Divining the right role, capabilities, structure, and Regimental System for Canada's Army Reserves

[cameron]

So here's a related question.  A commissioned officer in a PRes Armour Regiment; for intance, an Lt., volunteers for an overseas combat deployment, say Afghanistan.  Seeing as how he would have been trained to command a completely different type of vehicle than his Reg Force counterparts, what role would he play with a Reg Force unit deployed overseas?

 

[brihard]

So here's a related question.  A commissioned officer in a PRes Armour Regiment; for intance, an Lt., volunteers for an overseas combat deployment, say Afghanistan.  Seeing as how he would have been trained to command a completely different type of vehicle than his Reg Force counterparts, what role would he play with a Reg Force unit deployed overseas?

We didn't have reserve officers commanding regular force armoured units. The only reserve armoured officers I saw in command roles overseas were doing convoy escorts with platoons formed nearly completely of reservists, or in specialized roles like the CIMIC/PSYOPS world. The regular force has more than enough qualified officers to command its units and subunits.

 

[cameron]

Thanks Brihard, you've answered my question as to what slot a PRes Armoured Officer fills on an overseas deployment.  Thankfully, commanding a platoon tasked to convoy escort allows him/her to execute one of the armoured/cavalry roles they were trained for in an operational theatre.  Just one question, I know what PSYOPS is but what's CIMIC?

 

[daftandbarmy]

We didn't have reserve officers commanding regular force armoured units. The only reserve armoured officers I saw in command roles overseas were doing convoy escorts with platoons formed nearly completely of reservists, or in specialized roles like the CIMIC/PSYOPS world. The regular force has more than enough qualified officers to command its units and subunits.

In other words you mean 'quarantined', right?

 

[KevinB]

My laptop died last week so a missed a lot of discussions.
FJAG - I fully agree with you, the Reserves need legislation to enable it.
  Down here the Gov gives tax breaks to companies hiring veterans, so hiring NG folks is not just protected but encouraged.  Something the Cdn Gov may wish to consider.

I also fully agree that the Regular Force and its Regimental Structures is backwards and problematic (at best).

Infanteer has it dead nuts that the CF as a whole is stuck in an outdated method - one that needs to re-think it self for the good of the CF as a whole, the Navy seems to be a leader is this respect (as much as it pains me to say).

Military organization needs to be fluid and adaptive -- if it was - instead of coming up with wonderful buzz words (and new HQ's) it would be flexible and responsive, prepared as it can be for Canada's defensive needs.

 

[FJAG]

My laptop died last week so a missed a lot of discussions.
FJAG - I fully agree with you, the Reserves need legislation to enable it.
  Down here the Gov gives tax breaks to companies hiring veterans, so hiring NG folks is not just protected but encouraged.  Something the Cdn Gov may wish to consider.

I also fully agree that the Regular Force and its Regimental Structures is backwards and problematic (at best).

Infanteer has it dead nuts that the CF as a whole is stuck in an outdated method - one that needs to re-think it self for the good of the CF as a whole, the Navy seems to be a leader is this respect (as much as it pains me to say).

Military organization needs to be fluid and adaptive -- if it was - instead of coming up with wonderful buzz words (and new HQ's) it would be flexible and responsive, prepared as it can be for Canada's defensive needs.

I'm also quite a fan of the US Montgomery GI Bill provisions which help significantly with educational programs post active duty.

I have looked at most of the benefits available to Canadian Reservists and find that for the most part they're based on a "what have you done for us today" philosophy that kick in for "actual days paraded" rather than the fact that reservists also form a "stand-by" force. (a key example is the transition away from the RFRG which rewarded "years served" rather than "days paraded"). To me it seems that reservists have become just another exercise in "bean counting".

Regretfully I have come to the conclusion that our senior leadership simply doesn't care enough to improve the system to make it more attractive to potential reservists or more effective for the country. I've :deadhorse: often enough when I was still in; at this point I just get :gloomy: when I see the wasted potential.

