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You could watch it twice on a High Speed Rail trip between Toronto and Montreal.

Its been a few years (well - three decades) since I took what is now called DP 1 for Armour Officers, so take what I say with that caveat. All army officers take BMOQ-A, which is a challenging course. You are in a field environment for much of that course learning about leadership in the...

The German army left Shilo in 2000. The decision to move 2VP from Winnipeg to Shilo was announced in 2001. Perhaps balancing out the economic loss on a small town by an offset from a major centre within the same province that would still have a major DND footprint (RCAF) may have played a part...

We do have several sources of AFV. Our Leopards, for instance, were built in Germany. The General Dynamics Land Systems facility in London is quite impressive and produces a variety of AFVs. It is an important national asset. We have AFVs from other manufacturers and we also have soft-skinned...

Well, the Canadian Army defines an Armoured Fighting Vehicle (AFV) as a vehicle with cross country mobility, armour protection and a weapon system for close combat. We then add new definitions for light, medium and heavy (tank). The definition does allow for a broad range of vehicles, but I...

Good questions,. Light infantry, to include the ARes, would be doing all the DOMOPs that we currently get after. The light brigade group and arctic response battalions would continue to execute the operations that they do now in the north. In periods of of heightened tension the light...

For argument's sake, the following tasks and structures could be used to frame equipment and personnel expenditures. I am trying to stay in the realm of the likely, pushing the boundary with possible/dreaming. I will use generic unit indicators such as battalions in place of regiments since...

This is somewhat micro-tactical, but BMQ is nine weeks long and BMOQ is twelve weeks long. I assume from the upside-down emoticon that Cloud Cover is being facetious, but there are limits to what should be cut to increase throughput. BMQ/BMOQ is only the start of the journey to being trained...

The recruiting surge is indeed occurring.

The training system absolutely requires investment in terms of people (instructors), equipment (to include the NP for parts) and facilities. This is not to say that all individual training (courses) is done by the training system. The field force and ARes units can and do conduct IT. The...

In addition to Puckchaser's point I will offer the following. I will speak in broad generalities. Assuming you are a Regular Force DEO, once you pass BMOQ they will most likely send you to Gagetown New Brunswick. As a officer who has not completed all the Developmental Period 1 (DP 1) courses...

In the army, when we refer to the "Field Force" in a conversation we are referring to the deployable regular force brigades/units. I don't know if this is written down in a doctrine book, but you can find the term being used this way for a long time. So at a meeting we might talk about "how is...

I am not sure what document you are looking at. As Puckchaser said, even it if it is 50 training days (I was tracking 55), that works out to ten weeks before accounting for any admin days/stat holidays. So ten to twelve weeks. In any case, if you are Regular Force they will simply load you on a...

You’ll take the following courses: Basic Military Officer Qualification - Army (BMOQ-A): this is typically done at the Infantry School in Gagetown but it is also run at regional training centers. It’s around 12 weeks and focuses on leadership in a tactical environment at the dismounted section...

Good point, but it is not really remarkable that Secretaries of War in a British parliamentary democracy instituted reforms. That they were not soldiers is not remarkable. It was their job. Now, an army left to its own devices will tend to stay the same as reform on an institutional scale from...

It can be trite to refer to "winners" and "losers" in a war or a battle, but I will still try to do so here. Losers: The Assad regime is clearly the biggest loser. I can't see a way for them back to Syria. Nuff said. The Alawite population of Syria will likely face lots of resentment for...

Race, ethnicity and religion are always important factors in the politics of a given country. Modern Syria was formed out of a province of the Ottoman empire with Lebanon carved out in turn by the French as its own country. Arab Nationalism was a force in the Arab world in the last century...

If I am reading the article correctly, the USN added a Warrior Toughness Program to their basic training in 2022, which added two weeks bringing the length to ten. They have now streamlined that a bit to bring it to nine weeks. This is fairly normal when training is modified. You get feedback...

That would be quite a trick, given that Jordan is something like 95% Sunni, aligned with the West and a relatively stable country. Not to mention that Saudi Arabia borders Jordan. Iran can get money and weapons to Hezbollah in a variety of ways, and it doesn't have to be overland.

The US has provided something like 3 Billion dollars of aid to the Lebanese Armed Forces since 2006, and they have provided military aid to Lebanon for decades before that. Many Lebanese Armed Forces officers have received training at US schools. Three of my fellow 14 International Military...