The Conservatives announced their defense platform today. Their proposal calls for more troops and more money. But what it apparently doesn't call for is whats truly needed, a major look at exactly what Canadian defense policy should be, and how we should be spending our defense money. For example does Canada need new tanks? Our current Leopard Is are getting on in years, but do we really need tanks at all? Our air defense destroyers are coming to the end of their useful lives, and need to be replaced. But how many do we really need? And on it goes. The last major defense review was Perrin Beatty's ill fated 1987 White Paper, which came to look grandiose and rather clueless when Communism fell in Eastern Europe a couple of years later. Just throwing more money at DND won't give us the military we truly need, whatever that may be.