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The gender question is probably already settled — section 28 of the charter guarantees equality between male and female persons, and section 28 isn’t subject to the notwithstanding clause. So any theoretical Canadian conscription needs to be gender neutral.

Conscription has a solid track record of building armies for geographically local missions — self-defence or invading your neighbour. It has a decidedly mixed record of building expeditionary armies for global entanglements. The French had an interesting mixed model for many years, with a...

Is that true, though? It was my understanding that the new dress initiatives were driven by legal advice that the current standard wouldn’t survive a supreme court challenge.

Whether the things actually work is probably a question that should have been asked before polygraphs were made a Treasury Board standard for certain security clearances. A standard that was put in place almost 10 years ago.

Ensign, Colour Sergeant and Guardsman are all proper, legal, army ranks. Unlike those illegal pirate ranks used by the navy. Shifty buccaneers that they are.

The victims’ family nanny was allegedly the inside source providing information to the assassins — interesting twist on ‘the butler did it’. Now waiting for the dark and gritty sequel to Mary Poppins where she passes information over to the East End gangsters who want to settle a score with Mr...

The Army used to officially define its own centre of gravity as “institutional credibility” — many interpret that as doing anything you can to avoid airing dirty laundry in public.

There are other parts of a brigade that are some of the hardest to force generate — the signals squadron, the intelligence company, and the Role 2 capable Field Ambulance.

Getting an exchange posting to 10 Mountain Division but living in Kingston is certainly an interesting flex, that’s for sure. I mean, I don’t like Watertown much either, but still…

And this becomes the field upon which the regimental system fights its battles. Everybody wants a piece of everything, so if one of the brigades becomes the only place where you can potentially get six month rotations to Cyprus/Bosnia/Haiti/Eritrea, and similarly, if that brigade is cut out of...

Oddly enough, the last major culling of reserve regiments was done in the 1960’s — a period when not only were the majority of WWII veterans still very much alive and with us, but many were still serving. Didn’t stop regiments with service in Hong Kong, Normandy and Italy from getting the chop...

Bermuda has recently discontinued conscription. As a result, and due to that island’s economy and cost of living pushing up wages, their new volunteer soldiers are now paid extremely well. A Bermuda Regiment Corporal makes slightly more than a Canadian Warrant Officer — but he will spend every...

For a long time, Steward had a reputation as one of the few hard sea trades that didn’t have a retention problem. It was regularly in the Green, even, although I haven’t seen the most recent numbers. Something to consider when you’re tinkering with peoples career paths might be to start with...

The niche of a light tank is that it lets you have a tank in places where you can’t logistically support MBTs. CVR(T) in the Falklands, Sheridan in Panama, that sort of thing. If you’re trying to up the firepower of your light forces, that‘s probably fine, but it’s ultimately still a niche role...

The 172nd Light Infantry Brigade were the main US Army unit in Alaska for a good chunk of the Cold War — they were then expanded into the 6th Infantry Division in the 1980’s when the light infantry division project got off the ground. No doubt expanding the force in Alaska didn’t hurt when it...

Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) was Chairman of the Senate Defence Appropriations Commitee during the period when the light infantry divisions (6th, 7th, 10th, 25th) were being established. Ted was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a New Yorker.

On paper, everyone agrees with you on the importance of the brigade. Even policy. From SSE: “The Army trains to fight at the brigade group-level.” We sent a brigade to West Germany and we sent a brigade to Korea. We’ve known this for a while. But in practice, building brigades is hard work. And...

The big difference is that if that Sgt is ordered from Bragg to Washington DC his BAH goes from 1500 to 2400 per month. If posted to San Francisco it would be 4800 per month. If that MCpl is posted from Gagetown (one of our most affordable large bases) to Ottawa (one of our least affordable) —...

Unmanned aircraft, counterintuitively, are very manpower intensive. They require people at the operating bases to maintain, fuel and arm the things. They require a legion of shift workers to run the missions. They require technicians to maintain the secure networks that link everything...

The US adjusts BAH each year, for each market. During times of particular market fluctuation, it can be adjusted twice a year, as it was in 2021 for multiple locations. Canada has a policy to adjust PLD annually — the CBI states “PLD rates are taxable and are set annually” — but this direction...