NATO’s deterrence mission in Latvia drains the fleet of Canadian army vehicles

The Canadian army does not have enough vehicles to support both the Latvia brigade and a training exercise similar to Canada, a committee of the House of Commons said on Thursday.

Maj.-Gen. Robert Ritchie, director of joint strategic strategic staff (the nerve center of the army), told the defense committee that more than 400 vehicles of all types had been deployed for the NATO deterrence mission in the Baltic Nation.

“We do not have a mirror supplement of this equipment in Canada, and it is not necessary,” said Ritchie, referring to A radical change in combined weapons training implemented last year.

“The vehicles that individuals use for this deployment (of Latvia) are those on which they need to conduct the training prior to deployment in order to understand the systems and to have confidence and confidence in the use of this equipment.”

Ritchie did not specifically approach the depth of the shortage of vehicles in Canada and how it affected training for other smaller missions or domestic deployments.

But the fact that the army does not have enough vehicles to support a brigade on the ground and perform a simultaneous training exercise in Canada – for a force of the same size – is a concern that several defense analysts and observers shared the day after the Liberal government plan to rebuild and rearore the forces.

The soldiers were criticized to move the combined weapons training, where pedestrian soldiers do the exercise alongside tanks, artillery and planes to improve their coordination skills, the Wainwright base, Alberta, in Latvia.

Critics, including a former army commander, say that change means that soldiers are less ready to fight right away and have to learn at work.

The change, according to criticism, was carried out partly due to the reallocation of the internal budget to the Ministry of National Defense and a global fundraising of funds. CBC News was the first to report on the training overhaul in the spring of 2024 and when the ministry denied that funding played a role.

On Thursday, Ritchie also defended the decision, saying that soldiers take training in the field and under the conditions they may have to fight.

“There is a deterrent effect due to the conduct of the localization training on the front line for which the multinational group defends,” said Ritchie.

He added that a “conglomerate of reasons led us to the decision to move the training prior to the deployment in Latvia, which was exceptionally welcomed by Latvia and all the allies”.

However, the documents of the internal defense department, obtained by CBC News, say that there have been problems with the training in the field in Latvia. During the most recent deployment, Canadian soldiers had no “place during work training”.

“This required a more academic approach to preparations” for the major exercise known as Oak Resolve, the documents said.

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Prime Minister Mark Carney’s European trip ended after visiting Canadian troops in Latvia, where Canada is carrying out a NATO mission. Carney announced that the presence of NATO of Canada in Latvia will continue until 2029, in order to have a complete frame of 2,200 persistently deployed there in 2026. But the researcher and professor of Royal Military University Christian Leuprecht says that it is an “important challenge” for the Canadian Armed Forces to support it – and they do not really have the equipment.

The training problem was aggravated by a shortage of critical spare parts – and in some cases which forced the brigade to park vehicles, including the main leopard 2A4 combat tanks.

The factors forcing the army to park vehicles include “Canadian supply chain problems, the order book” and the new “tablet” training regime, which has seen troops finish their training in combined with Latvia, rather than in Canada, said a separate set of internal documents obtained by CBC News.

Ritchie recognized the problem with parliamentarians and said that the injection of the federal government of $ 9.3 billion into defense this year helps to solve this problem.

“The recent budgetary commitment has enabled significant delivery of spare parts orders, and we have undertaken it at high speed,” said Ritchie.

But he underlined the past decisions which “eroded a few things” – namely the reserve of spare parts by the army and that some “longtime suppliers have pivoted other contracts”.