Good evening, everyone. It’s been a while since we’ve done one of these, hasn’t it? Random thoughts are great, especially when you got some writer’s block for writing actual pieces and wanna get things off your chest! It’s been a bit of a controversial start to the week, hasn’t it?
Between continued operation cuts, further reporting on the continued hold of ordering Black Hawks for nTACS Phase I and an upcoming Alberta vote, it feels like we’re getting blasted this week right out the gate with things going on.
I was originally gonna write dedicated articles for everything but am also in a bit of a weird place. We’ve talked about this for several weeks now, especially on Black Hawks, where we just talked about it last week. I try not to follow the news cycle too much unless I think it’s super valuable and, most of all, won’t repeat.
Since we often report things days, weeks, sometimes months ahead of others, we tend to be in a weird spot in the news outlet, but I know these topics are still all important to you. So instead of trying to write some small articles on things, I thought I would just condense it all into one space.
That’s also because a lot of these issues are inherently intermixed together and are areas we have talked about individually but haven’t made that big connection together. I think it’s time we do that. On another note, go read the original articles as well! Support other outlets.
Anywho, the primary controversies (for those of you who are not gonna read the articles or want it simplified) primarily come down to two things:
Money: more specifically, the conflict between conflicting realities and expectations
The Federal Government’s policy of procurement
Both of those might sound a bit weird when said like that, but I think it’s important to be a bit open about that core. We’ve been on these topics a few months now (Black Hawk specifically a few weeks), but it is part of a broader picture of how things are being done.
And that picture, I find, is not always portrayed in the context needed. It is very easy to scream politics, as it is to scream numbers; however, when we do that we often don’t take a moment to look at that broader environment.
Let’s start with Black Hawk, and I’ll repeat what I said in the Q&A about it. The purchase is not cancelled; the idea has not been scrapped. There is more debate and there is a renewed look at whether a sole-source is the right option to go with. That comes from political but also departmental concern about the extensive use of sole-sourcing the last year.
A sole-source is looking increasingly unlikely unless it’s really fought for. That is true. The chances of this going through as planned are a lot slimmer and we are looking at options, but it isn’t a done deal that we won’t go ahead, and I think that is important.
Keep in mind, the entire concept of nTACS Phase I was to acquire Black Hawks; that’s why it was separated from the wider procurement. It was meant to buy Black Hawks quickly and get it done, as the Griffon (already inadequate in the role) is quickly reaching a point of being a detriment to CANSOFCOM.
That isn’t new, obviously. The Griffon is barely up to the demands of the wider CAF, let alone the intense demands of a Tier 1 Special Forces unit like JTF2. Their demands for a long-range, rugged, multirole helicopter able to operate in a number of challenging, contested environments are not met by the CH-146, and for a long time they have either gotten by with what was available or relied on allied rotary assets to make the difference.
That of course led to the need to quickly acquire a platform that could support those demands: something that in the last two years was endorsed by government. The CAF would acquire a fleet of Black Hawks (eighteen, to be exact) to provide a proper rotary capability in place of the Griffon.
nTACS is still another five or so years from delivery, and for many in the current global environment, that was far too long to wait for a platform to deliver. The primary drivers here were cost, availability and its use among allies. Not just the United States, mind you. Our Nordic allies use them extensively, as do most of our Pacific partners. There is a huge support chain related to the Black Hawk, and for SOF a number of highly desirable capabilities that could be integrated.
Black Hawks were cheaper than contemporary European alternatives, could start delivery the next year if needed and again are used extensively by many of our Five Eyes and NATO partners already. From the perspective of most involved it seemed like an easy call to make. The wider nTACS competition wasn’t burdened by the demands of CANSOFCOM, and they could get a platform that fit their desires several years ahead of Canada’s wider rotary recapitalization.
That, of course, has shifted this year, especially over the summer as relationships deteriorated across the border; no one denies the political in this case, but it isn’t the only factor. The sole-sourcing of American equipment had already been controversial to many in the last two years, and this year further solidified it with moves like HIMARS continuing to be pushed through.
Sole-sourcing isn’t just an American issue either. Its use in general carries its own controversy among various individuals and departments. The belief that we can quickly procure capabilities through selecting the option that best fits can work and has benefits in its use; but as we saw with Bill C-40, the current procurement environment is full of various actors already competing for their share of influence.
