please actually read what I wrote next time. I got my facts from a canadian think tank, 10 years ago is less than recient, congrats about the competition, if someone invades you (assuming we didn't help which we of course would) you could tell them that.
Is it to cold to think in Canada this time of year?
While I'm sure your ninja death squads can "erase" large armies of many sorts (plastic ones for example) you really don't have a good grasp of how current wars are fought, or even how the United States conducts the wars it engages in. Lots of countries have large armies. China, for example has far over a million troops in its armed forces. The United States, in contrast, has but a few hundred thousand. Neither of these numbers matter, however, because we have weapons of war that are far greater than general man power, and that no other country can manage. Even in raw spending numbers our superiority is fairly obvious. We spent $370.7 billion dollars last year on just the military. The runner up, China, spent $60 billion. That is just about 6 times greater in round figures which is, um, how you say in English, a lot. Where does Canada figure into this military picture, well they weigh in with a grand total of 9.8 Billion in military expenditures. That, if you're keeping score, is a whopping 2.4 percent of the U.S. budget. And what do we have to show for this amazingly disproportionate expenditure, you ask? Well we have unrivaled weapons in almost every field, the biggest and most powerful nuclear arsenal ever assembled, fleets of portable aircraft carriers that can move massive amounts of military around the globe in short periods of time, well trained special forces in every branch that can do what needs to be done, whatever that happens to be, and all sorts of other goodies in far to many areas to mention. What does Canada have? Well, according to one Canadian report I read (http://www.mackenzieinstitute.com/2000/2000_06_02 _Military_Eagles.html) which compared one of our military units to Canada's military, Canada's ninja death squads are not quite at that level. For example, Canada's military is largely a "collection of the uneducated" with many solders failing to finish high school and compared with U.S. officers their Canadian counterparts were "badly under-educated." 39% of our officers have graduate degrees. 6.8% of Canadian officers have the same. 40% of Canadian officers do not have even a BA, compared with 10% of U.S. officers.
Perhaps all this education stuff isn't really important. Perhaps as you said it is all about giving 10 guys weapons, ninja death squad commemorative boxers, and dropping them in the middle of Baghdad, but here are a few more facts for you in direct quotes:
"The Canadian Army has been rusting out for a while. While the 4th Brigade in Germany in the late 1980s was well trained and completely equipped, this was not true of the rest of the Army. Moreover, by the late 1980s, 4th Brigade's Leopard 1 tanks and M-113s did not place it among the most modern of NATO formations. Things have worsened since. The only partly modern formation that was ready to participate in battle was already under strength in 1988, and has since been brought home anyway.
"Since the end of the Cold War, Canadian troops have not been trained in a modern environment, have not trained in realistic large exercises, and have not received anything to speak of in new combat equipment. They have, however, been sent in operation after operation after operation, without adequate training and support. For troops at home, they lack ammunition for training, field rations, uniforms, and everything else that would properly train soldiers for anything more than "peacekeeping" -- peacekeeping as the Federal Cabinet sees it, and not that which was the experience of those who served in Bosnia, Rwanda and Somalia. Whatever success can be attributed to these operations largely exists off the expenditure of human and material capital that remains from earlier days."
"In a word, Canada does not adequately train individual soldiers anymore. Therefore, it can not train sections, platoons, companies or battalions. The building blocks of combat ready formations no longer exist. The corporate memory of readiness for the operations of the 1970s and '80s is fast going, and C
Slashdot Mirror
funny stuff, but again, thats quoting an article from a canadian thinktank (as best as I could determine, half that word may not apply)
please actually read what I wrote next time. I got my facts from a canadian think tank, 10 years ago is less than recient, congrats about the competition, if someone invades you (assuming we didn't help which we of course would) you could tell them that.
Is it to cold to think in Canada this time of year? While I'm sure your ninja death squads can "erase" large armies of many sorts (plastic ones for example) you really don't have a good grasp of how current wars are fought, or even how the United States conducts the wars it engages in. Lots of countries have large armies. China, for example has far over a million troops in its armed forces. The United States, in contrast, has but a few hundred thousand. Neither of these numbers matter, however, because we have weapons of war that are far greater than general man power, and that no other country can manage. Even in raw spending numbers our superiority is fairly obvious. We spent $370.7 billion dollars last year on just the military. The runner up, China, spent $60 billion. That is just about 6 times greater in round figures which is, um, how you say in English, a lot. Where does Canada figure into this military picture, well they weigh in with a grand total of 9.8 Billion in military expenditures. That, if you're keeping score, is a whopping 2.4 percent of the U.S. budget. And what do we have to show for this amazingly disproportionate expenditure, you ask? Well we have unrivaled weapons in almost every field, the biggest and most powerful nuclear arsenal ever assembled, fleets of portable aircraft carriers that can move massive amounts of military around the globe in short periods of time, well trained special forces in every branch that can do what needs to be done, whatever that happens to be, and all sorts of other goodies in far to many areas to mention. What does Canada have? Well, according to one Canadian report I read (http://www.mackenzieinstitute.com/2000/2000_06_02 _Military_Eagles.html) which compared one of our military units to Canada's military, Canada's ninja death squads are not quite at that level. For example, Canada's military is largely a "collection of the uneducated" with many solders failing to finish high school and compared with U.S. officers their Canadian counterparts were "badly under-educated." 39% of our officers have graduate degrees. 6.8% of Canadian officers have the same. 40% of Canadian officers do not have even a BA, compared with 10% of U.S. officers. Perhaps all this education stuff isn't really important. Perhaps as you said it is all about giving 10 guys weapons, ninja death squad commemorative boxers, and dropping them in the middle of Baghdad, but here are a few more facts for you in direct quotes: "The Canadian Army has been rusting out for a while. While the 4th Brigade in Germany in the late 1980s was well trained and completely equipped, this was not true of the rest of the Army. Moreover, by the late 1980s, 4th Brigade's Leopard 1 tanks and M-113s did not place it among the most modern of NATO formations. Things have worsened since. The only partly modern formation that was ready to participate in battle was already under strength in 1988, and has since been brought home anyway. "Since the end of the Cold War, Canadian troops have not been trained in a modern environment, have not trained in realistic large exercises, and have not received anything to speak of in new combat equipment. They have, however, been sent in operation after operation after operation, without adequate training and support. For troops at home, they lack ammunition for training, field rations, uniforms, and everything else that would properly train soldiers for anything more than "peacekeeping" -- peacekeeping as the Federal Cabinet sees it, and not that which was the experience of those who served in Bosnia, Rwanda and Somalia. Whatever success can be attributed to these operations largely exists off the expenditure of human and material capital that remains from earlier days." "In a word, Canada does not adequately train individual soldiers anymore. Therefore, it can not train sections, platoons, companies or battalions. The building blocks of combat ready formations no longer exist. The corporate memory of readiness for the operations of the 1970s and '80s is fast going, and C