Key Points and Summary – The Canadian Armed Forces are showing their most positive signs in decades, with recruitment up, pay raises improving morale, and new funding flowing. However, a deeper look reveals an ill-equipped and thinly stretched force that is not ready to fight a modern war.
-With less than half of its vehicles operational, only one submarine seaworthy, and major equipment modernization programs years away, the CAF remains a “hollow force.”
-While its presence in places like Latvia is politically valuable, it serves as a “tripwire,” not a sustained, combat-capable contribution to a high-intensity coalition fight.
Could Canada Actually Go To War Today?
The Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) are currently engaged in their most significant foreign deployment since the Afghanistan mission.
Approximately 3,000 CAF troops are deployed to Latvia as the centerpiece of the alliance’s Enhanced Forward Presence mission.
The optics are strong: Canada is on the front line in Europe, making a significant and noticeable contribution to NATO’s deterrent presence on the continent.
But beneath the optics is a more difficult question: could the Canadian Forces actually fight a modern war – in the Baltics, in the Arctic, or elsewhere – if deterrence were to fail?
Canada’s Military Is Stretched Too Thin to Fight
The answer to that question is more discouraging than many observers are willing to admit.
The Canadian Armed Forces can deploy professional and interoperable units; however, these units are small, under-equipped, and thinly stretched. That Canada cannot fight and decisively win a high-intensity war on its own should be obvious – but then that is neither an appropriate nor realistic standard.
The proper standard, the one to which the Canadian Forces can and must be held, is definitely more attainable: to be able to make a consequential and sustained contribution to coalition warfighting forces where core Canadian national interests are at stake.
But even given that standard, the discouraging answer to the question posed above is no, they cannot.
What History Suggests
History suggests that this is a standard that Canada has met in the past, and could meet again. In Afghanistan, Canada deployed approximately 3,000 troops to Kandahar Province at the peak of the mission.
For years, Canadian forces shouldered a disproportionate share of the combat burden in the south of the country.
They provided NATO not merely a flag, but a real fighting capacity.
The losses – over 150 dead – are a testament to the seriousness of Canada’s effort. In West Germany during the Cold War, Ottawa maintained nearly 10,000 soldiers with tanks, artillery, and aircraft.
Those forces were never expected to defeat the Warsaw Pact alone, but they were a consequential part of NATO’s deterrent posture. In both cases, Canada demonstrated its capability to sustain meaningful contributions to coalition warfighting forces for years on end.
The Present Situation Is Grim
The present deployment to the Baltics falls short of those precedents.
The Canadian forces in Latvia are deploying tanks, artillery, and short-range air defense systems to enhance NATO’s posture.
They are training and exercising seamlessly with American, German, Polish, and other formations.
But the battlegroup is designed to be a tripwire rather than a combat-capable brigade. It might slow an assault, but it would not hold it at bay for long and would need to be reinforced.
The political value of Canada’s presence is real, but militarily it remains modest by the standards of Afghanistan or Cold War Germany.
The Arctic Challenge
The same logic applies, and in some ways more starkly, in the Arctic.
Climate change has opened sea lanes and natural-resource frontiers, to which Russia has responded with a high-tech military modernization of its Arctic bases and a forward deployment of advanced naval and air assets, while China claims to be a “near-Arctic state.”
Canada’s response has been more modest. The Rangers provide excellent surveillance, but are lightly equipped. The Royal Canadian Air Force patrols northern skies from forward operating locations such as Inuvik and Iqaluit, but in early 2025 only about 40 percent of its fleet was serviceable.
Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships (AOPS) of the Harry DeWolf class are in the process of entering service, but as ice-strengthened patrol vessels they are not heavy icebreakers or warfighting platforms.
Infrastructure is the more glaring deficiency. Northern airstrips, ports, and radar coverage are sparse and often outdated. The Nanisivik Naval Facility was built with the hope of creating a year-round refueling hub, but in fact, it can host only a short summer season.
Ottawa has begun to modernize continental defense through NORAD, committing funds to new radar and northern operating locations; however, the distance between ambition and reality is vast. In a conflict, Canadian forces could mount a token defence, but sustained operations would be dependent on immediate U.S. reinforcement.
Unlike in Afghanistan or Germany, Canada’s Arctic posture does not yet equate to a consequential contribution to coalition defence.
Canada could also, in a different conflict scenario, be drawn into coalition naval and air operations against a near-peer adversary in the North Pacific.
Were this to happen, Canadian forces would be in a supporting role rather than a starring one. Politically advantageous and tactically competent, they are not forces that would be looked to for a sustained contribution to coalition outcomes, as they were in Afghanistan or Germany.
Readiness and Procurement
The readiness figures confirm the shortcoming. In June 2025, Prime Minister Mark Carney was forced to make the embarrassing admission that less than half of Canada’s vehicles were operational and only one of four Victoria-class submarines was seaworthy.
Recruitment has improved over the past several years, with intakes consistently exceeding targets; however, the CAF still falls short of its authorized strength. Even with pay raises, retention remains a challenge.
Procurement programs show a similar lag. Although Ottawa is proceeding with the purchase of the first tranche of 16 F-35 fighters, the fate of the remaining 72 aircraft originally envisioned is uncertain. Fourteen P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft will arrive from 2026, but will not provide full capability until later in the decade. The MQ-9B SkyGuardian drone program will see first airframes delivered in 2028. Medium-range air defence remains unaddressed. New submarines are under consideration, but not in service or even ordered.
