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Ok, there is on ongoing and lengthy discussion of what we should we should restructure the Army Reserve system to look like here:
http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/25713.0.html
...but I am posting this in a new thread because I wish to explore the why (as opposed to the what) of Reserve reform. Basically, I argue that a Reserve system that is built around national mobilization is antiquated and inappropriate for the requirements of the military of a modern, Information age society that basically undertakes expeditionary warfare (a constant) but within this expeditionary context is dealing more and more with 4th Generation Warfare and the oft-touted 3 Block War.
A structure that centers, organizes and functions around the concept of national mobilization is one that is inefficient and oriented towards the wrong task - as well, it's woefully ill-equipped to handle the nature and scope of today's "Come as you Are Conflicts". Modern 4th Generation conflicts that we will engage in are not pressing enough to warrant the absolute disruption of our information age economy for the purpose of General Mobilization.
First off, mobilization is dead due to the nature of today's weapons systems. There is simply no conceivable way that we will be able mobilize and equip our Reserve units and formations in time to make it to the fray. "Come as You Are" means exactly that - come as you are. If we don't organize the Reserves that are on hand, serving today, in a manner which makes them relevent to realistic planning and strategy, then we are just pissing away resources on a "legacy" structure that is a pipedream.
Consider equipping the current structure of 10 Army Reserve Brigades if they were indeed mobilized:
LCol Drew's article makes many more valid statements, I recommend finding it on the Internet and reading the entire piece.
Just as manufacturing times of modern military equipment make national mobilization a farce, so does the cost of modern warfare. Enfield made this clear to me via PM with a point on a discussion we were having:
The prohibitive costs of modern weapons systems ensure that dedicating the Reserve force to the concept of national mobilization is a waste of manpower and a misuse of resources, as the deeper implications of systems cost is that conventional warfare (that would require the mobilization of the state) is itself outdated. No nation (not even the United States) can afford to mass mobilize with the costs of kitting all these levies out and sustaining them abroad.
So what is the course we should take? Obviously, the Reserve needs to exist to back up the Regular Force. Both Reg and Reserve need to be interlocked into a national strategy of how to prepare and use military force. Obviously, the realities on the ground, both at home and abroad, do a good job of telling us what we need:
Although MacGregor's quote is centered on the American context, it is very relevent to our context in that we share:
- small, professional military forces
- expeditionary requirement of operating out of North America
- general goal of maintaining the primacy of the international liberal democratic order
- low public tolerance to mass casualties and expensive and long drawn out conflicts
I feel we need to reorient our entire structure towards the realities that we need both the Regulars and the Reserves to deal with the bushfires as the costs and requirements of conflagration in this day in age are too much to consider.
First of all, Readiness Cycles should consist of a variety of different "Echelons" of military forces. All army force structures fit into a specific echelon and National Strategy will dictate to the CF what echelons are required (I discussed this on the other Reserve thread):
[quote author=Infanteer"]
Echelon I) Special Operations Units and Rapid Reaction Forces (either Air Mobile or afloat in a Amphibious Role) - Required to be able to project globally within days and to remain in place to establish conditions for heavier follow-on-forces.
Echelon II) Regular Force Units and Formations - These are the full-time professional soldiers who must be capable being sustained on operations overseas - usually heavier then Echelon I forces (in our case, I see the "Cavalry" format as ideal for now). Current doctrine mandates two Battlegroups with surge capability for a Brigade. Echelon II forces are ROTO O and next few rotations.
Echelon III) Voluntary Augmention - This is where we sit now. This is limited use of Reservists in a strictly voluntary arrangement to help cover off on missions in mature theaters. This can involve individual augmentees to Regular Force Units or the formation of Reserve sub-sub units or sub-units within Regular Units (as with the Composite Reserve units and D&S Platoons). Reserve Battalions are required to be able to form a Platoon at all times as an Echelon III force (even if it is only a staff check).
Echelon IV) Reserve Activation - This is where the Americans sit now. Entire Reserve Units and Formations are called up, given workup training, and deployed. Obviously, quite disruptive, but it is something the Reserves should be able to do in a wartime scenario that does not call for complete national mobilization.
Echelon V) These are forces created from scratch in a National Mobilization scheme. They can exist on paper at zero strength until the balloon goes up and the floodgates are opened for recruits. These scratch units are filled out by soldiers from the other 4 echelons who have returned from operational duty.[/quote]
Note: Echelon V is a paper-only force; the possibility is beyond remote and I'm unsure of how we will do it, but we must prepare for it.
