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I've been reading a couple books about the sad state of Canadian military procurement. I think procurement for the sort of country Canada is is a legitimately difficult problem, but one that's eminently solvable with better informed voters and if party leadership had some more integrity.
There are three or four principle problems with Canadian defense procurement, that date back to debacles like the Ross rifle which constantly jammed in WW1 and the Avro Arrow which was an overengineered interceptor, and are still issues with more modern boondoggles like the F-35 and the Seahawk replacement acquisitions.
The first is just that Canada is an expensive country to properly defend. We've got an enormous, sparsely populated country, so ships and planes need to be able to travel far distances and need to be able to do it with infrequent refueling. Plus they need to be able to withstand the extreme cold and the ice in the arctic. This is part of what killed the Avro Arrow; no other country wanted to buy it and help Canada recoup the costs because no other country needed the (expensive) capabilities it offered. This is just something Canada needs to accept, that sometimes it will have to pay more to get the job done in Canadian conditions.
The second is a desire to build in Canada, to provide jobs to Canadians and build up a Canadian defense manufacturing industry. I'm sympathetic to this idea- it seems like a great deal to pay just a bit more and keep all the jobs and capital within your own country right? But in practice it's not just a bit more, it's multiple times more. There was an Iltis Jeep procurement order that, if bought from Volkswagen, would've cost $26 000 per jeep. Because the government wanted it to be built in Canada, it cost $84 000 per jeep. At that point you're paying more to build in Canada than you are paying for the actual thing you want. It'd make sense if the alternative was buying military equipment from China or even a neutral country like South Africa, but not from a NATO ally. And if Canada does want to build up its industry, I'm of the opinion it should be done in the style of South Korea- only subsidize Canadian manufacturers if they can actually export internationally and produce stuff other countries want. That's the only test that can't be faked to confirm Canadian manufacturers are really producing good stuff worthy of subsidy. In general I think among allies, there should be more cooperation and specialization for military production. Let the USA build the planes, South Korea and Netherlands build the ships, Germany build the jeeps, and so on. Not to assign official responsibilities to countries, but to let them compete in a freer market, so whoever's actually best at making the goods can get the contracts. And if your country isn't actually competent enough to build anything anyone wants, you should just suck it up instead of spending tons of taxpayer money propping up an incompetent industry.
The third problem is that procurements become very political. In the Avro Arrow case, the liberal government stalled cancelling it even after they knew it was doomed to avoid the bad press for it; then the conservatives taking over after the next election also stalled cancelling it to avoid the bad press. Then with the Seahawks replacement, Chretien attacked the conservative government over the EH101 replacement for being too expensive. Then when he took over as Prime Minister, he wasted 500 million and years of delays trying to find a different replacement after realizing the EH101 was just the right choice for a replacement by any fair measure. Then Justin Trudeau did basically the exact same thing when he called the F-35s too expensive only to realize they were the only plane that offered what Canada needed, but only after he delayed their procurement for years and wasted tons of money in the process.
The fourth problem I honestly think is basically unavoidable, and that's that procurement has to go through a ton of bureaucracy. The Canadian Armed Forces, the Department of Defense, the ministry of industry, and Public Service and Procurement Canada are all involved in any big ticket procurement order. And if you try to bypass one, once it finds out it'll stall things up for a couple years insisting on doing its own analysis. One of the books I read recommended making a dedicated new ministry just for military procurement, like what the UK and Australia apparently have, to streamline things. Personally I doubt that'd make things significantly better. It sounds like the Yes, Minister sketch that goes "We've completed the study of which bureaucrats we can cut." "What'd you find?" "That we're short of 8000 bureaucrats". I think large bureaucracy in modern governments is basically inevitable, and trying to cut it down or reform it is basically a waste of energy until you've first fixed some larger scale problems like public sector unions.
Which Anglo country (I’d say which western country but I know the pedants would pull out some obscure example) handles defense procurement well?
Bare minimum competent execution without real threats: Norway, Sweden, Czechia
Decent execution to counter real threats: France (special case: bites off more than they should chew) Poland, Finland, Turkey
Competent execution to counter real threat: Japan, Korea, Israel
Criteria for procurement success generally falls into the following categories:
When broken down in this manner, competing incentive mechanisms become immediately obvious, but also indirectly exploitable. Excepting definitional abuses of the above conditions, procurement failures for even basic systems are the statistical norm. Supporting indigenous capability development is the usual means governments and defense service sellers drain the public purse for no benefit, but ego stoking by censuring or advancing defense adjacent causes is also a common cause for mission failures.
It must be noted that a fundamental cause for procurement failures is economic incapability. Even if procurement practices are perfect, some states just have a shitty threat environment and cannot actually react to any practical threat which manifests. For the most part, the post Cold War peace dividend has resulted in objective 2 flailing about, letting defense budgets wither and focus shifting to counterterrorism and intelligence capabilities. In this anemic budget environment, inventories and capabilities have withered, with institutional knowledge rotting away and unable to redevelop even at a glacial pace.
The main defense many countries have is the incapability of their proximate threats. Nations are rolling the dice and hoping their neighbours are both too weak to actually do something and too smart to want to do something to begin with A military action is ruinous to both aggressor and defender regardless of kinetic success, and for many procurement agencies their mandates service internal political requirements when no external threat is manifest.
Czechia?
The system is hopelessly corrupt.
What's not said is he asked for $20 million which were to fund a major political party (ODS). I highly doubt he wasn't working for them.
To be fair, I don't think you can name a single nation that has a military procurement system free of bribery. It's basically impossible to even operate at those scales without it. Even in total war people still seem to skim off the top.
The question is whether the corruption actively stymies proper ressource allocation or not. Czechia seems to at least be able to operate a somewhat competitive arms industry, so it's not exactly comparable to the people that are buying entirely fictitious fortifications.
It's criminal waste of money.
Example 1
https://www.novinky.cz/clanek/domaci-cena-dronu-z-izraele-nebude-15-ale-27-miliardy-korun-40407332
Heron 1 drone. Utterly, totally useless against the supposed enemy - Russians, who'd shoot it out of the sky without blinking an eye. 100 million$ cost, per 3. That's an utterly absurd price for an unmanned plane with a speed of 200 kph. If it were completely stealthy and low IR observable, maybe it'd be worth considering. It's not.
People ought to be shot for this.
EDIT:
Oh, it got changed to loitering munitions which will be useful for a short while.
https://www.idnes.cz/zpravy/domaci/sebevrazedny-dron-vyckavaci-munice-armada-acr-nakup-vojaci.A240321_080714_domaci_ivos
At an absurdly inflated cost though.
that's 350k€ per one battery driven loitering munition! (the Hungarian deal, but I'll expect Czechs won't have a much better one).
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