The fleet’s mission-capable rate — or the percentage of time a plane can perform one of its assigned missions — was 55 per cent as of March 2023, far below the Pentagon’s goal of 85 per cent to 90 per cent, the Government Accountability Office said on Thursday.
Part of the challenges stem from a heavy reliance on contractors for maintenance that limits the Pentagon’s ability to control depot maintenance decisions. Delays also arise from spare parts shortages, inadequate maintenance training, insufficient support equipment, and a lack of technical data needed to make repairs.
Because of the Pentagon’s inane IP laws, maintenance on these planes is a bureaucratic nightmare: defense contractors are able to limit maintenance of these things to only those they contract because of IP restrictions and are not required to teach the military jack shit. Meanwhile, they’re essentially a paperweight half the time because they’re not getting proper maintenance.
How are we supposed to patrol the Arctic with a plane that needs an American private subcontractor to perform essential maintenance on it?
While I agree, I do also think we need a capable offensive force. The world today seems pretty unstable, and having to rely on our neighbor for our entire security seems a little unwise. Since building out our forces will take decades, we should probably get started on that project now.
Edit: unwise, not inside
Why would we want an offensive force? We have enough land as it is and our primary focus should be on soft power (so people don’t want to invade us) and defence (so people who try end up bleeding so much it doesn’t matter). Canada is uniquely suited for defence in depth given that our key geographical rival (Russia) would have to invade from the North, literally the furthest they could possibly be from key population centers, and that on the off chance that China decides to invade us, they’d have to cross through the Rockies AND the Prairies just to make it even close to the Golden Horseshoe. In fact, I’d actually argue that our key rival in terms of defence should actually be the US: their instability makes it increasingly likely that we may get caught up in a sort of hostile occupation if war should break out and they have the capability to easily strike all main Canadian population centers.
Sorry, I am using the wrong word, “offensive” here, when I meant a defensive force. Basically, enough tanks, planes, or whatever we need for the defense you’ve mentioned. If we have enough already, great :)
In the situation our rival is the US, I really have trouble us building enough of a defense to do anything but buy time!
The war in Ukraine has shown that NATO doctrine is, frankly, not very good against something even close to a peer force.