:cheers:

 

[dapaterson]

I'm also quite a fan of the US Montgomery GI Bill provisions which help significantly with educational programs post active duty.

I have looked at most of the benefits available to Canadian Reservists and find that for the most part they're based on a "what have you done for us today" philosophy that kick in for "actual days paraded" rather than the fact that reservists also form a "stand-by" force. (a key example is the transition away from the RFRG which rewarded "years served" rather than "days paraded"). To me it seems that reservists have become just another exercise in "bean counting".

RFRG, like the Norwegian Blue parrot, is no more.  However, in its dying throes it was converted to CAF severance, and paid out based on years of service, not days paraded, and done so retroactively up to the day when it ceased to accumulate.

On the plus side, there is up to $2000 per year for for years in academic upgrading for Reservists (50% of tuition and books).  Not perfect, but a decent incentive.

Regretfully I have come to the conclusion that our senior leadership simply doesn't care enough to improve the system to make it more attractive to potential reservists or more effective for the country. I've :deadhorse: often enough when I was still in; at this point I just get :gloomy: when I see the wasted potential.

:cheers:

Change is slow in any organization; the platoon commanders in Afghanistan will command the CAF in another 20 years.  I once despaired of seeing change - then realized that it comes slowly, particularly in intensely small-c conservative organizations like the military. 

 

[KevinB]

My concern would be if the then Lt/Capt's can survive that long? and more pressingly can the CF.

 

[GR66]

I just picked up "A National Force - The Evolution of Canada's Army, 1950-2000" by Peter Kasurak at my local library.  I'm not far enough into it to comment on the book but he does discuss the Militia in Chapter 1.

In the 1950's he states:

"What is clear is that, although the army had recognized that the key problem with the Militia was the incompatibility of part-time training with the skills required, it failed to design a workable solution.  Once the Second World War reservoir of military skills had been depleted, the Militia went into a death spiral"

In 1956, then Chief of the General Staff Graham commissioned Brigadier W.A.B Anderson to undertake a confidential study of the organization, equipment and training of the Militia.  As a result of his findings Anderson presented four options to CGS Graham:

• Plan A - Use existing Militia units to create a ready reserve of full-time, short-service soldiers recruited from sixteen- to twenty-four-year-olds serving for one year.
• Plan B - Make the strongest Militia units into the "Regular Army Reserve" as auxiliary battalions linked to Regular Force units.  The remaining units would become the "Militia" and would be given basic training to provide a partly trained nucleus for home and civil defence operations.
• Plan C - Link Militia units in pairs, one to be deployable and the other to be a depot and training unit.  Units would not know which had been designated as the deployable unit.
• Plan D - Some Militia units would become part of the Regular Army to provide troops to supplement the field force.

Both Anderson and Graham favoured Plan B, but a federal election took place, and the Conservatives led by John Diefenbaker came to power.  The new minister of national defence, George Pearkes, had been a strong supporter of a civil defence role for the Militia and, as we have already seen, did not believe that mass mobilization served a purpose in the nuclear age."

So it's not just 68 pages of thread circling around the same issue and same possible solutions...it's over 50 years of inability to solve the problem.  Organizational inertia and a conservative culture are one thing...this is total organizational paralysis!

 

[Kirkhill]

GR66

I have often heard the expression "the battles of academia are so long and bloody because the matter so little".

Perhaps that is ultimately the problem here - It just doesn't matter.

 

[Monsoon]

So it's not just 68 pages of thread circling around the same issue and same possible solutions...it's over 50 years of inability to solve the problem.  Organizational inertia and a conservative culture are one thing...this is total organizational paralysis!

Is Afghanistan now so far in the rearview mirror that we're back to conidently asserting that the militia is a hopeless bag of hammers that has no role to play? Frankly, in 68 pages the only legitimate criticism of the organization I've seen is, "Many reserve units are parading far below strength." Given the fact that units releasing 20-odd members a year are being given recruiting quotas of 6 to 10 to save training money, this should hardly come as a surprise to anyone.

