Let me first say thank you for the editorial, because I indeed still remember that when we were trying to get our forces into Kosovo back in 1999, the country from whom we were trying to rent strategic airlift would not allow us to land the aircraft where we needed to land. That was a wake-up call to people that we actually needed to have grey tail military aircraft to carry us to far-off places. And similarly, we launched troops
in the case of the 3rd Battalion of the Royal 22nd Regiment, in
East Timor in 1999. Again, we were looking for wide-body aircraft while everybody else was looking for aircraft as well, so we couldn't get the aircraft until much later on.
But that is just to say that I agree with you. Everything's expensive, and we in the Canadian Forces, working with all of government, try to find the best value for Canadians, whether it be a helicopter or a transport aircraft like the C-130J. It was great being in Trenton and seeing all the brand new C-130Js on the ramp and the C-17 on the ramp. Indeed, we try to look for the best value for Canada overall.
In terms of the details of the readiness of the services, I'll just say that this information is secret. So I won't go into detail on this kind of thing. I'll just say that the air force is always at the highest level of readiness, because for an aircraft to be fully safe from a flight safety perspective, it has to be at 100%. Whether it be a commercial aircraft, or a C-17, C-130J, helicopter, or fighter, it's got to be at 100%. Everything's got to work right away, because of the tolerances demanded of that aircraft in pulling three, four, or five Gs in combat. So generally, from a flight safety perspective, the air force is always at the highest level of readiness.
The navy and the army are generally similar in their percentage of folks who are at high readiness. In the army, generally, there's a battalion that is ready to go internationally. Similarly, as a factor in overall percentage, the navy with its ready-duty ships is generally at the same kind of percentage.
The army, because so much of its assets are in people, really doesn't have low readiness. It has normal readiness, whereas the navy's key assets are its ships, and the people, obviously, but the people don't float on their own, but need a ship. So when a ship goes into long-term maintenance, it's into an extended lower readiness period. So the navy, unlike the army, has this low readiness or extended readiness. For example, if you look at the HMCS Halifax, it will be in refit for a year. Indeed, when the submarine HMCS Victoria was dry dock and shipyard workers were working on it, the refit took years. Again, we'd not had a lot of work done on submarines on the west coast.
So I would say the most ready force is traditionally always the air force because of the high readiness requirements of flight safety. The army and the navy are about similar; but the navy, because of its business, is so equipment-oriented with regard to its ships that it actually has a low readiness status, while the army does not.
Hopefully, that answers your question, sir.