Future of ATHENA: Manning issues & LAV III upgrades

[Infanteer]

Countering this, you could claim that doing a longer tour would prevent burnout by ensuring that the soldier doesn't have to come back a year and a half later to do it all over again.

General Eric Shinseki warned of planning and fighting a 12-division war with a 10-division army (or something to that effect) - it seems that we're fighting a four brigade war with three understrength ones; perhaps this would help to address that.

 

[Jed]

I used to think that 9 months tours were the way to go.  That may still be true for theatres like Cyprus & Bosnia in their later years.  However, I think we would burn-out far too many soldiers in places like Kandahar.

In fact, I think a lot of the solutions we are looking at for Op ATHENA (longer tours and re-rolling complete sub-units to infantry) are fully appropriate to Bosnia in 2001 but questionable solutions for combat operations.

IMO I agree with your comments, MCG. I think the year longs get tough on about 9 or 10 months. They are all doable of course but you are going to start to get family issues coming up even on the easy tours. With the tough combat tours we are now getting into, and the fact that we are " fighting a 4 brigade war with a 3 understrength brigade army" I don't think year long tours are sustainable for the CF. The early Bosnia / Croatia 6 month tours in the early 90's were pretty devastating for 1 CER wrt to having mentally healthy troops with things being relatively fine on the home front.

 

[boondocksaint]

9 months, or even year long tours are do-able, IF we could have had a bit more down time in KAF. Some of our Pl's did 25 plus days outside the wire, rotate in to camp for 2-3 days and out again. Some guys did 40 and 50 plus days outside the wire, 3-4 days of refit, and back out. Or calling the FOB a place to relax...uhuh. If it didnt have icecream, it wasnt relaxing.

The easy solution, that isnt, is of course more people. Not gonna happen.

In hindsight, I think that instead of working ourselves out of a job, Canadians became so relied on, we were always in demand. Between the Lav, and our natural Canadian charm, someone, somewhere always had a requirement for us to be out there. Not a bad thing in many ways, we just didnt get much of a break.

We do have folks over there doing 9 month tours, IIRC they are generally in KAF for all or most of it, so getting their opinion might shed some light here as well.

 

[McG]

This may sound RTFO to some, but I think reduced HLTA times would reduce burn-out risk.  The BG was down by a Coy Gp at any given point in time, so while on the ground everyone was forced to work at 30% (ballpark) higher tempo.  More R&R, less/no HLTA and extra leave & decompression at the end.

. . . mind you, longer tours would also serve to space out the HLTA blocks more.

 

[Scoobie Newbie]

hell I could do a year IN KAF.  Outside, ehh not so much, mortars and IED's have a way of making one ansie.

 

[dglad]

This may sound RTFO to some, but I think reduced HLTA times would reduce burn-out risk.  The BG was down by a Coy Gp at any given point in time, so while on the ground everyone was forced to work at 30% (ballpark) higher tempo.  More R&R, less/no HLTA and extra leave & decompression at the end.

. . . mind you, longer tours would also serve to space out the HLTA blocks more.

I'd be extremely wary of that.  First, the messaging and optics--we're going to send you on longer tours, but we're also going to curtail or eliminate HLTA--could do more psychological harm than practical good.  Second, and again from a psychological point of view, HLTA breaks the mission into pieces...intermediate milestones to be achieved.  I spent seven months in Bosnia, but in my mind, I actually spent four months, and then three months (actually, two and a half, because of the HLTA).  That's a world of difference, particularly since the human mind instinctively wants to break large tasks or problems into smaller ones, to be solved individually.

I suppose the details of HLTA could be tweaked, but there needs to be something to ensure our personnel don't think they're being screwed and to give them those psychological milestones through the tour.  Mind you, more, but shorter blocks of leave (my initial thought) just compounds the logistics around scheduling, moving people, backfilling key capabilities with TAVs, etc.

 

[Scoobie Newbie]

Gents word here is that the ONLY thing the boys are counting on/looking forward to is HLTA.  So take that for what its worth.

