The 'Hollow Army' and the .COM dilemma [a split & merged thread]

[vonGarvin]

Even though I am staff qualified, I don't understand why there are so many commands.  As with Infanteer, I see the merit in a split of force employer and force generator.  I don't think it's a need, but I certainly agree that it has many merits.  Perhaps in an ideal world, we would have a national-level headquarters (which I would call "NDHQ" for short).  It would be in charge of everything, from D Cadets to any forces deployed, air, land and sea.  So, the person in charge of this staff, the chief, if you will, would be a Chief of the Defence Staff.  It would by necessity have to have a good mix of air, land, sea and special ops staff.
Under this national-level headquarters I'm not sure where to split.  Perhaps not yet into force generators and force employers.  Probably into a minimum of four "commands": Air, Land, Sea and Special Operations.  I would call this the "field force".  These four commands, homogenous in nature, would perhaps be the "force generators".  As an example, the air force (which I would call the Canadian Air Force) would be responsible for the individual and collective training of elements and members of the air force. 
So, we have a force generator.  Parallel to them, and also subordinate to the national-level headquarters would be the force employer "command".    This group, command or element would be responsible to the Chief of the Defence Staff (“CDS” for short) for the employment of forces everywhere.  This would mean anything from search and rescue operations in Northern Ontario to combat operations in Afghanistan. 
By necessity, of course, would be a number of other “things” to be managed, but I would see them managed by the various force generators.  For example, such things and doctrine development and validation, sustainment, acquisition etc.  They would be responsible for recruiting into their various commands.  This not mean a case of naval recruitment centres competing with army recruitment centres.  Instead, the day-to-day recruitment would be done in conjunction with the other forces.  Instead, the navy is responsible to aid manning, etc of the recruitment centres, but they would also set the entry standards for their various “hard navy” trades.  So far, so good.


Then we have the “purple” trades (those trades which work in all three forces: logisticians, technicians, etc).  One option would be to have “sub trades”, such as “Naval Administration Clerk” or “Army Supply Technician” or “Air Force Mobile Support Equipment Operator”.  The first obvious problem is that if the army doesn’t recruit enough Army Supply Technician, they could not (without retraining), employ an air force Supply Technician.  Also, the Air Force would certainly object to such a transfer, especially when they are short.  One advantage, however, is that the “purples” would be able to master the aspects of their various elements, vice being journeymen.

(Aside: I call upon the “purples” to comment on this view, which is definitely from a non-purple dude).

Anyway, I think I’ve rambled enough.  Theories?  Questions?  Comments?  Critiques?

 

[Old Sweat]

David, whichever one of you reads this,

That sounds remarkably like NDHQ with the environmental chiefs responsible for force generation and preparation along with doctrine, tactics, etc. Meanwhile the DCDS ran domestic and overseas operations on behalf of the CDS who retained full command of deployed forces. Special operations was run by a cell in the DCDS group that both trained, generated and commanded their 'troops.'

 

[vonGarvin]

Brian
I think that was mostly my point.  Having said all that, however, I acknowledge that the system may have not worked to expectations.  I am not convinced that the current solution has alleviated anything.  More commands does not necessarily mean more efficiency or effectiveness. 

 

[54/102 CEF]

My view - which is worth its usual 2 cents -

caveat : This really isn't about good or bad decisions by DND - its about the government strangling the resource inflow to support the demand at the far end.

I am guessing that Gen Hillier assumed he'd get more personnel which would put legs on the dot.coms - which didn't happen - straws in the wind are as recent as the statement of CLS saying training suffers as all the trainers are away/tasked....

Somebody bigger than all of us should be asking "and when is this going to be fixed? 2011-2012 before the next international tour-a-rama gets going?"

Like a subdivision with many foundations but no houses and no buyers - this will be a while before it grows a house (s) or is just foreclosed.

Its happened before

Probably need at least 4 more years so "architects" don't get their political noses out of joint

 

[dapaterson]

I am guessing that Gen Hillier assumed he'd get more personnel which would put legs on the dot.coms - which didn't happen - straws in the wind are as recent as the statement of CLS saying training suffers as all the trainers are away/tasked....

