Informing the Army’s Future Structure - CAMO Discussion
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PrairieFella
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Are our leaders so weak they cant say no to retired dudes with little clout with the public?
daftandbarmy
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Little clout with the public, maybe, but huge clout inside the CAF, certainly.
Oldgateboatdriver
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When we had to move HMCS Donnacona from its old downtown Montreal location in the early 90's because the almost 100 years old building couldn't be brought to the modern standards required to house all the new training equipment and simulators required to train reservists for the MCDV and modern RCN requirements, CRCN decided to fund it because CFB Montreal didn't have the funds for it. The Base Engineering and base command people came to the unit and asked this question (which they had faced before in the militia): "If we study and develop plans to build you a new unit and get all the way to the point of putting shovel to the ground, is your Regie going to come out and stop us after all this effort has been put in, because your current building is the home of the unit?"
They were agreeably surprised to hear us tell them: "No! We are in the Navy. We use our ships while they are effective and in commission. When they get too old, we scrap them and replace them with new ones. To us, a ship is the ship's company, the name and the attached honours - not the hull and physical things."
They were agreeably surprised to hear us tell them: "No! We are in the Navy. We use our ships while they are effective and in commission. When they get too old, we scrap them and replace them with new ones. To us, a ship is the ship's company, the name and the attached honours - not the hull and physical things."
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I had to move it here
If we're building a large force to mostly do home guard and civil defence functions? Sure.
But we aren't designing a force like that. Nor do we train people like that. Even now this new mobilization strategy is built around how fast can we train tens of thousands and turn them into standard pattern soldiers. That's not the type of troop needed to guard infrastructure at home, as you note.
We could easily anchor this 300k mobilization plan and the militia largely around civil defence and home guard functions. But that probably compromises the depth of the CA in deploying (in the universe of a 300k reserve and 50k regular CA). And then we'll get even more complaints about how the reserves are being shafted (instead of just a different purpose).
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Halifax Tar
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Imagine if the CA created a division entirely dedicated to domestic defence, and assigned that very real task to the A Res. I bet they'd be overjoyed to have an active role in defending Canada.
Halifax Tar
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Imagine if the CA created a division entirely dedicated to domestic defence, and assigned that very real task to the A Res. I bet they'd be overjoyed to have an active role in defending Canada.
Victimhood can be addicting crutch.
PrairieFella
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As long as the Regs are ok deploying every 6 months when there is no more reserve force to draw upon since we sunsetted 60% of the trades in the ARes/NavRes/whatever. Very little need for Arty, Armour, Bosns, etc in the defence of Canada, whatever that means. Probably lots of sandbag battalions for floods though. Thats the buggest gripe I have so far, what do they actually mean by defence of Canada? Do they mean a national guard capable of LSCO able to defend kinetically? In that case we need the same equipment and manning as the Regs. Do they mean a token force that shoots once a year and does the domops the Regs have no interest in like sandbagging or basic firefighting? That changes whats needed personnel and equipment wise. CA HQ needs to tell us what we can expect.Imagine if the CA created a division entirely dedicated to domestic defence, and assigned that very real task to the A Res. I bet they'd be overjoyed to have an active role in defending Canada.
Edit: Yes Bosns arent involved. Generalizations about operator trades obvs wasnt clear haha.
I assume you're referring the current reorg?
I would hope. I don't always get that sense though. There's probably a divide between those that really want to be part time warrior and those that just want to serve (in a more generic sense) part time. I have often wondered if we should just make a different standard for home guard and train reservists to it. Or maybe even a civil defence trade. And reclassify a lot of reserves to that. Heck, a properly trained civil defence operator who is still fit and current on a rifle and first aid and various leadership, organizational and computer skills could be trained to be a proper infanteer or say armoured crew in a few (3-4) months.
PrairieFella
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I don't disagree with you. But that's largely why I think building a real reserve is basically impossible today. Heck, even the Reg F takes how long on pre-deployment?
Modern warfare is not something you can train in weeks. And if you don't want to accept casualties like the Russians, the readiness requirement drives that training requirement higher.
If you take a basic infanteer, as an example. To the end of DP1 is what? 25 weeks between Basic Trng and Battle School? That's not combat ready. That's trade qualified. It's nearly impossible to train that exclusively part time to any real effectiveness. Our only real hope is to get some college or university student trained in two summers and hope they keep their part time career for a long time after. And then they'll still need 6 months of pre-deployment training if they get mobilized.
The Americans solve this problem with the GI Bill. Do 5 years and you have 4 years of post-secondary of your choice paid for (among many other benefits). That creates a massive pool of highly trained (and actually experienced) personnel who often continue as reservists or national guard after. That is largely what makes their reserves so reliable. Are we willing to spend like that? I haven't seen evidence that we are.
So given the constraint of how much we can train a part timer, what tasks can we give them, that's the question.
OldSolduer
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The old retired dudes' clout is with the politicians. HCols and HLCols are appointed by the government - and politics is part of that.
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daftandbarmy
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FWIW... we had few issues generating troops for about a decade's worth of Sandbox deployments.
Many of my soldiers went back for more than one tour while balancing work, school and family commitments.
At a guess, I'd say about 20-30% stayed on after their tours to continue their militia service.
Was it perfect?
No. A year of training, tour and recovery was an outrageously long time commitment for a part timer, for a 6 month tour, and the much ballyhooed 'workup training' was grossly inefficient from a Reservist's POV - there was alot of 'locker guarding' and other frustrating wastes of time apparently.
Regardless, it worked and we could make it better within even the current system.
Variety of weapons and tools. Complexity of operations. You didn't have to teach a soldier how to evade a drone just to close with the enemy.
Few points.
1) That 5 weeks is not all their getting before ending up in combat. Not today anyway.
2) Ukrainians have regularly said that NATO training is massively deficient and not suitable for their environment. Increasingly, they are setting up their own.
3) Wartime acceptance of losses is higher in a society at war on its soil. I don't think you'll find that Canadians are very amenable to the idea of training people for 5 weeks and then deploying them to fight the Russians in the Baltics or the Chinese in Taiwan.
This speaks to what I said earlier. War can bring in the adrenaline junky recruits. That's a different issue than maintaining the bench during largely peace time. Which is mostly what we have to construct here first.
Exactly my point. To go to a war which was essentially optional, we picked trained people and put them on months of training before deploying. This is not a realistic model for near-peer war which escalates quickly and chews through personnel faster than we're used to.
This leads to three options (as I see it):
1) Increase the acceptance of losses. Let's call this the Russian option. Few weeks and you're off to the front. We won't expect you to survive.
2) Increase cost. Spend enough so that we can incentivize enough service commitment out of a part timer to get them fully trained with months of full time service. This is going to need substantial compensation to make up for the disruption to their regular life. Let's call this the American option (throw money at the problem).
3) Reduced scope. We accept that we aren't going to the the WWI/WWII thing if deploying hundreds of thousands again. We tell the allies that our contribution will be higher skilled and higher value assets that are harder for them to generate and they bring the mass. I call this the MBA option (only a cold nerd would think this way).
I'm sure there's probably a hybrid COA somewhere in there.
Halifax Tar
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How much of the curiculum of our BRT is made up of lets call if fluff ?
Do you think we could cull our curriculum in a time of need ?
