The length of those six-month long QL3 courses in the Reg F is driven more by the rhythm of the posting season than by academic requirements. They can certainly be seen off in a few condensed months augmented by extensive DL/DT and an OJT package.
Not sure where this came from but that (as Stuart said to Sheldon) "couldn't be more wrong". Not even training for trade specific coursing is based on posting cycles as courses, due to changing content, are always in a state of flux. Could DL be used in some cases? Yes, it could but we are already seeing that there are issues with 5-10 day DLs for the various Leadership courses due to limited bandwidth at sea and/or the inability to free up personnel on operational deployments. As well, did you know that submariners have to be landed for DL-sort of defeats the purpose doesn't it. DL is not the end all to be all that many leaders are counting on it to be and some people are going to have to wake up to reality soon. Every single QSP review I have ever been involved in has several goals and one is ALWAYS the reduction of time in a classroom and more time in an operational Unit. The problem is that some of these course by virtue of the trade requirement MUST be in the 12 - 18 month range and conventionally a Reservist is not available as there is a follow up 12 month OJPR attached to that. This is NO DIFFERENT than a Community College technician/technologist diploma.
Personally, I see this as the single most prevalent stumbling block to the MESO trade and God knows, many of us are trying to come up with a solution to this but someone either CTing or cross training to something other than KIN class is going to have to sacrifice rank and as unfair as that is, right now, we are scratching our heads trying to come up with a fair and equitable but also effective option. I think we will but it will be years and not months as the grown ups in Ottawa would like to see. As effective as the KIN class and their crews continue to be, the 'Reserve only' crewing (yes, I know there's a WEng (NET) and ETech posit), and at no fault at all to those who gave their all in support of the training and operational deployment of these ships, the leadership forgot about one of the mandates of the Reserves; support to RegF operations. The crews had to become so class specific in their training that some trades (
not all) ceased to be able to meet this mandate...again, no fault AT ALL to the dedicated women and men who continue to sail these ships.
Finally, I don`t like the change in the title you made. Based on what has occurred in the Naval Reservist world in the last 20 years, someone (high up) finally realized a fundamental mistake had been made; tying Naval Reserve training to one class of vessel. It took 20 years to realize this error and leadership wants it fixed `tomorrow`. No one ever said change was good, it is, however, inevitable and I can`t help but wonder where this conversation might be 5 years from now. If it were Pat`s decision right now, it would be a matter of a simple interview to see if an individual wants the RegF lifestyle and a CT over with no loss in rank but a restriction in employment until training can be brought up to the RegF equivalent-That a person`s career may be `stalled ` for a period is an unfortunate reality but atleast there is no loss of rank. Alas, that is a pipedream and I knew it as I typed.
My 4 am Saturday morning two cents worth.
Pat
PS: And yes, I am a firm believer that `atleast` should be one word!