- Reaction score
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- Points
- 1,260
9 Rocket won't be stood up for a while. The artillery regiments are standing down their OP Batteries and reintroducing the FSCC and FOO parties to the gun batteries. C Bty 1 RCHA has been retasked from OP Bty to be the first HIMARS battery and will do the introduction and conversion to HIMARS for the branch. They are already turning to the task AFAIK. In due course once the systems come on line, 1 RCHA will split into two regiments - 1 RCHA and 9 Rocket, RCA - with both currently expected to operate out of Shilo. Note too that 10 Fd Regina, 26 Fd Brandon and 116 Fd Kenora are designated to be aligned as LRPS-L units with 9 Rocket.
Yes there are and there should be even more which is why I smile anytime someone suggests using gunners for mortars. Air defence alone could and should eat up several thousand. STA and deep strike, more yet. And that's before we start going from 2 four-gun batteries/regiment back to 3 six-gun ones. And what about a light regiment for the LIR? I could go on but we simply don't have enough gunners as it stands even if we filled all the blank files in all the regiments. More PYs and more ARes positions are needed.
I'm not sure what you mean by off-loaded. Quite clearly the infantry needs to designate a lot more folks to the combat support companies in the battalions to do mortars, anti-armour, CUAV, LM, even pioneer - not everyone can be in recce.
Not just the RCAC but also the rifle companies. You know my view on the LAV. IMHO it is not an IFV for MCO albeit the 25mm is nothing to sneeze at in a pinch. My view is that every rifle coy should keep 7 of their LAVs with the 25mm and get 7 new ACSV TCVs with a 30 or 35mm RWS capable of both anti air and DFS tasks. That puts a fair number of 25mm LAVs into reserve or form more mech battalions and could keep the GDLS factory busy churning out more ACVs. Since I'm not paying the bills anyway, I'd do the same for a fleet of tracked IFVs for NATO albeit there, since all the vehicles would be new, I'd want dual purpose RWS on every vehicle in the rifle coy. Yup I see two type of brigades - and armoured brigade with tanks and tracked IFVs and a wheeled mech brigade with just LAVs. (Yes - light brigades too).
C Bty was STA not OP. Z, the OP Bty, is stood down while C is currently sending a small nucleus to various partner nations to train for himars.