 

[tasop_999]

Agreed! That is one of the most logical things I have heard in a while.  Don't let the brass hear it or they might do the opposite. ;D

 

[PhilB]

Having just come back from a fucked up 9month afghan tour I have a bit of insight into this. Its not bad and it is doable, the problem as I see it is time frame. I am only speaking for reservists here but when you couple the riduculously long work up commitment the army is asking for (for TF 1-08 we have been told start date is 1-Apr-07, deploy date same time frame as TF 1-06 and rtn date the same.). This amount of time makes it very difficult for reservists to take time to go, and with the man power crunch we need to consider every option.

 

[Infanteer]

This may sound RTFO to some, but I think reduced HLTA times would reduce burn-out risk.  The BG was down by a Coy Gp at any given point in time, so while on the ground everyone was forced to work at 30% (ballpark) higher tempo.  More R&R, less/no HLTA and extra leave & decompression at the end.

. . . mind you, longer tours would also serve to space out the HLTA blocks more.

On the topic of leaves, would it be more feasible to have Platoon leave blocs - take the entire sub-sub-unit "out of the line" and give them HLTA and/or R&R.  That way, it can operate at full strength whenever it is out of the wire.

 

[gaspasser]

That sounds like a great idea!
The platoon/section could blow steam as a team.  It wouldn't hurt the line of battle and there would be no need to mix around troops to cover off leave positions. 

 

[McG]

If companies had four platoons it could be done.

 

[Scoobie Newbie]

you also wouldn't have to worry about keeping a back up section commander/driver/gunner around

 

[Gunner]

How about short/high tempo tours of 2-3 months for platoons or companies?  Fast rotations in and out of theatre as well as keeping the platoons/companies cohesive for longer periods of time?

 

[McG]

How about short/high tempo tours of 2-3 months for platoons or companies?  

Are you thinking the same thing the Air Force does?  1 year tour doing it three months on, three months off, three months on . . .

 

[Infanteer]

How about short/high tempo tours of 2-3 months for platoons or companies?  Fast rotations in and out of theatre as well as keeping the platoons/companies cohesive for longer periods of time?

Would this hinder the "edge" that soldiers develop from being on the ground for an extended period of time?  GAP related his Vietnam experience, stating that it wasn't until about month 4-5 that guys were really at the top of their game with respect to understanding how things worked on the ground.  Short ins-and-outs would deprive our units of this time to "harden up" while in-country, no?

 

[Gunner]

Potentially it could be similar but the air force focusses on tradesman (aircraft tech does the same thing in Camp Mirage as he does in Trenton, etc).  Bring a platoon in, 1 week to sort itself out, and then it is off on ops lasting ~3 weeks, in for a 2-3 day break, back out for ~3 weeks, and handover to the next platoon.  Keeps everyone fresh and the cycle is quick enough to keep the level of knowledge within the theatre.  Just tossing the idea out.

 

[McG]

It might work as a way to surge for directed ops (though probably too slow to react for these) but I don't think it would result in the familiarity needed of the guys that "own the ground."

 

[Gunner]

Would this hinder the "edge" that soldiers develop from being on the ground for an extended period of time?  GAP related his Vietnam experience, stating that it wasn't until about month 4-5 that guys were really at the top of their game with respect to understanding how things worked on the ground.  Short ins-and-outs would deprive our units of this time to "harden up" while in-country, no?

As you well know, you understand your role in theatre after 4-5 months but you also begin to focus on going home and you begin to lose your focus (I'm sure you have seen that stupid chart back in Bosnia about complacency, etc).  "Hardening" up is affected by casualties and HLTA, anyway isn't it?  

The trick is maintaining the cohesiveness of the platoon as it rotates in and out of country in order to maintain the experience.  The first "tour" would be learning as it is for all tours, but you rotate back to Canada, sort yourself out, practice what went right, what went wrong, take some leave and you go back in. Second "tour" has a much smaller learning curve, and you are much more effect as you have the experience of the first tour and have conducted an AAR to improve your platoon's performance.  Third "tour" has no learning curve at all and you can hit the ground running.

 

[KevinB]

Run an On Cycle: 3 months on - 3 months off 3 months on. -then an Off cycle.

You need a matrix to work the system -- but it keeps the subunits together.