What would an invasion of Canada look like?

Regarding the Chinese angle; he who owns Vancouver Island owns the coast. It is a significant natural obstacle that makes both Georgia Strait and Puget Sound a nightmare to get boats in, and once in would allow for air attacks from every direction; something that would be very difficult to defend against. If the Chinks were to take the Island first, they could use it as a strategic stepping stone to the Lower Mainland. While they could invade further north, working their way south along the coastal mountain range would be a nightmare, and taking the long loop across to highway 97 and then south would again expose them to the same nightmare from the air they would experience if they were to just sail right in.

For this reason, any defence aimed at repelling China needs to focus on making Vancouver Island an impenetrable fortress.

If it weren't for the combined pop of Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland being upwards of 9 million people, holding on to the island would not be so critical, as the mountains would act as a significant natural obstacle to other population centers.

As for an Arctic strategy against the Russians, let them land troops, but prevent the construction of significant tactical infrastructure. Due to the distances involved, if you can prevent air bases from becoming operational via a significant sustained bombing campaign, you prevent further incursions and will instill hardship upon the troops stationed there. As with all other stalemates, he with the most patience will win. The Canadian public could tolerate hundreds of lost pilots per year when compared to Russia losing hundreds of pilots and thousands of troops to freezing conditions and starvation.

As for defence against the Americans, our military is currently well versed in COIN ops. with that experience in mind, it would be fairly easy to develop a strategy based on a similar decentralised guerrilla warfare that strikes at the weaknesses of COIN. Based on the fact that we are all the same races speaking the same language, any insurgency would result in significant infrastructure damage and American casualties on both sides of the border. America would either say goodbye to her freedoms in an attempt to stop the destruction of everything, or she'd give up even quicker than in Iraq.

To do all of this, we need to significantly increase the size of the air force, the size of the navy, and the size of the militia.

The reg force army would have to be slightly enlarged and re-organised into a full sized, fully mechanised division based on 10 battlegroups consisting each of 3 infantry battalions, a tank squadron, a recce squadron, artillery battery, anti-air battery/squadron, engineer squadron, and the various other support units.

For the sake of peacetime organisation and keeping the current traditional Regiments and Battalions together, 2 BGs would form a Brigade, for 5 brigades total. Each Brigade would consist of 2 infantry battalions, an armoured regiment (2 tank and 2 recce squadrons), an artillery regiment (2 mudgun squadrons and 2 birdgun squadrons), an engineer regiment (I don't really know how they organise themselves and how it would subdivide into a BG, I just know engineers do their jobs well), and the standard brigade support services.

The Brigades would be transportable by rail and CC-177, but not by CC-130. The objective of the brigades and the division as a whole would be to directly engage and decisively crush any enemy than lands on the continent. As the division would be based in 5 different locations (Edmonton/Wainwright, Shilo/Winnipeg, Petawawa/Ottawa, Valcartier, and Gagetown/Fredricton) strategic mobility is important. All bases would need to have airfields and a rail line that can be accessed by both CN and CP. For bases that had their tracks removed, they would be rebuilt. The concept of Ops for the Division would be to move a single Brigade to a staging area to secure a route to the front line. This is followed by the remainder of the brigades being transported to the staging area once it is secured.

In the case of Chinese landing on the coast, the staging areas would be Kamloops and/or Prince George. The first Brigade in either location (likely 1 CMBG out of Ed/Wx) would arrive in either/both cities, secure them in conjunction with local militia & police forces, and begin securing a route to the front line. From PG the route would be highway 16 west and 99 southwest via 97. From Kamloops you'd have to secure 99 to the northwest (via #1 and 97), the Fraser Canyon via #1 & 97, and Highway 5. Depending on the situation you may even have to secure highway 3 via highway 5/97 and highway 5a south. It's very likely that engineers/airstrikes would aim to make all but one of these routes impassible, and the brigade/battle group would secure the preferred route to the front.

From here, rest of division arrives, the BGs leapfrog until contact is established, and then it's a matter of pushing the enemy back into the water. Time from initial invasion to first brigade arriving at a staging area can't be more than 1 week, and first contact established in 2 weeks. These timelines assume that light militia and air forces are effectively delaying the enemy advance through the cities and mountains.

I don't think it would cost much more to maintain a full heavy mech division compared to our current heavy/medium/light division-minus setup we have now. There would be a higher up front cost for equipment purchase and slightly more expense for upkeep and training. We would have to expand some bases but otherwise we'd be using infrastructure that is already in place.

On the militia side of things, I've flirted with the idea of a light mechanised division and 2 wheeled divisions in the past. Currently, I think that maintaining 2 light divisions and 2 motorised division would be adequate. Troops would be transported by air assets and trucks as required to positions that would be defendable with man-portable weapons and towed artillery. In my mind being light infantry in a maneuver war is like bringing a knife to a tank fight, but the concept relies on air parity or air superiority to reduce/nullify the enemies ability to conduct mounted warfare.

