brigade-sized force and land the rest conventionally, we'd have enough in the way of air and ground forces to slow them down before we could bring one of our own regular force brigades to fight them.

If the Americans chose to invade, well, then we're pretty much screwed. Phase two of Buster Brown's Defence Plan 1 really becomes our only option (scorched earth tactics and hoping someone intervenes and supports us). Canada could NEVER support a military force capable of deterring the US in the long term, simply because their much larger economy will support far more military forces than ours can sustain.

If the US invades, about the best we could hope for is to make occupation so costly that they eventually leave (kind of like Iraq).

[bootlegga]

2Cdo 2Cdo:

Lemmy Lemmy:

bootlegga bootlegga:

I truly believe that if someone backed Canada up against a wall, they'd get a far bigger fight than they expect.

Two world wars last century proved that. We don't need a standing military. History tells us we can whip one up pretty quickly if we need it.

You do realize that the troops had over 2 years of training before any of them seen combat. I also highly doubt the rush to volunteer from today's males.

Not entirely true on the first and historically, we have on the second point.

Canada did deploy a battalion in France shortly after Dunkirk - they didn't see much action, but they had only arrived in the UK a few months before.

We had four or five divisions of troops (including lots of Quebecois) who joined to defend Canada and were known as zombies for their refusal to go overseas to fight.

I have little doubt that plenty of people would sign up if Canada was actually invaded. The real problem IMHO would be training and equipping them in a short time, because tanks and other weapons of war are more sophisticated and take much longer to build now than they did in WW2 and learning to use them effectively takes longer too (you can't just through someone on the firing range for a day or two and send him off into battle).

[bootlegga]

stratos stratos:

$1:

The US doesn't have the capability to drop 105 million military personnel here (3:1 odds). If they did, there wouldn't be enough able bodied Americans left in the US to maintain the war effort.

That's exactly what Hitler said. It didn't work out for him that well. You are missing the point it is not 3-1 total but at point of attack.

The other thing is that modern warfare has far many force multipliers than there were in WW2.

Satellites, PGMs, UAVs, AWACs and so on - for example, a modern frigate has less actual firepower than a WW2 battleship, but because it can deliver it with far more accuracy over much longer ranges, it actually has more firepower if the two were ever to fight each other.

[Thanos]

Any invader that set foot in Canada would have a nuclear bomb dropped on them by the US within an hour. Odds are the Americans would attack, including with nuclear weapons, and destroy the invasion fleet anyway if it ever crossed the North American territorial limit.

[martin14]

bootlegga bootlegga:

Canada did deploy a battalion in France shortly after Dunkirk - they didn't see much action, but they had only arrived in the UK a few months before.

Most of 1st Division went over in 1940.
Never saw a shot, very disorganized, wound up leaving
most of their equipment in Cherbourg scurrying back to the UK.

Not the example to use for 'quick training'.

Thanos Thanos:

Any invader that set foot in Canada would have a nuclear bomb dropped on them by the US within an hour. Odds are the Americans would attack, including with nuclear weapons, and destroy the invasion fleet anyway if it ever crossed the North American territorial limit.

Yeah, ok, today, maybe they would do that.
And then what happens when they don't / can't ?
Just ask people in Georgia or Ukraine.
Or ask people in the Baltic countries if they really think Obama will risk
war with Putin.. for them.

[Freakinoldguy]

Guy_Fawkes Guy_Fawkes:

Conscription would not work out for Canada; as 2Cdo has said it takes years to create an effective basic front line soldier. Grabbing a random millennial off the street and tossing a weapon in their hand, rushing them through basic training and putting them into theater will result in massive casualties.

That and unlike what others have suggested. You can't whip up military technology. You need advanced weapons to fight against advanced weapons and we, no matter how brave Canadians are just don't have the ability to produce them at a moments notice.

This isn't the Fenian Raids or the War of 1812, it's 2016 where technology rules the war zone. At best we could conduct a small basically technology free resistance and be an annoyance to the occupying power because we have zero chance of winning an outright battle. But, given the size of our country and our inability to produce the manpower and weapons needed to stop or remove them we wouldn't have much affect at all.

All you have to do is look at Russia during WWII. They had hundreds of bands of partisans fighting the Germans with almost zero coordination or support between groups and the central Gov't. So, if it hadn't been for Russia's vast superiority in manpower and willingness to waste them they'd likely still be speaking German. Well, that and one brilliantly designed and simplistic piece of military hardware, the T34 Tank a vehicle that was in design and production before WWII started.

So, our meagre manpower, vastness of country and lack of advanced weaponry would be a major detriment to stopping an attack and reclaiming our country. TBH we'd likely end up having to continue partisan actions for decades if not centuries before we wore down the occupier enough to make him want to leave because of attrition.