With 68K active duty regulars that’s $570 a bag.
Despite the defence department spending more than $34.8 million on new sleeping bags, the Canadian Army asked late last year that hundreds of soldiers headed to a joint northern exercise in Alaska with the Americans be issued with old, 1960s-vintage bedrolls.
Troops who had used the recently issued General Purpose Sleeping Bag System (GPSBS) late last fall in a preparatory exercise found “several critical issues,” according to an internal briefing note obtained by CBC News.
More than 350 soldiers belonging to the 3rd battalion Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (3 PPCLI) deployed to Ram Falls Provincial Park, west of Red Deer, Alta., in late November last year, where they spent several days training for northern operations.
Temperatures during the deployment ranged from – 5C during the day to – 20C at night.
Logistik Unicorp of Quebec got the contract.
Give them a wool blanket and tell them to stop whining. A wool blanket was good enough for their grandfathers.
570 bucks is not that expensive for an arctic sleeping bag. I’d pay that for one if it actually worked.
+1
I paid $300 to get an old sleep set from a surplus shop. Great purchase.
Sleep like a baby in the cold now.
I am ready for the onset of no more civilization.
Given that they are only looking for 3000 of the Extreme Cold Sleeping Bag Army, to upgrade these kits to handle canadian winters, I suspect the actual cost is a lot higher…
That calculation includes navy and airforce, support personnel.
I’m rather shocked that an article from CBC didn’t blame the conservatives for the problem
FF sake, when did grunts get permission to sleep on exercise? Who’s in charge of this daycare?
So basically the Fifth Column that is destroying Canada is also active within military procurement.
But the half-wits of CSIS, the mendacious RCMP and the jerkoffs in the CSE are all worried about the alt/far/extreme right.
Rome is burning but we see three dudes crossing the Rubicon with a candle.
If you want soldiers functional in the arctic, a good sleeping bag is much cheaper than frost bight treatment. That’s a reasonable price. I have a 55 year old Woods Arctic Three Star and have slept outside in minus 20 degree F. temperatures. Prior to that purchase, I inherited my Grandfather’s artic sleeping bag that he used throughout WW2 with the Canadian Artillery and it was almost as good but rather worn out.
I was in the army in the 80s and I remember a discussion had with an old sergeant who was telling me about going on exercises in the prairies in the winter with nothing more than the clothes on their back and a woolen blanket. His experience would have been 1950s. We had rather good winter sleeping bags, but unless they’ve replaced them which they probably haven’t they’d be getting pretty threadbare by now.
jfk, they were both “general purpose” and not warm enough. Read the text.
You know, if they made it a requirement that those responsible for the acquisition of the new sleeping bags had to spend a week using them to sleep in conditions that the canadian army expects to encounter using them, prior to acquisition, then maybe we’d get something that worked.
Looking at the add on ECSB, one can easily see how useless military procurement is, when they are asking for a usable life of 3 years, or a shelf life of 5 years, yet it’s replacing something that’s been in use or storage since 1965…
Also, why doesn’t anyone report where these sleeping bags came from? did they just leave a pile of money on floor of the procurement office, and then magically these sleeping bags sprang into existence?
Logistik Unicorp of Quebec got the overall contract for this, and thousands of other items.
I spent about $450 at a surplus store and bought a brand new, old style bag complete. I’ve used them in real cold Temps like minus 40 and down.
When I was in the reserves I somehow had something to do whenever a winter exercise involved sleeping in the field. Thank goodness we weren’t grunts and usually had barracks.
You can buy on auction all the winter army surplus clothing and sleeping bag that come up on Ritchie Brothers auction quite frequently. Buy American.
Some sleeping bags on now to minus 10 degrees. 75 pieces ,latest bid $225.
What do you expect? They used up all the best insulating fibers stocking the tampon dispensers in the men’s washrooms. And as for numbers, Canada would be hard pressed to put 5000 regular soldiers into action.
That’s not a sleeping bag! It’s Chrystia Freeland.