Informing the Army’s Future Structure

[Humphrey Bogart]

This though is the false concept we were building at the turn of the century and confirmed in Afghanistan.

We created Frankensteinian battle groups which sewed together a battalion headquarters with company sized elements from all over the place. To cater to that, and on the assumption we would only ever deploy a battery, artillery regiments became solely force generators and the battery the force employer. In turn the battery was a cobbled together task oriented amalgamation of one or more troops from the observer battery, the gun batteries and an STA battery. Every time they put a roto out the door it would be formed under the command team from a given battery and personnel from all over the regiment ( and sometimes other RegF regiments) as well as ASCC folks from 4 AD/GS, and reservists from the LF area. It's no wonder it takes six months of training to put such a group out the door.

It was the same for the battalions. Most were augmented by individuals and companies from other battalions (sometimes from other brigades e.g. TF 1-07 with 2 RCR with its H and I Coys and C Coy 3 PPCLI) plus reservists.

If the plan is to reduce a battalion to two full companies, then its nothing more than what has been happening in practice. To reach a high readiness status for that battalion then all that needs doing is to designate the add-on company early in the cycle and have it participate in training as required. That is absolutely not optimal but essentially is business as usual.

My only concern is that every time that the Army has tightened up the establishments to reduce the hollow companies problem, it is only a matter of time that the hollowness returns to the now smaller establishment.

But this is the crux of the problem, a Battalion with 2 rifle companies, isn't a Battalion. Calling it a Battalion is dishonest.

You then run in to the problem of when you tell the Government you have a battalion "AVAILABLE TO DEPLOY" you end up having to take people from elsewhere, that actually have another task and set of responsibilities they are supposed to be looking after.

Do this once and you create a small problem, make this your SOP and the small problems begin to compound in to bigger problems.

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

I'll use another term to describe the way our Military organizes and projects itself:

FALSE ADVERTISING

 

[KevinB]

I'll use another term to describe the way our Military organizes and projects itself:

FALSE ADVERTISING

Agreed

That just compounds the career flow problem, Kevin. Switched on guys move onward and upward so don't spend enough time in the job after training to make it worth the money for the bean counters to invest in. The problem is how many of these guys can you afford to have ready to go when they are not actually dropping ordnance for real, just training. It's the same problem across the board for the Army - why do we scrap air defence? No one is attacking us with planes and its expensive.

Having a Military is expensive.
But not as expensive as not having one...

WRT JTAC's - make it a career field, kind of like how the USAF does. Put them in CANSOFCOM with extra Tan hat pay.
Then you can kick them out to whatever entity needs them - knowing you have a trained and current JTAC - who isn't out trying to also be a gunfighter etc.

The entire aspect of the AD trade and lack of CA AD capability is in its own mind boggling event.

Its a perpetual problem for expensive capabilities. You set standards and mandate x number of individuals or units are required and then you starve it of resources so that there is an ever growing delta as between the plan and reality.

Because the CAF will have built 2x more HQ's to do less...

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

My only concern is that every time that the Army has tightened up the establishments to reduce the hollow companies problem, it is only a matter of time that the hollowness returns to the now smaller establishment.

I've heard this dozens of times and have heard the same words come out of multiple Officer's mouths.

"We can't cut units because we will never get back what we lost"

So I think the general consensus seems to have been that we should just hollow out said units in anticipation we might need them again some day as opposed to striking them from the order of battle.

Hmmmmmm

Sounds a lot like the entire reason we have both Reserve Order of Battle and a Supplementary Order of Battle for this exact purpose.

 

[KevinB]

I've heard this dozens of times and have heard the same words come out of multiple General Officer's mouths.

"We can't cut units because we will never get back what we lost"

So I think the general consensus seems to have been that we should just hollow out said units in anticipation we might need them again some day as opposed to striking them from the order of battle.

Hmmmmmm

Sounds a lot like the entire reason we have both Reserve Order of Battle and a Supplementary Order of Battle for this exact purpose.

Agreed.

The only way to get back what has been lost is showing what exists now.
Showing multiple Regiments with 3 Bn's etc is a farce - as it's just Col's moving deck chairs on the Titanic.

Better to be honest - doesn't matter if that ends up being just Reg Force Bde at full strength and equipment - at least it's there and readily deployable, that way the gaps in the wall are very visible.

IMHO the CA would be better off that current with 1 Bn from each Inf Reg't fully manned - and the other 2 being 30/70, same with the rest of the Arms Reg'ts and support functions .
That still wouldn't find AT or AD assets etc, but it would offer an actually immediately deployable Bde - and 2 other Bde's able to be brought to readiness to relieve the deployed one as needed.

