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Soldiers are for peace keeping. That is what it will return to.

More than likely, however I will qualify that by saying that the typical Canadian soldier has as much fighting spirit, as much heart as any one of our troops, they train hard, they are dedicated men and women and I hold them in great respect.

You sound like an expert.

Nah, I'm no expert, I just study this kind of stuff when I have time, I've always been fascinated with military forces, I recall learning in junior high school that the U.S. nuclear deterrent was comprised of 1000 Minuteman missiles, 54 Titan II missiles, 656 Polaris (or Poseidon) submarine launched missiles, and at that time, approximately 400+ B-52 bombers (along with a few Convair B-58s). They burned those numbers into my head, not that I'm sure how useful the data would be, lol

From what I understood in 2006 is that Canada needed 10% year over year budget increases for at least a decade to get our military forces up to par.

That sounds about right to me. The trouble with any Western society (especially Canada) is having to make the repeated choice of 'guns vs butter' and it is clear that 'butter' has always been the priority mainly due to the overwhelming military resources of the U.S. which provides Canada with a very effective security blanket.

Harper did some of that but not near enough.

It can't all be blamed on Harper although the past 10 years certainly can, his predecessors (Martin and Chretien) did little to nothing to improve Canada's military preparedness either.

I agree about the soldiers. They deserve our love and respect. I remember watching some program on TV of Canadian soldiers at checkpoints. The stress of that situation, not knowing if the next truck rolling up is full of martyrs or not.

I recall those comparisons in the 1980s between the US and USSR conventional sources. I have tried to find that data again on the internet to no avail. I recall the Soviets having twice the number of aircraft, three times the tank divisions, and maybe twice the number of foot soldiers. They had less nukes but much larger ones that could take out half the state of ohio.