Would you rather the PRes exist in a vacuum with no real task?
Boy! Who hurt you this time? The answer to your question is in the highlighted words. The PRes and the ARes, in particular, hunger for
real tasks.
They thumb their nose at being an augmentation force,
They didn't during Afghanistan. And the view was almost unanimous from both the RegF and the ARes that the system wouldn't have made it without them and that by the time they deployed the augmentees were indistinguishable from the Regs in the field. Unfortunately things chang during these peacetime deployments where quite often the augmentees are handed the scutt work.
didn't jump into the niche tasks (HUSAR, etc)
I presume you're talking about LUSAR, the CAF's second experiment with reservists as the disaster relief snakes and ladders people. This is the job that no one in the regular force, including the engineers, wanted. Try to picture yourself as an 18-year-old joining the ARes to do soldierly things and being given a chain saw to operate instead of a howitzer or an armoured personnel carrier like the grown-ups get. It was mostly a shit task albeit, I'll freely admit, some did enjoy it as a diversion.
and now you're thumbing your nose at Defense of Canada and DOMOPS?
Pardon me, but the ones who are thumbing their noses at defence of Canada and DOMOPS are the regular force who have segregated themselves into the "fun" division. My take on defence of Canada is that it is a vital task that needs a proper balanced force with considerable regular force involvement and a wide variety of complex equipment. The light brigade with a high para content would be perfect as a quick reaction force for Roto 0 defence of Canada missions.
On the other hand, heavy combat trades that are only needed fully for wartime like armour, mechanized infantry and artillery could easily be done by a force largely composed of part-timers in less expensive hybrid units where everyone is specifically trained and equipped for those roles. Instead we have some 20,000 full timers in a division which basically does rotos for around 2,000 positions in Latvia (and even that calls for a 20% ARes contingent of augmentees).
And DOMOPS - which group is actually saying it shouldn't be interrupt in its training to handle things like DOMOPS? Braaap. Wrong! The answer is the RegF. Instead they expect that civilian workers and students will drop everything in their lives to go and fight fires and floods. Institutional arrogance is the word that I would use here.
If 2 Div is only capable of DOMOPS then the PRes leadership (yes, it's not the RSS' fault) has absolutely failed.
2 Div will do the job it's given. If it's not a worthwhile job the troops will vote with their feet. And by the way, a good RSS team will pick up the load when reserve leadership is weak. That's what caring about the troops means. And that's coming from a guy who did RSS. If RSS don't pick up the slack then the system is sending the wrong folks to RSS or it has the wrong theory of leadership.
This new structure provides a proper day to day mission task with a secondary task of full scale mobilization to keep the Regiment of Silly Hats crowd happy.
Here's the thing. Silly hats do not create institutional rot. If the Silly Hat crowd were the problem then the army's leadership should have sorted that out decades ago. Instead it treated a valuable human resource with, at best, benign indifference.
The problem is that the central CAF leadership is too wrapped up in their own world and their own careers and their own day-to-day problems that they won't take the time to fix the fundamental "systemic" problems that keeps the ARes from meeting its full potential. When much of the RegF sees the ARes all that they see are the funny hats; OTOH when I see the ARes I see the criminal waste of a valuable resource.
Here's my problem with the CAMO. I actually do see defence of Canada as a significant and important job. It's so important that I believe many of Canada's best RegF troops should be on the task along side their ARes counterparts. In the same way that I think many ARes personnel should be specifically trained and equipped to augment and reinforce the expeditionary division with part time augmentees and fully equipped units which are ordinarily not needed during peacetime on a day-to-day basis. I see what ought to be a true force structure with a strong mobilization capability for home and abroad.
What I don't see is Inflection Point 2025 or the CAMO building that. I see an
ad hoced structure that was slapped together on a Friday afternoon as an afterthought once someone had decided to put almost the whole regular force army into one bloated division to continue the force generation of rotos fetish they are used to rather than taking some time to build a balanced well thought out "One Army." There's a promise that they will figure it out some time this year. I don't doubt that they will try, but by shaping 1 Div the way they have, the job becomes almost impossible even if some of the army's best minds were put to the task.
There are two place where the modernization program tells me its spinning bullshit:
1) When it touts a "One Army" concept where the "Regular Force, Army Reserve, Canadian Rangers, Defence Civilian Team operate together seamlessly," and then goes on to form two distinct divisions that completely separate these components on two separate missions; and
2) When it states that the "CA must also develop ARes self-sufficiency in terms of training, operations and sustainment to accomplish the needed capacity support to support modernization efforts." What are they smoking? The ARes hasn't been able to accomplish that since the Korean War. What wonderful magic formula have the folks at Army HQ discovered but not yet revealed?
Mate. I've been in the CAF for 44 years - RegF, ARes and CAF reserve - and I've followed the system for 16 years since then. The CAF in general and the army in particular are institutional masters at avoiding dealing with the root issues on this brief. Instead they undertake superficial shit that makes no progress whatsoever. What's worse is that while I totally agree with CAMO's overall vision of an army capable of deploying, fighting and supporting a division in combat at home and abroad, I, unfortunately, see the direction the army is going as a regressive step. I honestly hope that I'm wrong. Based on the army's past track record with ARes reform and army structure I'm betting that I'm not.