 

[Kirkhill]

Question:

What is a Full Brigade?

Is it defined by the number of boots on parade? The number of LAVs available? Or the number of Guns?

Or to ask it another way,

965 LAVs and ASCVs with minimal crews? Or 3 Battalions of boots?

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

Question:

What is a Full Brigade?

Is it defined by the number of boots on parade? The number of LAVs available? Or the number of Guns?

Or to ask it another way,

965 LAVs and ASCVs with minimal crews? Or 3 Battalions of boots?

Generally a Brigade formation composed of 3 or more battalions + supporting elements.

Modern Military Force Structures

Classic military unit groupings differ greatly in their specialization and size, and from country to country. Here is a basic look at how modern ground, naval, and air units break down in terms of si…

www.cfr.org

 

[KevinB]

Question:

What is a Full Brigade?

Something missing from the Canadian Army...

Is it defined by the number of boots on parade? The number of LAVs available? Or the number of Guns?

Or to ask it another way,

965 LAVs and ASCVs with minimal crews? Or 3 Battalions of boots?

@Humphrey Bogart answered already - but you need both the soldiers and the equipment to consider it to be a full combat capable Brigade.

For a Heavy Bde that would be: Tanks, IFV's (Tracked), SPA (Tracked), SPAA (Tracked), AEV's etc.
For a Medium that would be LAV's, Armor of some sort - maybe tanks and LAV Recce, SPA (Wheeled) SPAA (Wheeled), LAV-Eng etc.
Light generally has mobility enablers (either soft skin or unarmored wheeled), Towed Arty, all generally Airmobile or Airborne capable systems of support.

Of course robust system to support it all would be good too...

 

[Kirkhill]

Generally a Brigade formation composed of 3 or more battalions + supporting elements.

Modern Military Force Structures

Classic military unit groupings differ greatly in their specialization and size, and from country to country. Here is a basic look at how modern ground, naval, and air units break down in terms of si…

www.cfr.org

I get that but, just for example, we were to consider a brigade of tanks, or a brigade of armoured cars instead of a brigade of infantry.

How many brigades of armoured cars could we field with the number of LAVs in stock and on order?

 

[KevinB]

I get that but, just for example, we were to consider a brigade of tanks, or a brigade of armoured cars instead of a brigade of infantry.

Brigades like Battle Groups and Combat Teams are generally combined Arms formations.
An Armored Brigade will still have an Infantry component.

How many brigades of armoured cars could we field with the number of LAVs in stock and on order?

Snarky answer - zero it will still be missing the combined arms enablers

 

[KevinB]

@Kirkhill has a post on the CH-148 thread that jogged my memory.

One aspect I think the CA does terribly is G-8 (Force Mod), with the DLR types in Ottawa fairly far removed from the coal face that a lot of requirements never seem to see the light of day.

I think the CA would deal with evolution a lot better if they had G-8 cells at the Bn level -- it doesn't even need to be a full time job.
Weapons, VAS, Clothing/PPE, Comms/Network . Each Bde would then collate the work and push it to DLR.

 

[Brad Sallows]

Despite the formal-establishment-fixated views that have developed over the past decades, brigades are just formations composed of whatever elements are thought necessary for the envisioned tasks. Nothing prevents Canada from taking 6 units and having one 4-unit brigade and one 2-unit brigade.

 

[Kirkhill]

Definition of brigade​

(Entry 1 of 2)
1a: a large body of troops
b: a tactical and administrative unit composed of a headquarters, one or more units of infantry or armor, and supporting units
2: a group of people organized for special activity

brigade
verb
brigaded; brigading
Definition of brigade (Entry 2 of 2)
transitive verb
: to form or unite into a brigade

... as in brigading the company's machine guns into a platoon.

 

[KevinB]

Definition of brigade​

(Entry 1 of 2)
1a: a large body of troops
b: a tactical and administrative unit composed of a headquarters, one or more units of infantry or armor, and supporting units
2: a group of people organized for special activity

brigade
verb
brigaded; brigading
Definition of brigade (Entry 2 of 2)
transitive verb
: to form or unite into a brigade

... as in brigading the company's machine guns into a platoon.

pedantic​

[ puh-dan-tik ]SHOW IPA

See synonyms for pedantic on Thesaurus.com
Middle School Level

---

adjective
ostentatious in one's learning.
overly concerned with minute details or formalisms, especially in teaching.

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

Despite the formal-establishment-fixated views that have developed over the past decades, brigades are just formations composed of whatever elements are thought necessary for the envisioned tasks. Nothing prevents Canada from taking 6 units and having one 4-unit brigade and one 2-unit brigade.

