Rearming the military: Should Canada buy it or build it?

7 comments

1. I think the CAF is re-arming for the same reason the European nations are re-arming, because they fear becoming entangled in the conflict with Russia. If we expect to get involved it makes sense to purchase weapons now from existing arms manufacturers. If we take the time to manufacture our own, the conflict could start before the infrastructure for arms manufacturing is ever established.

   It should be done concurrently

2. A country with very little history for military production….will take decades for subpar defense. Defense is not something you want to play around with if you see a pending conflict.

3. Both. But lean heavily on a diversified arms network, decoupling from the US when we can, and buying when there’s no better alternative. The LAV6 program shows we CAN do good domestic procurement projects, but with how little time we have it might be dangerous to do too much.

4. if you buy it how can you be sure it does not have an off switch in the office of some would be dictator?

   pretty sure at this point you have to make it yourself, or you are boned. good luck with trusted allies, you still might have some.

5. Canada shot itself in the foot domestic defense industry wise. There are a few standouts, but it critically lacks in aerospace and heavy armoured vehicles.

   However, with the rapidly changing landscape of war, Canada could make a go for drone development.

   Essentially, buy from a trustworthy partner for things that will take decades to develop domestically and go local for things that are done well or are just emerging.

6. Canada is different than Europe, they have no imminent enemies in the next century unless the US decides to eat them – they should absolutely build their own domestic military infrastructure and weapons, and they don’t need the 5% GDP spending that Europe does.

   They’d be silly just to dump all that money into US weapons when there’s no urgency for them and their potential weapons supplier is the only threat, albeit a minor possibility.

7. Depends on how fast you need it, I would guess.  I mean I’m all for building up the capacity ourselves, but but it depends on if we could ever approach the quality of foreign made, and then also sustain the industry enough that we don’t kill it off in a few years and lose all the progress we made.

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