hillier swings

UPDATE: Colour me impressed. Damian Brooks has a post up showing that that Defence Minister Graham appears to have "followed" my Plan B outlined below. If Minister Graham is looking for advice on other military matters, i charge by the pint.

I said i would get back to this and my follow-up would be that I think Gen. Hillier came out looking like a winner in the aircarft acquisition gamble that he took last week. He swung for the fences on the aircraft procurement but also found himself in a political win-win. If he had of been able to get the aircraft requisition approved by Cabinet it would have been a win for the Forces and given them the equipment they badly need and he would have been perceieved as they guy who got made it happen. He didn't, which isn't really a surprise, however, by pushing this the way he did he can turn to the troops and pilots and say, "boys, i gave it my best" and that in this case the problem wasn't high level leadership coupled with a sclerotic DND procurement shop, but squarely where it belongs, with the politicians in the Liberal party (Bill Graham, who backed the proposal as far as he dared, does deserve some small degree of credit).

Hillier showed the rank and file he was willing to try his best to get them what they need but that ultimately they are hostage to the machinations of the politicians and lobbyists who think that supplying soldiers in the field has regional development implications and Canadian content implications. They are no more than corporate welfare bums taking money from DND instead of "R&D grants" from the Ministry of Industry. Fer crissakes isn't that what regional development agencies like this one are for.

One quibble. If Hillier was thinking tactically about this he should have agreed with Bill Graham that he would go to see Cabinet with Plan B in his back pocket, an alternative which wouldhave divided the procurement up into two pieces by taking the search and rescue aircraft and non-essential items from the procurement initiative and used them as a bone to throw the Cdn firms who want a piece of this. These are the only pieces of the package where a comapny like Bombardier could propose a reasonable alternative aircraft anyways. The corollary would be that there would be no talk of waiting for proposals to see if there are some sort of homegrown substitute for the Chinooks and Hercules, the acquisition of which would proceed immediately. These are proven platforms used by most of our NATO allies and we have experience flying and maintaining them. The US Army is currently in the process of fielding a next generation Chinook and its dual rotors give it the ability to operate in high altitude theatres like Afghanistan and no other helicopter i know of can come close to it. That would have allowed Cabinet to give the lobbyists something and the Forces to get their most high priority items on the fast track.

In the Globe article on Nov 16th one insider specualtes that politics played a role in shelving it since:

"I think there were some people making comparisons to Kim Campbell and
helicopters and last-minute decisions, and they decided this might not be such a
great idea," a source familiar with the situation said. In 1993, the Liberals,
led by Jean Chrétien, reduced Ms. Campbell's Conservatives to two seats in
Parliament after a campaign during which Mr. Chrétien railed against a Tory plan
to spend $4.8-billion to replace the military's 42-year-old Sea Kings. "

This only makes sense if they are worried about attacks from the NDP. They really can't expect attacks from the CPC on actually buying the military something they asked for. And when I first read that they waffled on the procurement I saw this as an opening for the CPC to portray this as another boondoggle like the long delayed purchase of the Cormorants, anti-military bias blah-blah-blah. If this speculation by the "source familiar with the situation" is found to be true then it means the Libs are worried about attacks from the left more than they are about stealing an issue from the right. That can only mean they are worried about vote splitting on the left allowing Conservatives to take a seats as voters disgusted with the Libs on a variety of issues bolt to Jack! and the NDP. If I were in CPC headquarters I would be looking at ridings where all 3 parties were relatively close in vote count as a good place to focus.