That negativity for sole-sourcing depends greatly on individuals, and I won’t speak in wholes as it comes to organizations. It isn’t fair for me to say PSPC believes this or the DIA believes that, nor do I think this should be portrayed as some sort of conflict between federal departments.
To push the Black Hawk situation into an anti-Trumpian box is to ignore that the mechanisms that are used to execute on this are controversial in themselves, and their use is coming under greater scrutiny not just externally but internally, and not just for reasons of power.
We exist in a strange place for procurement. The DIA in itself is not a real organization with a defined mandate and authorities. That will come with Bill C-40, but even once it is passed there is a period in which the DIA will still be bringing itself up to capacity; and even then, Bill C-40 does not (as C-31 did) grant divine authority to the DIA and her Minister to execute.
Certainly, there are people who want to move. They will look to things like GlobalEye and they will see a mandate to execute similar. They will do so in cases where they can bring all the pieces together.
People are gonna be shocked when another GlobalEye moment hits and the PMO just decides we’re getting something, because they definitely ain’t afraid to do it again, far from it. They’ll do whatever they want, and that choice will come within a short and unexpected period between that decision being made and us finding out about that.
This is part of why the idea of “I haven’t heard anything and there’s no info” doesn’t really matter anymore, because the PM ain’t afraid to make choices at a moment and let everyone learn when they announce it. At any point things can and will shift if they feel like it, and that adds another layer of uncertainty.
It isn’t to say things are in disarray, but it is an environment that is still fractured in authority and where the top isn’t afraid to make decisions and push things they desire. All of that plays into this for both ways. In Black Hawk’s case, the justification for it is rooted in the operational, in the need.
That can be fine to push things across, but in an environment where those mechanisms are under greater scrutiny and it doesn’t benefit from alignment with the Defence Industrial Strategy or the Federal Government’s focus, certain areas where we might have pushed through two years ago suddenly lose their mandate to continue (bar, again, the upper echelons of the Government taking a personal stake in the decision).
And for us, that is something that we accept in this environment; and to move beyond Black Hawk specifically for a moment to greater policy and the current ecosystem, defence procurement is inherently economic. Canadian defence procurement especially is driven by the balance of economic development, industrial benefit and capability.
That has not changed; what has changed is the scale and attention that is brought upon it and the mandate to make it succeed. The Federal Government views defence investment not just as an economic tool but as a pillar of new industrialization.
In many cases that is beyond the pure industrial establishment. No longer is the Federal Government happy with just ITB offsets and manufacturing investments; IP control, government-to-government agreements and export guarantees are increasingly becoming more important considerations in these choices.
And to play some defence here (because I feel I’m being a bit negative on it and not giving a fair shake to that mentality), one cannot build up the defence industrial base without risk and sacrifice. Canada sits outside the key markets where export opportunities are, sits beside the largest defence manufacturer on earth and lacks the industrial anchor to execute on the government’s goals in the timelines they’ve set.
To meet that requires Canada to secure outside investment and requires Canada to secure strategic partnerships that can open pathways for industry to participate more broadly in the international ecosystem.
Both of the major projects that the Feds have pushed their influence and have executed on (AEWC and CPSP) try to leverage that; and the mentality that quite a few folks do have, in their fairness, is that Canada is not in a position of strength, and prioritizing relationships with key companies and governments to maximize benefits (in spite of competition and desired capabilities) is sometimes needed to secure those strategic investments.
Speed and aggression are no longer merely desired but actively encouraged under the current Federal Government. That is how they execute on the key performance indicators laid out in the Defence Industrial Strategy.
And so things that fall out of that, such as Black Hawks (but not limited to), will fall through those cracks and risk petering out as effort, capital and time are put to policies and platforms that better align with the broader vision the Feds have set out.
There is only so much that we have… I know at times it can feel different, but there are only so many people available to run projects and with the procurement expertise to execute as the Feds desire. There is only so much money available, and I still stress this a lot: while we are very clearly investing more in defence (and we are on track to spend more on defence than we have in decades), that pool of money is still increasingly strained and still subject to authorities who are not keen to blindly approve everything.
That is why, even in a defence-friendly environment, we cannot assume that things will move through, won’t be cut or will be the subject of prolonged fights. The old system still exists, sure, but even in the new system the policies and checks and balances we have put in place don’t just disappear. There is no defence mandate that removes folks like the Treasury Board from the conversation.