Dare I suggest that the militia has no problems at all that an injection of cash and some will to support the organization at the CA HQ level won't solve?

 

[GR66]

GR66

I have often heard the expression "the battles of academia are so long and bloody because the matter so little".

Perhaps that is ultimately the problem here - It just doesn't matter.

You're probably right on that.  It certainly seems clear that as early as the 50's the leaders of the Army/CF seriously questioned the need for the Militia at all.  A repeated theme in the book is that both military and civilian leaders really question the need for the Militia at all, beyond a vague political purpose. 

Large scale mobilization has been almost universally seen as being a non-starter ever since the USSR got the bomb.  Any war between nuclear powers would be over (either escalated to nuclear war or negotiated to prevent nuclear war) long before any mobilized troops would have the ability to take part in the conflict.  Besides that there has simply never been the capability to rapidly deploy or even equip said mobilized forces.

In the case of a non-superpower, or regional proxy conflict, the view seems to have been that there would never be mobilization of Reserve units and that their only role would be individual augmentation.  Even in this case the Reserves were seen as preferably used to augment domestic Reg Force positions in order to allow those Regulars to deploy as opposed to direct augmentation by Reservists. 

It seems to me that our (military and political leadership's) self-delusion about what the CF is REALLY capable of doing results in a Militia (and Reg Force) structure that is simply far too bloated and inefficient.  Ironically, accepting a reduced (in size anyway) role for the CF would likely be something that would be politically sellable to the majority of Canadians while at the same time the resulting, leaner and realistically organized military could hopefully be more efficient and reasonably well equipped.

Hamiltongs:  I don't think anyone is saying that Reservists are "bags of hammers"....just that the Militia as an organization is structurally designed to fulfill a role (fully trained individual augmentation) for which they are really not well suited, or alternately a role for which there may be no real need and/or ability to support (massive mobilization).  There are always individuals that make liars out of any generalization, however, and of course many Reservists played a key role in Afghanistan.  The question though is whether the Militia as currently designed is the best way to fulfill this role.

 

[KevinB]

I'll partially say it...
Realistically without legislation the Militia as a whole entity is a useless bag of hammers, as far as units are concerned.
  If there is a lesson to be learned from Reservist augmentation in Afghanistan - is that anything beyond a PL is a probably a waste.
Perhaps in some trades Maj could be justified.

I would personally opine from a strict operational value POV that if you slash and burn a lot of Res Senior Officer and Senior NCO positions - the monies that where going to those PY's (or whatever term is used for Reserve positions) could be used for more training and equipment at the Section and Pl level.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

You're probably right on that.  It certainly seems clear that as early as the 50's the leaders of the Army/CF seriously questioned the need for the Militia at all.  A repeated theme in the book is that both military and civilian leaders really question the need for the Militia at all, beyond a vague political purpose. 

Large scale mobilization has been almost universally seen as being a non-starter ever since the USSR got the bomb.  Any war between nuclear powers would be over (either escalated to nuclear war or negotiated to prevent nuclear war) long before any mobilized troops would have the ability to take part in the conflict.  Besides that there has simply never been the capability to rapidly deploy or even equip said mobilized forces.

In the case of a non-superpower, or regional proxy conflict, the view seems to have been that there would never be mobilization of Reserve units and that their only role would be individual augmentation.  Even in this case the Reserves were seen as preferably used to augment domestic Reg Force positions in order to allow those Regulars to deploy as opposed to direct augmentation by Reservists. 

It seems to me that our (military and political leadership's) self-delusion about what the CF is REALLY capable of doing results in a Militia (and Reg Force) structure that is simply far too bloated and inefficient.  Ironically, accepting a reduced (in size anyway) role for the CF would likely be something that would be politically sellable to the majority of Canadians while at the same time the resulting, leaner and realistically organized military could hopefully be more efficient and reasonably well equipped.