In the coastal defence concept posted above, any action in the cities would mostly be a rearguard action while tactical infrastructure was destroyed. The goal is to retreat to the mountain passes and prevent an enemy advance through them. The exception to this is Vancouver Island. As I posted well above, Vancouver Island is a huge asset/liability and every effort must be made by local forces to keep it secured. In the event that the Island can't be held, the same scorched earth policy would apply. However the troops wouldn't have anywhere to retreat to, as crossing the strait would be impossible and crossing active pass would simply lead to land with no road access to the rest of the country. It's likely the goal of these troops would be to maintain an insurgency and prevent the construction of tactical infrastructure.

For the air force, there would be 5 wings, 1 on each coast, and 2 inland.

While I like the concept of a do-it-all stealth fighter, they are prohibitively expensive. Also, when you lose one, you lose all of it's capabilities. For this reason, I believe we need to go with a 3 tier combat aircraft setup for all wings, albeit with slight differences between the costal and inland wings.

The coastal wings primary focus would be interdiction/interception of enemy air and naval assets. For this reason, there would be 2 squadrons of fighters. The top tier would be a long range patrol/strike aircraft. Designed to go out, hit a target, and come back, or to loiter over open ocean/arctic in search of targets. For this reason it would have to be twin engine. I suspect stealth would be an asset as well. As it is meant for striking ships and cargo planes, refuelers, & bombers, it doesn't need to have superb maneuverability. Whatever it can't out-turn it needs to be able to hide/run from it. That said, the only fighters on the market that could really fill this role are the Eurofighter and Rafale, as the F-22 isn't available unless the Americans have a change of heart. As much as we all loved the Arrow, a Stealth Arrow 2.0 probably isn't available. 24 aircraft per coastal wing.

The lower tier target would be a smaller, slower, shorter ranged, mostly dedicated air-air fighter. It can have limited air-ground/sea assets, but this isn't it's primary role. It need not be twin-engine, however it needs to be more robust that the patrol aircraft. Think the Saab Griphen. It's primary role would be combating any carrier based aircraft or ferried fighters that come within range. It's secondary roles would be defending against the support/force multiplier aircraft that the patrol aircraft missed (say a massed bombing run), or dropping bombs on tactical infrastructure. Tertiary roll would be ground support/anti-shipping. 24 aircraft per costal wing.

The last combat oriented squadron would be naval patrol aircraft. Primary role would be sub-hunting, secondary role would be hitting soft shits (cargo, refueler, etc). Any modern combat vessel could take a patrol plane down, so it would be up to the fast and/or stealthy tier 1 fighters to take those ships out (in conjunction with subs). Currently the CP-140 Aurora fills this role, albeit in reduced numbers (12 operational, down from 18). 6-8 per wing would be adequate.

These wings would be based in Comox, Yellowknife (I really wanted Iqaluit but too isolated), and Goose Bay.

The Inland Wings role would be mostly ground support. They would be the ones responding to a landfall by striking enemy formations and tactical infrastructure, as well as defending friendly troops and transport aircraft from enemy fighters/ground attack aircraft.

The tier 1 aircraft would actually be a ground attack helicopter. Something like the Apache. I shouldn't have to get into details why, but their ability to loiter is a significant asset. They are very soft to heavy anti-air and enemy fighters, which is where the other two tiers come in. 24 aircraft per wing.

The tier 2 aircraft would again be the Griphen-like aircraft, for all the same reasons. It's primary mission would be to deal with enemy fighters and ground attack aircraft. secondary mission would include bombing enemy airfields, bridges, and other tactical infrastructure. 24 aircraft per wing.

Third tier would be Warthogs. If the Americans don't want to keep them, we should buy them. There is no better fast air ground support. They are cheap, reliable, durable, and are second to none. While they can't loiter like an attack helo, they can deal with enemy AA assets where the helos can't. Again, 24 aircraft per.

Given that most things armoured come with a gun that can shoot birds, the concept for an attack on a mechanised group would be Warthogs attacking targets of opportunity with Griphen flying air-superiority missions. With the armour bedded down trying not to be seen by the fast moving aircraft, the attack helos would move through and conduct a more detailed/destructive search for enemy armour and troops. Of course, both fast and slow ground support will be capable of responding to friendly ground troops requests for fire support.

The beauty of such a wing is that unlike the costal wings, the inland wings can fly from completely unprepared airfields. They can move with the front lines and can move from place to place as airfields are destroyed. Highways, open fields, clear cut mountain tops don't matter. So long as there is fuel, ammo, and 3500 feet of "runway" these squadrons can operate. They would be based out of Cold Lake and Bagotville.

Of course there would be transport and rescue aircraft, but these are more need specific and likely would be national-headquarter controlled assets. I also couldn't tell you offhand how many of each we'd need.

The naval side of things is a bit more difficult. It really depends on whether we want to focus solely on defence, or if we wish to continue supporting our allies overseas.

If we are focusing solely on defence, stick 8-12 U212s/U214s and 6-8 minesweeper/minelayers on each coast (Esquimalt, Halifax, and somewhere up north, Churchill???), and call it a day. The attack subs go out and do what they do, picking off the anti-air ships while the aforementioned patrol aircraft pick off anti-sub and surface-surface ships. Minesweepers/minelayers get busy making the waterways near ideal landing zones impassible.

If we want to project power - we need 20 general combat surface ships, not 15, and at least 3 resupply ships. This would allow us to project a small task force of 5 ships on each the Pacific and Atlantic. No matter what I think the arctic is a sub and aircraft game. I used to believe in the idea of icebreakers, but they'd be sitting ducks compared to enemy subs. Let the coast guard maintain icebreakers. In this scenario we would still maintain 4-6 attack subs on each coastline with the same concept of ops. Surface ships would attack soft targets and/or deploy abroad to disrupt enemy shipping and air movements. Maintain a max of 6 minesweepers/minelayers on each coast under this concept.

In terms of personnel; the size of the navy would double, the size of the air force would triple, and the army would increase in size about 25%. Once we are past the initial purchase costs, the military should be able to operate on a budget of 40-50 billion per year. yes it is a significant increase compared to what we pay now; however, it would bring us in line with our NATO commitment (2% of GDP = 38 billion this year), and a significant amount of the costs would be money injected directly back into our economy in the form of medium and high income jobs, particularly in areas that otherwise don't have much for those kinds of jobs (Yellowknife, Goose Bay, etc). The secondary benefits to industry not in military areas would be significant as well, as the amount of hardware we'd need maintained/repaired domestically would increase significantly.

Outside of the military, some strategic changes need to be made in order to ensure military effectiveness, both for deployment and supply throughput.

First the highways. Every major centre in the country needs to be connected by a nationalised highway system, minimum 4 lanes, 120kph standard. Provinces would also be required to maintain a minimum 2 lane secondary highway for all routes at a 80kph standard. Boots, if you are reading this, yes I read your comments about the costs of such a project. This means expanding the Inland Island Highway fully to Victoria. This means 4 lane TCH all across northern Ontario plus a secondary highway north of it, Yellowhead becomes 4 lane all the way from Edmonton to Vancouver, finish twinning highway 1 from Kamloops to Banff, etc.

I already spoke of rebuilding torn up railheads on bases. In addition to this, federal connectors will be built between CN and CP lines so that any railhead has immediate access to both networks. In the case of here in Wainwright, it means rebuilding that old ass trunk line that ran parallel to highway 41 way back in the stone age so that the Wainwright railhead can network with the CP line in Czar (Wainwright is already a CN division).

For fuel supplies, Energy East must be completed for the sake of ensuring that we can rely fully on domestic petroleum products. Further, each mechanised brigade must be fully supplied by refineries within 250km of their home base. This ensures that for any domestic operation there is always capacity to operate the mechanised division, regardless of fuel shortages for civilian usage.

Can't really think of anything else right now. I hope this wasn't too difficult to follow. Believe it or not I was light on the details for each of the concepts.

No wait! We can't do that!
I mean blow up the convoy of ships everyone saw coming from 5,000 miles away. Fighter bombers are only for blowing up Toyota pickups and buildings that don't move....

I dunno. Those North Koreans are pretty crafty, especially if L'il Kim has his sights set on all those lucrative jenkem mines out near Whistler.

Claiming economic necessity and national interest, China invades BC and builds Enbridge pipeline and Kitimat terminal. Alberta militia prevents Cdn Forces from crossing Rockies to repel the invasion. Tens of thousands of BC Environmentalists prevent southern Forces from moving North citing damage to bear & fish habitat from tank treads and birds upset from nests by explosives or noise from jets...

actually more likely than project being approved. :mrgreen:

Chinese respond to activist complaints with massed machine-gun fire. Activists respond with "dude that's, like, kinda harsh ......". :lol:

Andy decides not to write a letter to his condo board, complaining about all his new Chinese neighbours. :lol:

First Nations submit claim for 320% of BC's land mass and elebenty trillion dollars to new Chinese overlords. New Chinese overlords respond with a simple "ha ha ha". One month later, after saturation bombing and nerve gassing campaign has been completed, nothing is heard from First Nations in BC ever again......

Andy tries out Chinese dating service and begins Mandarin lessons.

If it's Peeps who think Cats are tasty they might land at my house for a celebratory invasion dinner party.

Vietnamese are more into cats....Chinese, especially northerners eat dog on occasion.