Canadian troops vital to Ukraine effort, but aren’t superhuman

OTTAWA—For those who casually follow the affairs of the Canadian Armed Forces, it will come as no surprise that one of their primary roles has become that of training foreign militaries. Since the spring of 2015, Canada has provided approximately 200 combat trainers to assist the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Known as Operation Unifier, this support has trained more than 30,000 Ukrainian soldiers to date. Unifier was briefly suspended following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Once it became evident that Russia would not achieve a quick victory, Canadian trainers resumed Unifier, albeit from the safety of military bases in the United Kingdom. While Canada leads NATO in terms of military support for Ukraine, one has to wonder at what point Canadian instructors will prove unnecessary. This is in no way meant as a slight to the Armed Forces' professionalism. I have often stated that, in my opinion, the CAF produces the best soldiers in the world. However, actual combat experience cannot be substituted with live-fire ranges and scripted tactical exercises. The last time that Canadian soldiers had an actual combat role in a conflict was in 2011. At that juncture, the Canadian military switched to training Afghan security forces before exiting the war in Afghanistan altogether in 2014. It is difficult to fathom how 12-year-old combat experience in the Afghanistan counter-insurgency campaign would lend itself to instructing Ukrainian recruits to face a modern Russian military in the Donbas trenches. The Taliban and other Afghan insurgent groups were armed with light automatic weapons and homemade improvised explosive devices. They had no artillery, no aircraft, no armoured vehicles, no body armour and no drones. The Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan had the advantage of all those resources and still the United States-led NATO intervention lost that war. Fanatical resistance and tireless persistence wore down the NATO alliance’s will to continue the illegal foreign occupation of Afghanistan in 2021. For those Ukrainian fighters Canada has trained, they have had years of experience manning the battle lines that were first established around the eastern Ukraine region known as the Donbas back in 2014. While a ceasefire was brokered between the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the separatist militias of the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, since 2014 this frontline has seen regular outbreaks of resumed combat. Thus, many of the 30,000 Canadian-trained Ukrainian soldiers would have already had months of experience enduring artillery barrages and trench warfare. When Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion in February 2022, he turned a volatile, simmering civil war of separation into an interstate war between Russia and Ukraine. For the past 18 months, the Ukrainian military has gained battlefield experience of an all-arms nature. By this I mean armour, artillery, fixed-wing aircraft, rotary-wing aircraft, unarmed aerial vehicles, and unmanned shipborne vehicles. The new sophisticated battlefield combines drones and satellite imagery to give combatants vital intelligence in real time. Low-level air-defence systems have become so evidently vital to battlefield survival that the Canadian government recently spent $400-million to acquire such a system for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Unfortunately the Canadian military will not be able to train Ukrainian recruits how to use this new weapon system for the simple reason that Canada does not possess such protective weaponry. There is a plan to fast track procurement of a low-level air-defence system to be immediately forward based with the Canadian battle group in Latvia. When that does come to pass, perhaps the Ukrainian students of today will become Canada's instructors of the future. On a related note, following the July NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told his attendant press posse that Canada would be participating in the NATO effort to train Ukrainian air force pilots how to fly F-16 fighter planes. The implication was that our Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilots would be doing this training. However, the RCAF flies twin-engine CF-18 fighter jets, the operation of which is completely different from that of the single-engine F-16s. It is possible that Canada will be supplying logistic or administration staff to help with the project and, if that is the case, the public should know the facts. Canadian soldiers and pilots are good, but they are not superhuman. You cannot teach what you do not know. Scott Taylor is the editor and publisher of Esprit de Corps magazine. The Hill Times

Canadian troops vital to Ukraine effort, but aren’t superhuman

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Canadian troops vital to Ukraine effort, but aren’t superhuman

The CAF produces the best soldiers in the world, but actual combat experience cannot be substituted with live-fire ranges and scripted tactical exercises.

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