The thing is, we'll take 4.5 years minimum for a young officer to go through school and do phase training to reach OFP. But we won't give 16 months to get a Private a diploma (the net with trades training is even lower). But we know this is attractive. So now we cobble together NCMSTEP to pay twice as much for these kids to attend civilian colleges and take 20 months to graduate with no control over the curriculum. We could just post them to Borden for 2 years and get them from recruit to educated and trained Pte ready to do whatever fleet training and get to work. We refuse to acknowledge how attractive that would be.
Canada moves to 2% GDP end of FY25/26 - PMMC
- Thread starter Maxman1
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Mate, that is just a contract. As you say, the existing troops aren't obligated by their contracts but could be approached. All subsequent contracts should have a continuing service clause.
That shouldn't present too many difficulties. You are among the many here that are keen on compulsion under existing law and eliminating the, what was it, come as you like mentality?
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British Army Apprenticeships | Amazing Apprenticeships
Explore over 40 British Army apprenticeships across engineering, healthcare, logistics, intelligence, and more. Earn while you learn, gain qualifications, and build a career full of adventure and purpose.
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I also recall a junior tradesman program that enrolled kids at 16. School leaving age was 15 at the time.
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But. It. Doesn't. Need. To.
I'm one of the old OCTP crowd. Straight in on a nine-year enrollment with my senior matric (junior matric would have been good enough) and reached OFP as a field artillery officer in ten months of full-time service.
Do that in large bunches and keep the ones that pan out and say thank you with an education benefit that don't.
The problem was that back in the early 1970s we offered all of those, like me, the opportunity to convert our 9-year contracts to indefinite service. Lots of boneheads stayed around because of that and we ended up in the 1990s having a commission, heavily weighed down by college professors, say that every officer needs an undergraduate degree. Give me a break.
It's part of the release interview half-heartedly raised by a bored clerk. Most don't bother to transfer.
I sure am. The NDA creates the various service components and basically states that you serve until released. Everything else, the terms of service, the duty to attend training, the voluntary release provisions are policy encapsuled in regulations, directives, policies etc set up by the defence bureaucracy. Much of what is wrong can be changed internally within DND and the CAF (with a nod to TB when finances are concerned).That shouldn't present too many difficulties. You are among the many here that are keen on compulsion under existing law and eliminating the, what was it, come as you like mentality?
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The late Old Sweat was probably one of the best examples of the high quality of individual that the soldier apprentice program could create. I knew a lot more of them in my day who were some of the best Snr NCOs that we had. It was a shame when they ended the program.
We will need to offer more than one pathway. That said, I think you'd be surprised by how many would sign up for a year if they knew that school would then be paid for. That's the part you're missing here. In exchange for reaching OFP and committing to a reserve unit, they get $10k in tuition paid for every year. This is even more attractive than the US GI Bill which draws in tens of thousands of recruits each year, down there.
Keep in mind that it's easy to also defer start by a semester or two in many programs. That gives 6 months from high school graduation till end of the year. We should be able to get a motivated kid trained as a basic infanteer or armoured crewman or boatswain in that time. Then they get to start at their unit as basically a skilled apprentice, with $10k in tuition paid for. We get a better trained reservist. They get a massive leg up financially and between regular and summer training will not have to worry about student loans. All for delaying school by 1 semester.
You can still offer the traditional summer training pathway. But there's no justification to give them tuition assistance then.
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But. It. Doesn't. Need. To.
I'm one of the old OCTP crowd. Straight in on a nine-year enrollment with my senior matric (junior matric would have been good enough) and reached OFP as a field artillery officer in ten months of full-time service.
Do that in large bunches and keep the ones that pan out and say thank you with an education benefit that don't.
The problem was that back in the early 1970s we offered all of those, like me, the opportunity to convert our 9-year contracts to indefinite service. Lots of boneheads stayed around because of that and we ended up in the 1990s having a commission, heavily weighed down by college professors, say that every officer needs an undergraduate degree. Give me a break.
It's part of the release interview half-heartedly raised by a bored clerk. Most don't bother to transfer.
I sure am. The NDA creates the various service components and basically states that you serve until released. Everything else, the terms of service, the duty to attend training, the voluntary release provisions are policy encapsuled in regulations, directives, policies etc set up by the defence bureaucracy. Much of what is wrong can be changed internally within DND and the CAF (with a nod to TB when finances are concerned).
Is there any reason why the government couldn't make an index of all past members by their SINs and use that as the foundation of their 300,000 Supplementary Reserve? At least they would know what the available resouce was. They wouldn't have to start calling prople in. But perhaps a pleasantly worded email asking if they might be avalable to assist in some form and a promotional campaign.
