FJAG said:
Follow on combat forces such as armoured, artillery and engineer ...
You do realize these are all required in the vanguard force and not something that can wait for R1 to replace R0?
MedCorps said:
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• 6 x Maint Coys sounds very ambitious to support from a skills/training perspective.
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This is to address what I am told is a problem, the Res F having to rely totally on the Reg F for equipment maintenance and being the "poor step-brother". A Maint Coy would ideally attract people with civilian vocational training in the field they are employed in the reserve. They would concentrate on vehicle repair, towing operations and weapons repair. Maybe less comprehensive occupations need to be made for Res F versus Reg F in these areas.
The coy tasks would be:
1) provide qualified maintenance individuals to back-fill or augment the Reg F be it on exercise, deployment, sick leave, mat-pat leave. Especially in the summer.
2) Field two or three of each vehicle repair, tow truck, weapons repair teams (I have seen these referred to as light aid detachments / mobile repair teams) for exercise or deployment.
3) Provide support to other reserve units in garrison. Especially for the Maint Coys in Windsor (Close Support Tn Coy) and Hamilton (Medical Unit), but also for other units where weapons and vehicles could be sent.
4) Provide support to the EME School / Base EME for the Maint Coy in Barrie.
I find it odd that Maint is grouped with Log in the Service Bn in the current Res F structure. They seem to get forgotten about in the Res F because of this (I suspect most of the Svc Bns are led by Logistics Officers). They need to be separated out. I was also amazed by the training lengths to get someone qualified. I do not know the answer to this, but someone needs to figure this out if Maint is going to work in the Res F.
Maintaining the PRes fleet is not a part-time job. The solution is not more PRes maintainers to tinker on weekends and evenings; the solution is to establish standing contracts to support the vehicles through local civilian garages (more and more we are contracting this through-life support within the vehicle procurement).
Maintaining the skill sets in the PRes is problematic in itself. If every PRes vehicle maintainer is a civilian Red Seal mechanic, then I suppose you would have a good start point to build from. But, a lot of guys do not want to join the PRes to do their day job in a green uniform. Instead, you must be prepared for the possibility of establishing and sustaining both the technical and the soldier skill sets in every member. This is difficult enough in the Reg F where RCEME techs work full time and are exposed to a greater cross section of military equipment.
EME and Logistics are grouped within common battalions in the Reg F too.
MedCorps said:
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• Does the proposed Ceremonial Guard consist of more than a year round planning staff that is filled-out in the summer?
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I did not know that CG was not full all year. Their website is misleading. I would suggest they have a standing cadre and standing full ceremonial band for NCR use (there must be all sorts of functions in the capital) and then fill out the guard and band for the busy summer season. Maybe by having a standing band, redundancy could be found in the Ottawa Reg F band?
Why invest in capability that is already adequately serving its purpose? The ceremonial guard pulls in sufficient university students on summer break to fill its 3 month function, and the year round planning cadre has been more than up to the task for ages. A PRes band will not displace the NDHQ band because the NDHQ band is available for functions during working hours, and there already is a largely volunteer (ie. unpaid) band with the highlanders in Ottawa.
... On the other hand, I am personally not opposed to the idea of eliminating all Reg F bands. If another part-time band enables such a transition, then I could maybe accept it.
MedCorps said:
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• What does a PRes Postal Coy do?
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A Res F Postal Coy:
1) provides qualified postal clerks / officers (?) to back-fill or augmentation to the Reg F be it on exercise, deployment, sick leave, mat-pat leave. Especially during the summer employment period.
2) generating (mobilizing) up to three mobile military post offices for larger exercises and deployments. I suspect these are not large organizations in terms of personnel requirement. It is my impression from some of my reading that the Reg F is starting to civilianize the military postal system and the Res F might help that process along.
3) generating (mobilizing) a platoon sized formation of "general support troops" for domestic response tasks in the Brockville area.
