Future of the army lies in counter-insurgency: General

"traditional peacekeeping capabilities" fuck off.

I thought he was bang on with what he was saying. Why do you have a problem with his statments?

One of the best tooks to run down insurgents are well diciplened, culturally aware light infantry and that's definately Canadian forces. We need more air & fire support elements when we make contact but we can be very good at this.
The only thing that I worry about is that fighting insurgency takes a long time and we are far too ready to play politics instead of stick to the job at hand.

Canada could never win a counter insurgency war. Canada as a society is to weak to engage in that kind of a war.

Translation: Tanks, ships, and fighter planes are tools of the past.

Spoken like a true ground pounder. Sorry, General, but you're incorrect. Counter-insurgency may be one mission we can do, but it's not the only one, just like ASW wasn't the only mission we did during the Cold War.

I don't think that's what he said.
It's commonly accepted that Canada can't fight a world war by themselves and a fight without the US, UK or NATO is highly unlikely. Designing our forces to fight a war we can't effetively compete in is unrealistic.

I'll take his word, given his credentials.

I'll take his word, given his credentials.

The infantry is the focus, but we have all the tools we do in theater for a reason. While not in it's traditional role, the tank has found a niche in the counter-insurgency environment, as have the arty types, and especially the combat engineers. The same four combat arms we've developed a military support system around. Nothing we have now and are using now will be made obsolete by COIN, Afghanistan is proving this. Some things change, but everything is still there.

counter insurgency? I am still partial to hand stitched.

Canadian_Mind. I agree.
Canada's massive armored force isn't going to sweep the russian hords off the Polish prairies but it definately can be used to add direct fire support to soldiers stuck on a bunker.
Just the same as our next fighter shouldn't be a handfull of F22s but a dozen JSF. We can't really expect to support enough pure air superiority fighters when what we really need is something that can also move dirt when called on. Even more important is we need to train to do that or we risk having to rely on others in theater.
I like this idea and the only problem I see is our weak political resolve when it comes to something difficult.

I'll take his word, given his credentials.

Everyone is entitled to thier opinion, even if it's the wrong one...

Given that he's spent his entire career in the Army, I'll discount his narrow vision on the CF as a whole (just like I wouldn't expect an admiral to be an expert about infantry tactics or air-to-air combat).

The general needs to do his history homework. The Canadian Army's "traditional role" was not "peacekeeping" it was frontline spearhead combat troops - see WW1 and WW2 and Korea. I don't agree with the people who say that Canada hasn't the will to fight a protracted war, maybe politically, but it seems to me there would not be a problem with volunteers for combat if this country were attacked.

He didn't say it was peacekeeping.

FWIW, I would imagine that the grandson of Andy McNaughton would have a pretty good grasp on history.

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