And I agree with you on the officer training.
OCTP
RESO
MITCP
Even Sandhurst only takes 44 weeks. 8 weeks if you already have passed basic training (DP1?)
It's not the 70s though. We live in a different time. Aside from just the lack of attractiveness of direct service, we also live in a world where college is the new high school and today's high school graduate is probably not anywhere as mature as you were back then. They may get through training. Not sure I trust them leading troops full time at 20 though.
I won't even get to the changing nature of war and the impact of Somalia in driving a fully degreed officer corps.
Sure. But something like 80% of Sandhurst entrants have degrees. And that percentage keeps going up. I would add too that British A levels themselves are a lot more than high school in Canada. Closer to a year of university here.
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Meanwhile, how do you find kit for this new army?
USMC General has an idea for suppliers.
“When you come with it [a prototype], don’t come with one with the intention to take it home with you and all the data that was collected while we conducted an exercise together,” Lt. Gen. James Glynn, commander of Marine Corps Forces Pacific, said Thursday at AFCEA’s TechNet Indo-Pacific in Hawaii.
....
“Come with five. Take one or two home and leave three with us and we’ll continue to work on it,” he added. We’ll give you access to all the data that’s coming off of it and we’ll do everything we can to break it with the goal of making it better.”
General tells industry to bring more prototypes to help forces move at speed - Breaking Defense
"If we have the prototypes, prototypes can move very quickly to what we actually operate on," Marine Corps Forces Pacific Commander Lt. Gen. James Glynn said.breakingdefense.com
Glynn said in the future dynamic operating environment, the name of the game is speed. Forces don’t have time to wait for perfect solutions or the acquisition community to take years to develop something.
“Partner with us to fail. Got no problem when it doesn’t work,” he said. “If we have the prototypes, prototypes can move very quickly to what we actually operate on.”
Further to this
Anduril took a flyer on the Aussies buying their Ghost Shark XLUUV. They started building their factory 18 months before they had the contract. Their first unit came off the assembly line 51 days after the contract was signed and ahead of the promised Jan 2026 delivery.
Speed and risk and accomodating failure. All characteristics well known to Canadian bureaucrats.
Submarines and Silicon Valley: Inside Anduril’s Australian gambit
Anduril opens a submarine factory in Sydney as its seeks to embed its AI and its Silicon Valley ethos into the defence world.
www.forbes.com.au
I particularly like this quote:
“People are always like, ‘Are you doing too many things?’ But it’s a pretty simple formula. We’re not scaling one 6,000-person company. We’re scaling a lot of 300-to 500-person companies.
“You get people space to run and just let them go.”
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One thing my life working with Europeans in a North American environment has taught me is how much more practically inclined their education system is.
I saw it in dairies and fishing vessels. Operators that we took off the street the Europeans put a year or two of education and apprenticeship into before they left them alone in a production facility.
Those people were more easily promotable because they had a better understanding of people, processes and the occupational environment.
I also noted that their gymnasium, baccalaureate, masters system didn't map precisely on North American standards. Again, they were much more practically inclined than the North Americans.
A North American engineer with a masters degree is already off exploring some esoterica while their Scandinavian counterparts are on the lathe and preparing to weld their next bright idea onto a plant that needs optimising.
PrairieFella
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Quadruple it and it might be attractive. 250 bucks get you dinner and tank of gas for a family of four these days.
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Fair enough. Your price is 1000. 300 MCAD per year.
DND spends 221 MCAD on Cadets and Jr Rangers per year (4800 per cadet per year).
5000 Rangers are authorized at 14 days of Class A pay per year
Assume about 200 CAD per day (Somewhere about Corporal as an average rank)
2800 CAD per person per year
14 MCAD per year for 5000
280 MCAD per year for 100,000
840 MCAD per year for 300,000
Order of magnitude estimates for the cost of maintaining a reserve.
Costs of administering, equipping and training, of course, are over and above that.
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MilEME09
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A mil service tax credit might not be a bad idea, in the grand scheme it would affect less than 1% of the population but would definitely help service members.
daftandbarmy
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It's almost as if some reliable data, informing the CAF about what the target audience might prefer best, is in order.
But, of course, we'll probably just run more displays in malls because that's what we did in 1979
We have a system like that in Canada. CÉGEP.
Nah. This is feel good nonsense to justify your opinion. You'll not be able to back this up with a shred of evidence.
At least when you talked about their system before post secondary, you were on to something.
MilEME09
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Almost as if having bases near major cities helped with recruiting and presence?It's almost as if some reliable data, informing the CAF about what the target audience might prefer best, is in order.
But, of course, we'll probably just run more displays in malls because that's what we did in 1979
