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Comment by grawprog | Hacker News Reader

I'm not American and i've always thought it odd how many 'join the army' ads you guys have on your channels, watching cartoons as a kid on the american vs the Canadian channels we got, the american ones always had at least one join the army ad per day, while I think I could count the amount of canadian ones I remember seeing. But i'll agree I remember even then thinking the army of one ones were pretty dumb and made no sense...I also remember the be all you can be ones...that's really how great your guys state propaganda is honestly. I remember these things, still. That says something.

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The US has pretty much been at war with someone somewhere since WWII. President Eisenhower's military war complex warnings shows it was already apparent at that time. Stockpiling weapons is only so effective at keeping the complex running. It's much better to constantly be depleting the stockpiles requiring them to constantly being replenished while also needing new toys to be created. I don't know/think/research that the neighbors to the north have been involved in nearly as many conflicts.

Edit: corrected the actual president. thanks ethbro

Eisenhower's?

Doh! Thanks for the correction. I also had it in my mind that Truman did the Highway Act, but that was also Eisenhower. Shows how much I paid attention in history class.

The US army spends about $700 million on recruitment [0]. While that number has been higher recently since becoming an all volunteer army recruitment has been an expensive challenge.

[0]https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2018/11/07/to-draw-...

Just to clarify - Canada doesn't have forced conscription, it also has an entirely voluntary armed forces.

What are you clarifying here?

I think the supposition is that Canada also has a volunteer army, but does not spend as much on recruitment. I am not sure if that is true or not, but anecdotally it feels like there is at least 10x the amount of military recruitment ads in the US as there are in Canada.

Well I would think the Army as the road out of poverty thing is not as big in Canada as in the U.S

Bingo. There was a awful lot of screening at MEPS -- where you go to process for the US Military, regardless of Marines/Army/Navy/Airforce -- for medical stuff. Lots of implied "do you secretly have a medical issue?" questions, as the military is responsible for paying for your healthcare.

I served with a dude who entered to be a diesel mechanic (even though he had no background/interest in it) because he got his GF pregnant and didn't have a way to take care of a kid at 19.

These are less of an issue in Canada, the UK, etc. where they have universal healthcare and better safety nets.

> Lots of implied "do you secretly have a medical issue?" questions, as the military is responsible for paying for your healthcare.

Basic training was the hardest exercise that I'd had in my life up until then. They don't want you dying from an asthma attack on the obstacle course or something similar.

Or, if you have a heart condition, they don't want you dying on the operating table from it when they go to remove a piece of shrapnel.

Yup. And if you have a knee problem, back problem, etc. you will get chaptered out for medical reasons, so why waste time and money if that's the eventual outcome? Does the military want to pay for the healthcare of someone who went to basic training with a bad knee and made it worse due to being in the military? No! That isn't their purpose and we should never expect otherwise.

Sometimes I think people are just looking for a boogeyman.

Right, but does Canada have the same global police mission that the United States does? I’m not sure why it would be the default expectation that the U.S. and Canada or other NATO countries would have the same amount of recruitment advertisements.

So I guess I’m unsure about what was being clarified given the OP’s statement and then the following response.

original post said:

> since becoming an all volunteer army recruitment has been an expensive challenge.

Implying the issue is a volunteer army. If that's the case, Canada would have the same problem as it's also a volunteer army.

If your argument is that it's not about being a volunteer army, it's about the scale of the military, you might be right... we'd have to compare the personnel number to recruitment budget ratio between NATO countries to get a sense of that.

Standing military in the US is also 0.4% (1.38M/328.2M), v.s CA's 0.17% (67,000/37,894,799) of population.

I've heard (but never actually verified) air shows basically come out of the Air Force and Navy's recruitment budget.

