I've left my thoughts about restructure before so I won't get back into regurgitating that. (Although I've drafted an article about restructuring the forces so as to create a preposition brigade in Europe that I'll put up in a day or so).
My view is fairly simple.
1) leave mortars with the infantry. They need them desperately and in the hands of gunners they'll just be part of political posturing;
2) we need both light, medium and heavy forces for the real world and that means appropriate fire support and other artillery weapon systems and not just training guns.
3) the M777 is a good gun for rapid deployment light and middle weight forces and as such should become a standard for at least some reserve artillery units (whether to round out existing regiments with additional batteries or to create fire support for new formations;
4) the M777 is not a good gun for heavy forces (think Latvia) We need a real SP and it needs to be armoured to survive counterfire. There are too many wannabee wheeled unarmoured self propelled systems that just won't do and we shouldn't waste money on one as an interim system. A supercat portee system provides nil value. There are many, many extra M109s around.
5) maintaining self propelled guns in the reserves is very possible. There are at least a dozen reserve and National Guard battalions (and dozens more of M777, HIMARS and Avenger) down south to prove that. They receive less wear and tear than regular battalions and with the right staff and system it's very doable;
6) we need to get our Reg F artillery leadership to get their heads out of their butts and realize once and for all that there are necessary artillery capabilities that aren't needed day-to-day and but absolutely essential in a crisis and just scream out for reserve roles because they'll never get the PYs for the Regular Force positions: air defence is essential; target acquisition (from radars to UAVs); real general support (be it an additional M109 regiment or HIMARS); additional forward observer batteries; how about anti-armour (we have nowhere near enough - and could use at least one battery in the brigade). Just think about it. A modern Russian brigade has
four manoeuvre battalions and
six of various artillery battalions. Why do they do that? Because they're not as stupid as we are!
Latvia is the writing on the wall. It's the wake-up call that should tell everyone that the Army's current striving to be a "symmetric, agile, multi-purpose, combat-ready force" is a crock which will lead to the potential deaths of hundreds of Canadians unnecessarily. The Army needs to reposition itself into mission specific light, medium and heavy forces and retool their doctrine and equipment holdings accordingly. Anything else is professional negligence. In the words of Gen Belzile:
...no planning is being done for a major war.
This is shortsighted in the extreme. A military that thinks in terms of turning itself into a great host in a crisis is very different from one that is small, thinks small, and plans for very little.
As long as we keep looking for the cheapest training aid gun to replace the C3s, we are thinking small and planning for very little.
:stirpot:
op:
