Yup, I’m thinking an armed security team for domestic work only. There are precedents in nuclear security, the Parliamentary Protective Service, security at the Royal Canadian Mint, etc. Someone better than you at doing security and protective stuff, so you and your troops can stick to fixing planes, which the rest of us definitely can’t do. In the case of an overseas deployment, CAF could determine if it needs to force generate either a fully self sufficient security force, or a contribution to a coalition force. This could be grabbed from RegF combat arms for a “right the fuck now” deployment, or force generated from PRes for subsequent rotos.
I take it as a given that the force protection posture will differ in Canada versus on a deployed operation, and that domestic requirements should generally be pretty steady-state. Not to say CAF troops couldn’t augment domestically if needed.
I mean, obviously it would be great if we had a full time, fully deployable tailored force, but a lot of things would be great that aren’t necessarily viable or cost effective. And I think our inevitable junior partner role in any coalition makes it more likely that we can continue to risk manage this.
Though, credit where it’s due, obviously there was that one time at Bagram where the RAF mechs geared up and merked a bunch of Talibs who breached the wire.