Hamiltongs:  I don't think anyone is saying that Reservists are "bags of hammers"....just that the Militia as an organization is structurally designed to fulfill a role (fully trained individual augmentation) for which they are really not well suited, or alternately a role for which there may be no real need and/or ability to support (massive mobilization).  There are always individuals that make liars out of any generalization, however, and of course many Reservists played a key role in Afghanistan.  The question though is whether the Militia as currently designed is the best way to fulfill this role.

Mind you they questioned the need for anything army related with the advent of nuclear weapons. We were going to be bombed to the stone age was the opinion.

 

[Old Sweat]

Mind you they questioned the need for anything army related with the advent of nuclear weapons. We were going to be bombed to the stone age was the opinion.

There was an oped piece in the Ottawa Citizen last Saturday questioning the need of an army for other than minor tasks in Canada and suggesting the funds should be diverted to the RCAF and especially the RCN.

 

[GR66]

There was an oped piece in the Ottawa Citizen last Saturday questioning the need of an army for other than minor tasks in Canada and suggesting the funds should be diverted to the RCAF and especially the RCN.

I guess first we need to send all the bad guys a memo that they must now stay in the open or on boats...

 

[McG]

... in 68 pages the only legitimate criticism of the organization I've seen is, "Many reserve units are parading far below strength." Given the fact that units releasing 20-odd members a year are being given recruiting quotas of 6 to 10 to save training money, this should hardly come as a surprise to anyone.

Dare I suggest that the militia has no problems at all that an injection of cash and some will to support the organization at the CA HQ level won't solve?

The problem is not that units are under strength.  The Army Reserve is capped at a prescribed size.  The problem is that we have an organization that puts a LCol over top of a small company.  Giving resources and authority for reserve units to grow to 500 pers is outside the CAF's scope.  What is within the CAF's scope is cutting the LCol, Maj, CWO And MWO which are extraneous to the authorized strength.

 

[Monsoon]

The problem is not that units are under strength.  The Army Reserve is capped at a prescribed size.  The problem is that we have an organization that puts a LCol over top of a small company.  Giving resources and authority for reserve units to grow to 500 pers is outside the CAF's scope.  What is within the CAF's scope is cutting the LCol, Maj, CWO And MWO which are extraneous to the authorized strength.

Okay, I'll make the case if a devil's advocate is what's needed: expecting a 500-600 multiplier per LCol and CWO is a regular force infantry battalion-specific construct that fails in application all across the regular force CF, to say nothing of the reserve. The command challenges of commanding a 200-person militia unit that needs to do it's own recruiting, training of personnel much of the way to the OFP, career management, personnel administration, finance/budgeting for pay, etc, etc, etc are of the sort that few regular force operational units in the CF face, and they don't scale down much in complexity with unit size. Obviously, commanding a 300-person MP unit in the Reg F comes with operational demands that don't exist in the reserve, but it's important not to completely discount the admin burdens placed on the command teams on reserve units.

Now, I say this as someone who's not in the army and who just finished a three-year command tour of a 200-person reserve unit as a two-and-a-half without incident, and I'm certainly not going to argue that things couldn't be better organized across the reserve component. But I will say that given the current administrative demands on a militia unit, having a LCol CO and a CWO RSM is not manifestly unreasonable. I could (and won't for a variety of OPSEC reasons) count off a number of sub-100 person units in the CF that don't bear half as much admin burden and which have LCol/CWO command teams. Without a substantial re-org of how reserve admin is done (why, for instance, does CMP pay for and administer Reg F members' training to the OFP but not reservist training? Why does DGMC manage Reg F career admin but not much of reserve career admin?), giving the people trying to manage an already tough situation a round of demotions isn't going to solve more problems than it creates.

 

[McG]

... expecting a 500-600 multiplier per LCol and CWO is a regular force infantry battalion-specific construct that fails in application all across the regular force CF, to say nothing of the reserve.