That wouldn't surprise me. As a kid, airshows and movies like Top Gun & Iron Eagle certainly gave me a pro-military view. I did end joining the army after high school. On the first day of basic training, I also have very vivid memories of drill sergeants mocking us recruits for having bought into the "be all you can be" propaganda :)

My favorite memory of an airshow was seeing the SR-71 fly. Oh my gosh that thing was cool. It was so loud that its vibrations set off what seemed to be every car alarm in the parking lot. At the end of its performance, the pilot just pulled back on the stick and just flew straight up into the clouds. I don't know if this video is the airshow I went to, but imagine a kid with a love of military aircraft seeing this thing up close --https://youtu.be/aV82gbriMc8.

I also have fond memories of seeing an A/V-8B Harrier do a vertical take off and landing. The funniest memory I have was seeing the label on an Apache helicopter's 30mm cannon that said "do not aim at personnel on base".

My favorite first hand experience was getting to fly in a vintage WW2 B-25 Mitchell. I sat in the glass bubble where a gunner would sit at the front of the aircraft. This was in 2012. The owner said that all of the parts he ordered to keep the plane flying came in the original WW2 packaging. As of 8 years ago, somewhere out there was a warehouse full of WW2 era spare parts for 70 year old bombers!

Airshows are cool :)

On another tangent: there are also collectors of WW2 (and older) combat rations, and some people open their contents for review and sometimes consumption today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA6u-sYhFi0

> On the first day of basic training, I also have very vivid memories of drill sergeants mocking us recruits for having bought into the "be all you can be" propaganda :)

Supposedly it's more like "Full Metal Jacket."

I sat in the glass bubble where a gunner would sit at the front of the aircraft

It's rare that I'm envious of anyone, but I'm literally drooling right now :-)

I did a bit of Googling. Here's an article about the B-25:

http://warbirdsnews.com/warbirds-news/memoriam-milan-mike-pu...

If you really wanted to try and take a flight on this plane, or a similar one, I could try to get you in touch with the guy. It's a friend of my Dad's friend.

Here's a video from 1992, which will give you a sense of what is event is/was like, too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt10M55Z2JU

This might help you: https://youtu.be/-YQmkjpP6q8

I'm not sure but it wouldn't surprise me. The DoD pays major league sports to have the anthem and the presentation of colors before games.

The war business needs lots of dedicated people, therefore fueling nationalism and military pride becomes necessary to have a constant influx of applicants. This happens pretty much everywhere, although to different degrees.

In fairness the Canadian army doesn't really need you and to get combat you really need to put in your time and volunteer for the post. In the US army depending on the timeframe you could be through basic training and in a combat zone in less than a year.

I'm not certain how easy it is in the forces to get cushy stay at home jobs, but Canada actually contributes disproportionately highly to armed conflict when compared to the US, it has participated heavily in quite a few recent actions[1]. Both armed forces have logistical and bureaucratic arms along but only the US (AFAICT) has a dedicated stay-at-home path via the National Guard.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_Canada#Pos...

What source do you have that Canada has disproportionate contributions, compared to the US? The Wikipedia page doesn't say that.

Canada spends disproportionately low compared to the US. It's been a source of major compliants in NATO.

1.2526% vs 3+%

Canada does join many more conflicts than it should. But sometimes doesn't have the equipment to get there/back to survive (wearing green camo instead of brown in the desert is a major disadvantage).

> dedicated stay-at-home path via the National Guard

I thought last decade that dedicated stay-at-home path meant you ended up in Iraq or Afghanistan. In other words not so stay-at-home.

Indeed -- many National Guard units have done 4+ deployments to Afghanistan or Iraq.

There was an article a while back about how the Guard used to be fat-ass weekend warriors with gear that was EOL or falling apart. After damn near 20 years of Afghanistan and Iraq most of those Guard units have been multiple times and are equipped and trained to something that resembles actually full-time line units. The Active Duty troopers still get better gear and training, but the Reserves & Guard are a completely different creature than a few decades ago.

There is zero guarantee as National Guard that you won’t be deployed. You can be activated at the state or federal level anytime.

Source: I’m an active duty Army veteran and have extended family in a guard unit that’s currently deployed OCONUS.

Yvan eht nioj.

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