How Shortcomings Would Show
These shortcomings would be evident in the context of coalitions. Forces that are modest in size, professional, and interoperable matter politically, but not militarily, if they cannot be sustained at scale. Canadian soldiers in Latvia provide assurance and signal resolve. Still, in practice, they do not yet amount to a consequential contribution to coalition warfighting on the scale of Afghanistan or Cold War Germany.
Arctic patrols and NORAD contributions strengthen continental defence, but only alongside a massively dominant U.S. capability. Ottawa’s involvement in multinational procurement strengthens alliance resilience, but those moves are incremental.
Canada Must Step Up
The message is clear: Canada cannot afford the luxury of any illusions about combat credibility. Symbolic deployments may be helpful for political optics, but they do not deter adversaries or shape the course of wars.
The question that matters is whether Canada can again provide the kind of consequential and sustained contribution to coalition warfighting that it once did in Kandahar and West Germany. That standard is a more difficult one, but it is an achievable one if Ottawa makes the hard choices on deployable, survivable, and combat-capable forces.
There are promising signs that, in the not-too-distant future, Canada may be better positioned to fight alongside its partners and allies. Ottawa has pledged to meet NATO’s 2 percent defence spending target by early 2026.
It has even signed on to NATO’s Hague Summit pledge to spend 5 percent of GDP on defence and resilience by 2035, with at least 3.5 percent of that total allocated to core military capability.
Billions of dollars are already budgeted for new aircraft, naval systems, cyber, and northern infrastructure. So, while the Canadian Forces are currently unable to fight a war, they may be capable of doing so in a decade or two.
Canada finds itself today in a world of great-power competition. Multipolar rivalry is back with a vengeance, and Canada straddles three contested theaters: the North Atlantic, the North Pacific, and the Arctic.
In all three, the question is not whether Canada has the flag out, but whether the Canadian Armed Forces can again provide contributions that make a difference in coalition contexts. That was the measure of Canadian credibility in Afghanistan and in Cold War Europe.
It must be the measure again.
About the Author: Dr. Andrew Latham
Andrew Latham is a non-resident fellow at Defense Priorities and a professor of international relations and political theory at Macalester College in Saint Paul, MN. You can follow him on X: @aakatham. He writes a daily column for National Security Journal.
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Swamplaw Yankee
August 30, 2025 at 12:31 am
It’s Ground Hog Day, the specter of Canada is outlined again, again, again.
This op-ed generator was repeatedly advised to run in the recent Canadian Federal election. This sloganeering just never stops. Did the election debates not make clear No-one in these Canada debates was even remotely interested in going to 3% of GNP let alone 5% of GNP.
The enron type scam of 2 % was perpetrated by 3T on the MAGA POTUS Trumpkins elite Cabal and the Yankees did not even bother to vet + swat back.
In May 1945 Canada was the 4th most powerful World military power. In 2025 it has transformed itself into a powder puff. The Putin FSB + Xi triad networks penetrate the place and the USA agencies as well.
3T doubled the tax dollars for the NPR of Canada, the CBC, and 3T can legally out-pr + outwait the MAGA POTUS. 3T just promises the whole whole whatever to be delivered the second day after Trumpkins vanishes.
Now, let’s hear how the huge population of Mexico is aggressively agitating to contribute huge levels of Mexican tax monies to NORAD, NATO + ordering hundreds of F-35 air frames for each and every drug cartel. –
3T = Third Trudeau.
-30-
securocrat
August 30, 2025 at 1:39 am
Canada’s carney is busily touring military bases in europe, in great anticipation of the coming, coming, or soon-to-come-very-quickly ww3, not realisung things are boiling or aboiling at home.
Carney better return home, now, today, before he finds out He has lost his direction, or maybe his job.
Stop being a war sakesperson from way across the ocean.
War benefits nobody except the War Dept.
Krystal cane
August 30, 2025 at 5:33 pm
In a Russia thought the same thing about The Ukraine before the mess they’re in now when you post things like that it makes people like Trump think we can invade Canada.
JingloBell
August 31, 2025 at 7:56 am
Is mark carney attending the 80th anniversary of china’s victory over japan in beijing this sept 3 2025.
There’s going to be a massively massive parade in the street, with spanking new MISSILES, new tanks, new aircraft, new artillery, new marchers and a new determination and latest new most newest willpower.
Carney would be mightily impressed. A bad time and bad misfortune to miss it.
Swamplaw Yankee
August 31, 2025 at 12:55 pm
To some great extent Canada was the second pop of the PRC CCP party. As the world’s forth largest military power in 1945, the long game was to shrink Canada to a powder puff, able to overwhelm Iceland or Greenland.
And, 3T is on track to spend zero tax funds for NATO + NORAD.
If you count the enron 2% of today, 2025, zero new tax Cash from 3T will go to to the 5% some In NATO dream of.
Hey, I used to speak with Canadian heroes who fought Japan in Hong Kong or Singapore. Now, the Commie Stalinist’s vassal Mao, et al, is re-writing history that China beat Japan.
Canada of 1945 -52 refused to even send a single bullet to the Chinese fighting against Stalin’s little puppet Mao. Canada refused to even push to send Japanese and German left over ammo, huge tons of the right size ammo, to help the ancient Han ethnic people fight against the Stalin vassal Mao and his redlines.
Already the Stalin KGB had penetrated Canada and stopped such anti-commie Stalin talk with their well paid CBC mouthpieces. The CBC in Canada is somewhat like the NPR in Yankee. -30-