Something can be whatever you want it to be but it's important that you codify, preferably in writing, aka Doctrine, what that something is.

Once you codify exactly what that something is, you can assign tasks for what you expect that something to be able to reasonably accomplish and do.

I know, by reading doctrine what a Stryker Company in an SBCT looks like:

I know what an Armoured Brigade Combat Team looks like:

I can go right down to the individual sqns/companies/batteries and see exactly how many guns, personnel, vehicles, equipment they have. This is useful because it gives me actual figures to plan with, think water, rations, bullets, fuel, etc.

Even our potential adversaries have pretty succinct documentation that lays out exactly what their respective formations and manoeuvre elements look like:

Nice little publication published by our Allies here:

https://info.publicintelligence.net/AWG-RussianNewWarfareHandbook.pdf

Ironically, we have an organization in Kingston that is staffed with an Army of Majors that is supposed to look after all of this. I currently have no idea what they are doing?

hmmmmm

I find it funny that when I joined, I was given training that provided a fairly succinct overview of what Platoons, Company's, Battalion's, etc were supposed to look like. This was codified in Doctrine that I could refer to when I had questions or needed to fact check something. Sure some of it was notional but there was at least a framework that we had to work with.

Now? It seems something can be whatever the flaveur de jour is and there is no requirement to document any of it.

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

This isn't to say that everything has to look like Doctrine either, obviously vehicles will break down and there may be times when you need to reallocate resources.

Right now though, I wouldn't be able to even tell you what a Canadian Brigade looks like, what vehicles it has. We bought 500 TAPVs, where are they supposed to reside in our ORBAT? What about the random assortment of LAV ACSV?

Imagine Midland Trucking owning 500 18-Wheelers and having no idea where they are supposed to be and what they are supposed to be doing with them?

 

[Kirkhill]

Something can be whatever you want it to be but it's important that you codify, preferably in writing, aka Doctrine, what that something is.

Once you codify exactly what that something is, you can assign tasks for what you expect that something to be able to reasonably accomplish and do.

I know, by reading doctrine what a Stryker Company in an SBCT looks like:

I know what an Armoured Brigade Combat Team looks like:

I can go right down to the individual sqns/companies/batteries and see exactly how many guns, personnel, vehicles, equipment they have. This is useful because it gives me actual figures to plan with, think water, rations, bullets, fuel, etc.

Even our potential adversaries have pretty succinct documentation that lays out exactly what their respective formations and manoeuvre elements look like:

Nice little publication published by our Allies here:

https://info.publicintelligence.net/AWG-RussianNewWarfareHandbook.pdf

Ironically, we have an organization in Kingston that is staffed with an Army of Majors that is supposed to look after all of this. I currently have no idea what they are doing?

hmmmmm

I find it funny that when I joined, I was given training that provided a fairly succinct overview of what Platoons, Company's, Battalion's, etc were supposed to look like. This was codified in Doctrine that I could refer to when I had questions or needed to fact check something. Sure some of it was notional but there was at least a framework that we had to work with.

Now? It seems something can be whatever the flaveur de jour is and there is no requirement to document any of it.

The difference between them and us is that they have a plan and they work the plan until the plan doesn't work anymore. And when the plan doesn't work anymore they come up with a different plan and work that one. And spend money to do it.

 

[Kirkhill]

pedantic​

[ puh-dan-tik ]SHOW IPA

See synonyms for pedantic on Thesaurus.com
Middle School Level

---

adjective
ostentatious in one's learning.
overly concerned with minute details or formalisms, especially in teaching.

Pedants come in all shapes and sizes. Some even wear green clothes to work.

 

[Fabius]

The CAF and therefore the CA have I think decided that we don’t want to have firm TO&E or ORBATS.
Such things would require us to admit to certain truths and would constrain our ability to deny reality.
Sadly we do not use any such fixed items for high readiness forces. We remain firmly wedded to building bespoke constructs for operations.
Right now the CA is managing its force generation literally by individual people not formations, units or sub units.
I don’t think the institution really thinks this is a problem. F2025 may pretend that the Army understands it’s a problem but honestly day to day decisions by the CA, CJOC and the SJS don’t support that view.
Oh well

 

[McG]

when I joined, I was given training that provided a fairly succinct overview of what Platoons, Company's, Battalion's, etc were supposed to look like. This was codified in Doctrine that I could refer to when I had questions or needed to fact check something. Sure some of it was notional but there was at least a framework that we had to work with.

The doctrine folk today seem allergic to the idea of codifying organizational structures.