George Wallace said:
Not bad post, but the above paragraph about the Reservist coming through the door ...etc. etc. is crap. They probably have more experience than the Reg Force members in the platoon fresh out of BMQ and DP1. Many may even be on their second or third Tour as well......and yes there have been a lot of generalizations in this discussion.
Of the roughly 40 members of my regiment who deployed on 3-08, the majority of us had no prior operational experience. Off the top of my head I can think of one guy who'd previously done Afghanistan as battlegroup and a few who had done Bosnia in various positions. I'd say perhaps fifteen percent of our guys had previous tours.
Also, reserve training tends to focus very much on the basics- we spend a lot of time doing section attacks, recce patrols, and so on and so forth. We don't do much live fire stuff at all. We don't do much training in less traditional types of ops that are more applicable to the COE- urban patrolling, cordon and search, mechanized or airmobile work, etc etc. Mostly what we walk into workup with is basic soldier skills- the reserves have little training time
or real subject matter expertise to impart much more than that on us.
Further, look at the workup timelines. For 3-08 the battlegroup got 16-18 months of workup training, with the exception of a small number of individual augmentees who came in later. By the time stream 2 (the bulk of the reserve augmentation) showed up in September, the battlegroup had, at least at the platoon and perhaps company level, been training together for most of half a year already. The workup training timelines for stream 2 pers have shrunk as well, so while battlegroup is still getting a long workup training, reserve augmentees for stream 2 are showing up a number of months closer to deployment now. I think it is very fair to say that there is a significant skill and training delta between a reservist coming in and a reg who is already a member of the rifle platoon over a year out from deployment, even if he has just come off his basic. The experience differential between a reservist who's been doing class A and
relevant class B for 3 or 4 years is very quickly made up by someone who's spent even six or eight months in the regs.
The main point I'm trying to make is that, early to midway in the workup training process, it's less of a loss of training investment to task a reservist out to another organization that's headhunting than it is to send someone from the regs. And I would would also posit that if a spot like door gunner were to be given to RegF Inf, it probably would not be that guy right off his BMQ/DP1 who gets it.
I think it's a bit questionable of you to say that my comments are 'crap'. I don't just make this stuff up. I'm well aware of the nature of the reservists going on tour. By the time 1-10 is out the door, my regiment will have sent well over 80 to Afghanistan, many of whom I've worked with or have trained.
Absolutely, reservists can and have integrated well into battlegroup, and have also formed other organizations like CIMIC and PSYOPS that have frequently found themselves in some tough spots. But also realize that most of the guys going to these spots are either getting a
lot of workup training, or have gone through selection to pick the best candidates for these organizations (e.g., PSYOPS). In the
majority of cases I thinik it's fair to say that it is less value lost to pull a reservist from battlegroup and send them to a random spot than a trained and likely experienced RegF infanteer.