And that ties back deeper into the other news from this week. Operational cuts and the need to find savings have not disappeared. There is still a mandate in place to find savings, and sadly those savings are coming from the places hit worst over the years: maintenance budgets, training days, cuts in critical staff, cuts in budgets that force supplies to be stretched and minor equipment purchases that are desperately needed.
It hits hardest on the individuals, the units and bases that make up the day-to-day CAF. They’re the ones seeing budget cuts. They’re the ones seeing money reallocated to support large-scale projects that need funding. They’re the ones that administrative, training and maintenance cuts hit worse.
For some, like the Army, that hits at a time when they’re already going through a massive reorganization, where there is a critical need to get funding down at the local level. It’s worse for the ARes too, who not only have been mostly excluded from Army Mod plans up until recently; who are increasingly tasked with doing more with less, with a “Defence of Canada” mandate that is still unclear and without a broader plan; and who are the ones hardest hit by fleet divestments.
That is especially true as we hear more rumours and talk about wide-scale fleet divestment that will primarily hit the reserves, who are already watching capabilities and equipment consolidated to support the Expeditionary mandate. You can’t defend the country with nothing, nor can you do it off the backs of a couple pickups and whatever scraps are left.
And this isn’t me criticizing 1st Div, nor the choice to prioritize it. We are still in the midst of the largest recapitalization of the CAF in history, and by now I will say history. The amount of replacement projects, new capabilities being onboarded and the demands we’re asking the CAF to achieve.
More money than one could have dreamed three years ago, a mandate to procure and the biggest expansion of capabilities we’ve ever seen, and yet it’s also coming to an ecosystem that ain’t in the place to support it at all the levels needed; in a significantly smaller CAF than we had even twenty (let alone thirty, forty) years ago; and in a CAF that is also trying to play catch-up on underinvestment so long that the conversation stretches back to before I was even born.
And that’s the situation we’re in. We’re trying to cross the finish line with chains hanging from our necks while also trying to get ourselves unchained. The environment doesn’t have anyone at fault, at least to me. Everyone has different mandates in an environment that is rapidly changing in every direction, trying to find solutions in an ecosystem that is still trying to build itself up, racing against each other.
So much money, but a backlog so bad and a defence procurement policy that is increasingly dictated at the top, who are increasingly using defence as a safety net to try and support both volatile markets and industrial capacity.
Below that, an ecosystem still trying to figure out who controls that money and how to use it, without the proper tools in place to support it. An ecosystem trying hard to get things done, and they are! Never discount that the people operating here are trying to get things done: ESCP-P, CPSP, HIMARS, moving on more ACSV and ACV-W, pushing through CMAR, DAME and LUV. These are real accomplishments in spite of a system that is still trying to build it.
But it also comes to a DND and CAF operating with fewer people, with a significant backlog of needs, while also trying to expand and acquire new capabilities. Billions in deferred maintenance; thousands of vehicles at their end of life or well past it; cuts to operations, support staff and training capacity at the foundational level to try and find savings for a government looking not to just balance the budget or stuff like that but create capacity for a prolonged trade war and economic usurping.
It is a complex environment, to say the least, and one that is at odds with itself as it tries to play balance. I try to not hold folks to fault, although almost everyone is guilty to some degree, primarily in promoting their own interests. That can’t be a fault of anyone, because no matter what, people will protect and secure their own.
But I also think it’s good to acknowledge that environment, with the caveat that we all have biases. I know what I see and whom I talk with. I will never advertise my own view of the situation as absolute, and neither should you in who you talk with, what you see. We all have our biases, and we only know as much as we are privy to.
There is always deeper, always more that is going on, always people at the core of any story, any organization that we will never hear from or know; and so I do believe that judgement needs to come with acknowledgement of those issues, of that ecosystem.
We are doing better, a lot better. We are on a good path. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, but right now we are not there, still trying to find the right path and start throwing off those chains of burden that are holding us back. It was never going to be easy, far from it. It was never gonna come without risk and radical thought, without controversial choices that will divide us.
I believe that we will come out of this stronger, better than we were. I believe we will come out of this renewed in ways we could never have imagined, and it will be wonderful. It’s just about getting there, and slowly, I believe, the hardest parts are getting behind us. We’re so close to the top of the mountain, and then it’s just getting back down.