Okay, but 300 to 400 is not unreasonable expectation of other arms in an Army brigade (the sort of construct which the Army reserve follows) and Army reserve units are not established to come close to this for their LCol and CWO leadership team.  Instead of three units established at under 200 pers each with its own LCol and CWO, there is no reason that the Army Reserve could not have one unit with the 400 to 500 man establishment.  The hardship of every unit managing recruiting and training to OFP would also suddenly find itself with a deeper resource pool to manage the tasks.  Instead of BMQ courses with six candidates (which I have seen in the PRes), one course runs at full load (reducing the overhead demands of Ops staff attention, allocation of Crse O & Crse NCO, use of training resources).

I could (and won't for a variety of OPSEC reasons) count off a number of sub-100 person units in the CF that don't bear half as much admin burden and which have LCol/CWO command teams.

If you cannot identify the units for OPSEC reasons, then I would tend to suspect there is something about those units that is a little different.  But it does not matter.  This is an appeal to hypocrisy - a logical fallacy.  One cannot justify organization A doing something wrong by pointing that organization B is also doing the same thing wrong.  Instead of defending the reserve excess of HQs, you have illustrated that there is potentially room for the same house cleaning in the Reg F (something we already know and something that warrants a discussion in a thread not about Army Reserve organization to address).

... given the current administrative demands on a militia unit, having a LCol CO and a CWO RSM is not manifestly unreasonable. ... Without a substantial re-org of how reserve admin is done (why, for instance, does CMP pay for and administer Reg F members' training to the OFP but not reservist training? Why does DGMC manage Reg F career admin but not much of reserve career admin?)...

Good.  Let's address the concerns.  Army Reserve units train BMQ and BMQ(L), but I have normally seen the trades training done at Area/Div training centres or national schools.  Should the first two courses become a CBG responsibility, or maybe economies are gained through larger units that can run these courses at max load (as opposed to below min load)?  Should career management become a CBG or Div responsibility?

All of this is in the realm of the CAF's ability to influence and control.

 

[Monsoon]

Okay, but 300 to 400 is not unreasonable expectation of other arms in an Army brigade (the sort of construct which the Army reserve follows) and Army reserve units are not established to come close to this for their LCol and CWO leadership team.

But here's where the falacious comparision comes in: your CER CO with 300 engineers or your armoured CO with 400 troopers relies on the existence of LCols at CFRG, CDA, etc that support them in ways that they do not support militia units. If you left the current militia organizational support concept as-is and just dialled up the number of soldiers per LCol/CWO, you'd have reduced none of the unit admin burden and increased the personnel admin burden by two or three orders of magnitude. Why would we expect class "A" reservists to exercise a span of control that a Reg F CO isn't expected to?

If you cannot identify the units for OPSEC reasons, then I would tend to suspect there is something about those units that is a little different.  But it does not matter.  This is an appeal to hypocrisy - a logical fallacy.  One cannot justify organization A doing something wrong by pointing that organization B is also doing the same thing wrong.

You've missed my point: organizations A and B in this case are both doing what the unique circumstances of their cases require. Neither is "wrong" just because they don't correlate to an infantry battalion. And yes, these others units are different because they recruit and train people in their capabilities largely in isolation (much like a reserve unit does).

Good.  Let's address the concerns.  Army Reserve units train BMQ and BMQ(L), but I have normally seen the trades training done at Area/Div training centres or national schools.  Should the first two courses become a CBG responsibility, or maybe economies are gained through larger units that can run these courses at max load (as opposed to below min load)?  Should career management become a CBG or Div responsibility?

All of this is in the realm of the CAF's ability to influence and control.

I'd buy all of that. I'm just saying this is the stuff that needs to happen before we talk about changing ranks. And don't think that the end result will be a particularly noticeable overall drop in the number of senior officers and NCOs - you'll just have moved them out of the armouries and into centralized supporting organizations (a move that would be entirely welcome, though it would be met with a lot of wailing about loss of local control).