Reorientation of Readiness Rotations that includes Echelon's that consist of Reserve Forces will demand that:
1) The Reserves be given appropriate roles that coincides with and complements the Regular Forces - we need the Reserves to be seen as more then just a mobilization pool.
2) The Reserves must be manned, equipped, and trained to fit into the above. There can be no "paper armies" in a real operational readiness structure.
3) The Force Structure will demand a different approach to how we treat our reservists. Being Echelon III and IV units, they will have a real mission - the business sector and the government will have to recognize this. In return for obligation of service (part time contract) the Reserves must be supported with job protection (both coercive legislation and cooperative incentives for employers), guaranteed training, and real operational focus.
It is time to look at the Reserves as a tool in our belt - there is no purpose to keeping a fire extinguisher on the wall if it is empty and missing the hose.
Anyways, just some thoughts coming out of discussions in the last week. Flame away.
Infanteer
http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/25713.0.html
...but I am posting this in a new thread because I wish to explore the why (as opposed to the what) of Reserve reform. Basically, I argue that a Reserve system that is built around national mobilization is antiquated and inappropriate for the requirements of the military of a modern, Information age society that basically undertakes expeditionary warfare (a constant) but within this expeditionary context is dealing more and more with 4th Generation Warfare and the oft-touted 3 Block War.
A structure that centers, organizes and functions around the concept of national mobilization is one that is inefficient and oriented towards the wrong task - as well, it's woefully ill-equipped to handle the nature and scope of today's "Come as you Are Conflicts". Modern 4th Generation conflicts that we will engage in are not pressing enough to warrant the absolute disruption of our information age economy for the purpose of General Mobilization.
First off, mobilization is dead due to the nature of today's weapons systems. There is simply no conceivable way that we will be able mobilize and equip our Reserve units and formations in time to make it to the fray. "Come as You Are" means exactly that - come as you are. If we don't organize the Reserves that are on hand, serving today, in a manner which makes them relevent to realistic planning and strategy, then we are just pissing away resources on a "legacy" structure that is a pipedream.
Consider equipping the current structure of 10 Army Reserve Brigades if they were indeed mobilized:
"Assuming that the Government decided to react to a particular emergency by mobilizing, there is no doubt that there would be sufficient young men and women to fill the ranks of the Army's units. But where would their weapons be? They may be able to get uniforms and small arms, but the answer is that mobilization would be, at very best, a four-year process. Consider the following example. There are no tank plants in Canada. The General Dynamics Land System (GDLS) Tank Plant estimates that a plant could be constructed based on Canadian industrial capabilities in 30 months. Adding a further 18 months for the production cycle, as envisioned by GDLS, brings the total to 48 months from initialization until the first tank rolls off the assembly line. GDLS is presently producing approximately 100 Abrams M! tanks a year, and they can surge to a production rate of 300 a year by tripling their shifts. The point is that tank production rates remain fixed; the high tech nature of major warfighting systems has extended production time lines to years from the months or even weeks required to produce equivalent systems during the Second World War."
Major (now LCol) Dan Drew, Combat Readiness and Canada's Army, The Canadian Doctrine and Training Bulletin; Vol2, No4 (Winter 99): pg 43
LCol Drew's article makes many more valid statements, I recommend finding it on the Internet and reading the entire piece.
Just as manufacturing times of modern military equipment make national mobilization a farce, so does the cost of modern warfare. Enfield made this clear to me via PM with a point on a discussion we were having:
"Enfield said:Something related to what we were talking about last night, thought it was interesting from Gwynne Dyer's 'War' (pg 385 in my copy)
"In the 1980s, under Reagan, at the height of US Cold War military buildup, the US devoted as much factory space to the construction of military aircraft as Germany did in 1944. In one month in 1944 Germany produced 3,000 aircraft. In the 1980's, the US produced 50 per month." (rough quote)
On a side note, the US defence budget under Reagan was almost double what it is today, so I assume aircraft production today is about half that, or less.
Mobilization is dead. Even if we mobilized everyone, there'd be nothing for them to do since we could never arm or equip them, since boots, a hat, or a C7 cost 117 times what their equivalents did in 1940.
