kEiThZ
Superstar
All good points, but I still think the "quickly" part could be an issue. To load at, for example, Fredericton, you have first get the ground crews and all of their gear from Trenton to there and the tanks from Gagetown to the airport (not far I admit, but still). As for the armour itself, how many are deployment ready? How many crews are deployment ready? There is debate within the military if we should even retain armour so I would be wondering about their state of readiness. Best I could find, there are about 20 main battle tanks in Gagetown, in total.
1) Moving a bunch of armoured vehicles and associated kit from Gagetown to the airport can literally be done in hours. We're talking an afternoon's work. Also, there are air and sea movements crews whose literally specialty is packing, loading and moving stuff and people. And in addition to the movements squadrons, these professional movers are at every base.
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www.rcaf-arc.forces.gc.ca
2) The military keeps a portion of every force on high readiness. And if tensions ramp up, readiness goes up and those next in line start moving up the cycle too. If there was no contingency plan (CONPLAN) for Russia ramping up in Ukraine, staff officers should be fired. I doubt this wasn't anticipated though.
3) While there were some debates about retaining armour during the Afghanistan era ("Great power competition is over! It's all about terrorism now!"), some of that has faded and that is why the army still has tanks after Afghanistan and is even considering up-armouring further. All that said, you go to war with the army you have. So discussions about procurement and force restructuring are moot at this point.