Roy Harding said:
Man - that's gotta be hard - and I'm not trying to be a smartass here.
I spent my career in Reg Force, with very little exposure to you Reserve guys. Since I've been paying attention to your issues (at least here on milnet.ca), I've begun to have a whole new level of respect for what you do.
I can't imagine not knowing whether you'll be employed or not, but still volunteering to do it.
You Reserve folks are amazing - and I salute you (FWIW).
Roy
It's not quite so bad as it was before, Roy. 3-08 seems to have been relatively well administered so far, at least from our end of things. Timelines for self identification were reasonable, and they offered four 'streams' for employment. Some volunteered to start training in May or June, and were integrated directly into RegF rifle companies, and will remain so until the end of the tour (except a couple who were yanked out to be sent on PLQ Infantry- but that's another story).
The second and third streams are those of us who have self identified for Sept 1st. The only difference between 2 and 3 is whether you're doing area run courses this summer, which seems a bit dumb. There may or may not be some administrative or bureaucratic reason for the differentiation, but I don't really know or care. Stream 2 and 3 mostly look to be headed to the national support element; my placeholder spot, for instance, is a 'weapon operator' in a security platoon, which from the breakdown of CFTPO slots I interpret as an RG-31 gunner, though I may be out to lunch. A few more may be picked up for RegF Rifle coys depending on how the regs fare in the DAG process, but that's very much watch and shoot.
Stream 4 is a January commencement of service, for six months workup and six months deployment. They'll spend almost all of their time behind the wire guarding KAF or Camp Nathan Smith, or at least that's what it sounds like now.
We have a pretty solid confirmation that we'll be employed (paid, if not necessarily utilized throughout) in one capacity or another frmo our date of arrival to the end of the tour. The variable is our actual task on roto. Naturally most of us are hoping for (and probably won't get) a slot in a rifle platoon, but we'll see how it breaks down. In either case, lots of us have stepped up to fill in the second tier roles outside the wire, convoy excort, force protection, etc. The numbers from the reserve units are rather astounding- my regiment had about 43 (all ranks) self identify for all streams (or at least that was the count when I delivered the stream 2 and 3 applications to brigade), and while some of those may drop out, more will ID for january sometime this fall. This is for a unit that actively parades maybe 60 riflemen on a decent night, plus leadership and admin.
There are still horror stories out there of people who did their six months workup, then got told "Yeah, sorry, we don't need you. Peace." This time, the brigades have been adamant that anyone who self IDs and gets accepted into a position WILL deploy in some capacity or another- but we'll wait and see.not yet into a career. Those with 'real' careers (and I mean no disrespect to anyone by saying that) who are deploying generally work for someone with a favourable view towards military service, ie government, etc.
Watching the entire process is going to be interesting. Due to the numbers, I anticipate that 3-08 will become a significant case study in the use of today's reserve force for augmenting deployment. There will be a lot of lessons learned out of this, most of them well above my pay grade.
There's some truth to what Zipperhead mentioned- the greater part of those of us deploying are students or