The prohibitive costs of modern weapons systems ensure that dedicating the Reserve force to the concept of national mobilization is a waste of manpower and a misuse of resources, as the deeper implications of systems cost is that conventional warfare (that would require the mobilization of the state) is itself outdated. No nation (not even the United States) can afford to mass mobilize with the costs of kitting all these levies out and sustaining them abroad.
So what is the course we should take? Obviously, the Reserve needs to exist to back up the Regular Force. Both Reg and Reserve need to be interlocked into a national strategy of how to prepare and use military force. Obviously, the realities on the ground, both at home and abroad, do a good job of telling us what we need:
"There is no going back, in other words, to the assumption on which the traditional American nation-state was founded: that a small army, augmented by large numbers of reservists, is all that is needed to hold the enemy at bay while the civilian economic facilities are converted to wartime production....
Rather than relying on the cumbersome mobilization and massed firepower arrangements of the Cold War, this work suggests reorganizing the Army into mobile combat groups positioned on the Frontiers of American security, ready to act quickly and decisively, primed to move with a minimum of preparation."
Col. Douglas MacGregor, Breaking the Phalanx: pg 2
Although MacGregor's quote is centered on the American context, it is very relevent to our context in that we share:
- small, professional military forces
- expeditionary requirement of operating out of North America
- general goal of maintaining the primacy of the international liberal democratic order
- low public tolerance to mass casualties and expensive and long drawn out conflicts
I feel we need to reorient our entire structure towards the realities that we need both the Regulars and the Reserves to deal with the bushfires as the costs and requirements of conflagration in this day in age are too much to consider.
First of all, Readiness Cycles should consist of a variety of different "Echelons" of military forces. All army force structures fit into a specific echelon and National Strategy will dictate to the CF what echelons are required (I discussed this on the other Reserve thread):
[quote author=Infanteer"]
Echelon I) Special Operations Units and Rapid Reaction Forces (either Air Mobile or afloat in a Amphibious Role) - Required to be able to project globally within days and to remain in place to establish conditions for heavier follow-on-forces.
Echelon II) Regular Force Units and Formations - These are the full-time professional soldiers who must be capable being sustained on operations overseas - usually heavier then Echelon I forces (in our case, I see the "Cavalry" format as ideal for now). Current doctrine mandates two Battlegroups with surge capability for a Brigade. Echelon II forces are ROTO O and next few rotations.
Echelon III) Voluntary Augmention - This is where we sit now. This is limited use of Reservists in a strictly voluntary arrangement to help cover off on missions in mature theaters. This can involve individual augmentees to Regular Force Units or the formation of Reserve sub-sub units or sub-units within Regular Units (as with the Composite Reserve units and D&S Platoons). Reserve Battalions are required to be able to form a Platoon at all times as an Echelon III force (even if it is only a staff check).
Echelon IV) Reserve Activation - This is where the Americans sit now. Entire Reserve Units and Formations are called up, given workup training, and deployed. Obviously, quite disruptive, but it is something the Reserves should be able to do in a wartime scenario that does not call for complete national mobilization.
Echelon V) These are forces created from scratch in a National Mobilization scheme. They can exist on paper at zero strength until the balloon goes up and the floodgates are opened for recruits. These scratch units are filled out by soldiers from the other 4 echelons who have returned from operational duty.[/quote]
Note: Echelon V is a paper-only force; the possibility is beyond remote and I'm unsure of how we will do it, but we must prepare for it.
Reorientation of Readiness Rotations that includes Echelon's that consist of Reserve Forces will demand that:
1) The Reserves be given appropriate roles that coincides with and complements the Regular Forces - we need the Reserves to be seen as more then just a mobilization pool.
2) The Reserves must be manned, equipped, and trained to fit into the above. There can be no "paper armies" in a real operational readiness structure.
3) The Force Structure will demand a different approach to how we treat our reservists. Being Echelon III and IV units, they will have a real mission - the business sector and the government will have to recognize this. In return for obligation of service (part time contract) the Reserves must be supported with job protection (both coercive legislation and cooperative incentives for employers), guaranteed training, and real operational focus.
It is time to look at the Reserves as a tool in our belt - there is no purpose to keeping a fire extinguisher on the wall if it is empty and missing the hose.
Anyways, just some thoughts coming out of discussions in the last week. Flame away.
Infanteer