4) generating subject matter experts for civil-military cooperation tasks where the GoC wants to “globally engage” a country to re-establish their civilian or military postal system post crisis or improve an existing postal system (delivery networks, parcel services, mail processing, physical delivery, customer engagement, commercial products and government postal policy). It is my impression from reading a few things that this is a new and upcoming area the CAF is becoming more interested in. This task requires special expertise and training both in mentoring, teaching and in providing foreign assistance. Canada Post is not in a position to deploy employees overseas (especially where unlimited liability is a factor) despite being part of the "Whole of Government" approach to global engagement.
The military should not get in the business of rebuilding (or mentoring to rebuild) another nation's postal service; this is an area where civilian postal experts can be used. I don't believe the back-fill demand or individual augmentation demand is particularly high for military postal clerks (there are no postal officers). I don't think this proposal warrants the investment. From time to time we do need "general support troops" for domestic response, but this can be done by any occupation. My recommendation is to leave this as an infantry location.
MedCorps said:
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• What does a PRes Ammo Coy do?
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1) provides qualified ammunition technicians / ammunition officers to back-fill or augmentation to the Reg F be it on exercise, deployment, sick leave and mat-pat leave.
2) generating (mobilizing) a field ammo storage team and up to three EOD teams.
3) generating (mobilizing) a platoon sized formation of "general support troops" for domestic response tasks in the Brampton / Oakville / Georgetown area.
4) generating subject matter experts for civil-military cooperation tasks where the GoC wants to “globally engage” a country to re-establish their military ammunition storage system. It is my impression from reading a few things that this is a new and upcoming area the CAF is becoming more interested in. This task requires special expertise and training both in mentoring, teaching and in providing foreign assistance.
5) generating subject matter experts for deployment to teach civilians (especially children) in post-conflict area of the risks of mines and un-exploded munitions.
6) Consideration could be given to establishing a standing ammo storage facility for the large number of Res F units in the Brampton / Oakville / Georgetown area. This would be run by this Res F Coy and would save the drive to Borden.
In the Canadian Army, post-conflict mines and UXO are a Combat Engineer problem and not Ammo Techs. Operational EOD is done by Combat Engineers and Clearance Divers; Depot and garrison level EOD are Ammo Tech roles. Educating children of explosive hazards does not require a technical expert of the threat. Creating a TDM in the Brampton / Oakville / Georgetown area would result in a full time staffing requirement ... this is not a good fit for part-time reservists. If one wants reserve Ammo Techs, it might better be achieved by creating a few Class A positions in CFAD Bedford or even with the TDM of larger bases. Like the postal clerks, I don't see the value in creating a new PRes occupation in this area.
MedCorps said:
• 5 x Med Coys also sound very ambitious to support from a skills/training perspective, and these are not Army Reserve.
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They should be Army Reserve. Not having your field medical support owned and tasked by the Army is strange. Not having some dedicated garrison medical support for the Res F is counter-productive given the business hours of the Res F vs. Reg F. These Med Coys are all in areas where there are medical / nursing or paramedic schools (McMaster, U of O, U of T, Western). Recruiting would be targeted on these civilian professionals. These units would also provide medical screening support to Res F units in area (or via a mobile road show) to conduct medical screening (which I am told the Reg F does poorly for the Res F). Deployment of these folks (like the recent Ebola) thing I think will be on the rise as part of the GoC “global engagement” movement.
The Reg F Army does not have medics either. It is a whole other stovepipe in the empire building CAF. I am not opposed to more PRes health services capability, but breaking the HSS empire is not worth the fight within a PRes context.
As far as the Reg F doing a poor job supporting the PRes, is this a performance shortcoming or is it a dissatisfaction over the limited entitlement that PRes have for medical services? If it is the latter, creating more capability will change nothing.
MedCorps said:
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• What does a PRes Dental Coy do? It would not be Army Reserve if it were to exist.
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They should be Army Reserve. Not having field dental support currently owned Army is strange. It is also strange that Res F personnel do not get Reg F dental support when dental fitness is required for deployment I am told.
1) provides qualified dental technicians to back-fill or augmentation to the Reg F be it on exercise, deployment, sick leave, mat-pat leave. You will never get a dentist to leave their civilian practice to do back-fill, especially given the rates of Res F pay.
2) generating (mobilizing) three mobile dental clinics for exercises and deployments. These mobile clinics could also visit Res F units in 4 Cdn Div to conduct periodic dental examinations (and minor repairs) for Res F personnel.
3) generating (mobilizing) a platoon of "general support troops" for domestic response tasks in the Cambridge / Kitchener area.
4) generating subject matter experts (officers) for civil-military cooperation tasks where the GoC wants to “globally engage” a country using dentistry. This task requires special expertise and training both in mentoring, teaching and in providing foreign assistance.
Observations here are generally the same as above. The HSS empire owns dental services and not the Army. Growing this capability in the PRes will not afford regular dental services to PRes members because there is no entitlement. And when you want "general support troops" then the efficient means to generate these is with Infantry and not technical trades.
MedCorps said:
• 3 x Int Coys sounds like overkill (especially beside only 5 x Rifle Coys).
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Units are not linked like they are now, so do not use ratios like 3 Int Coys to 5 Light Inf Coys as it does not matter as they will never deploy as a Bde. I read that the ASIC / Army Intelligence Regiment concept is the rage and it seems like the Reg F is sucking positions away from the combat arms to staff these large organizations. Having 3 x Int Coys could help offset these Reg F position shifts. It also seems like military intelligence world is well suited for reservists who may have a number of civilian occupations / education that would be useful to the military on a part-time basis.
You are not proposing that the PRes deploy in brigades, but there should still be some balance to the numbers; the force generation base should be proportional to the individual augmentation demand that will exist. 3:5 seems steep to me.
MedCorps said:
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• The Army Reserve does not have Construction Engineers. Like maintainers, this is difficult to support from a skills/training perspective.
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I think they should have a Troop of these guys. It seems like a hole in the current establishment. 30 guys who do the skilled trades in their civilian Brick and Stone Mason, General Carpenter, Plumber, etc Monday to Friday then you would just need to learn and master the solider and leadership skills and learn the army way of doing construction engineering. Two weeks of training in the summer could be spent working on a base, etc learning the organizational culture while still doing your trade.
Like the RCEME techs, it is difficult to find guys who want to join the PRes to do their civilian job. Even more so than RCEME Techs, military construction trades are not so nicely analogous to civilian trades (generally, the military skill sets cover multiple civilian trades while leaving out skills of each trade that are not militarily relevant). The RCAF makes construction troops work by hiring mostly retired military, having a larger Reg F presence, and sending the few off-the-street recruits on the year long Reg F trades training. It works, but is this a model the Army wants to introduce to the Army Reserve?
MedCorps said:
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• What does a Engr Sp Tp do in the Reserve? Is this Hy Eqpt, ROWPU, a bridge train or something else?
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1) provides qualified combat engineers to back-fill or augmentation to the Reg F be it on exercise, deployment, sick leave, mat-pat leave.
2) generating (mobilizing) a ROWPU for exercises and deployments.
3) generating (mobilizing) a section of "general support troops" for domestic response tasks in the Waterloo / St Thomas area.
4) generating subject matter experts (officers) for civil-military cooperation tasks where the GoC wants to “globally engage” a country using civil-engineering. This task requires special expertise and training both in mentoring, teaching and in providing foreign assistance.
This Tp has a foot print in Waterloo which has a big engineering school.
If you have properly trained engineers, you are wasting them as "general support troops" in domestic response. In domestic operations, there is always a job for combat engineers. Currently, the PRes Engr support troops are established with specific roles but many of those roles are not actually realised because the training or equipment does not exist. PRes EROC Tps and Hy Eqpt Tps exist on paper but not in reality - The EOD, vehicle and Hy Eqpt training is not provided to PRes and the equipment does not exist outside the Reg F. The "light Hy Eqpt" (aka. backhoe & dump truck) capability does function within the PRes, though I don't know that the resources exist to actually field full troops where they are designated. There are also some water supply troops, and I do not know how these are resourced. In any case, if you want to say there is going to be an Engr Sp Tp, then you need to specify what capability that Tp embodies.