Somebody bigger than all of us should be asking "and when is this going to be fixed? 2011-2012 before the next international tour-a-rama gets going?"

Gen (ret'd) Hillier ran amok because no one had the balls intestinal fortitude to tell him when he was right out of it.  "Getting more personnel" is useless.  For HQs, you want mostly staff with 10-20 years experience.  So, class, here's a question:  How long in advance do you need to start preparing?

The CF has an indecent obsession with doing shiny new things, but never abandoning the old things.  Want to increase the CDS span of control (which every bit of organizational analysis will tell you is wrong, wrong, wrong)?  Fine.  What are you going to stop doing to provide the resources to do it?  None of this "We'll figure it out later" crap.  Make a plan - that is, proper assignment of tasks, resources and priorities.  Not a wish statement.

Or maybe I'm just cranky...

 

[armyvern]

...
Remember: over 10% of the Regular Force trained effective strength is posted to the NCR.  CFSU(O) supports more people than Winnipeg, Esquimalt or Petawawa (as I recall, only Valcartier and Halifax support more).
...

Statements like this always kill me ... the Op bases. We've got 8400 sets of clothing docs here that we provide support to on an ongoing basis. Ahhhh, but a whole lot of them are "students' ... so they never count them as "actually posted here and requiring support".  :

There's only one spot with more "individual docs" (ie customers) to support than us - and it's CFSU(O). I'd feel bad for them there if they actually had 90% of their customers living in the field and requireing frequent exchanges of stuff clothing actually stocks these days ...

Welcome to Gagetown, home to the largest Supply Coy in the country - there's a reason for that.

 

[McG]

By necessity, of course, would be a number of other “things” to be managed, but I would see them managed by the various force generators.  For example, such things and doctrine development and validation, sustainment, acquisition etc.  They would be responsible for recruiting into their various commands.  This not mean a case of naval recruitment centres competing with army recruitment centres.  Instead, the day-to-day recruitment would be done in conjunction with the other forces.  Instead, the navy is responsible to aid manning, etc of the recruitment centres, but they would also set the entry standards for their various “hard navy” trades.  So far, so good.

I'm not sure that re-entrenching environmental stovepipes is any better an idea than the .coms. 

We have a common scale to against which to measure applicants, but there are already different entrance requirements for the occupations which require them.  So, we don't need to complicate the recruiting process with environmental stovepipes.

Segregating the supply depots into environmental stovepipes will increase the drain on manpower (if new depots are opened) and greatly run up costs while draining efficiency & effectiveness (regardless of how it is done).  Chopping-up ADM(Mat) and dividing it into the ECSs would be even worse for draining manpower while running up costs & reducing performance (not that I don't think there isn't a lot of fat which could be trimmed in ADM(Mat)).  ... so, (again) we don't need to complicate sustainment with greater environmental stovepipes. 

I do agree that training, doctrine & requirements belong under the force generators and for the most part we have this right (but I was a little surprised to learn CANOSCOM has the lead for a lot of the Joint Engineering stuff).

There are probably a lot of improvements to be had through converging, merging & re-shuffling various L1s.  However, before stuffing more power, function & responsibility into the ECSs, I think we'd be better served with Joint amalgamations.

 

[dapaterson]

Vern:

The comment wasn't meant to downplay the work of the training bases, rather to highlight the disproportionate share of the Reg F that's nested in the National Capital Region (NCR).  Can we as a military afford to have over 10% of the trained strength lodged in a static, non-deployable HQ?

Or should we be working smarter?  Or should we install dis-incentives in the pay and benefits system to deter the growth of the HQs?

Imagine, if you would, a 15% reduction in the size of NDHQ - that's nearly 1000 Reg F PYs to reinvest across the board - it would help make many initiatives a reality.

Or we can do as we always do - take a PY here and a PY there and add them to Ottawa...

 

[armyvern]

Vern:

The comment wasn't meant to downplay the work of the training bases, rather to highlight the disproportionate share of the Reg F that's nested in the National Capital Region (NCR).  Can we as a military afford to have over 10% of the trained strength lodged in a static, non-deployable HQ?

Or should we be working smarter?  Or should we install dis-incentives in the pay and benefits system to deter the growth of the HQs?

Imagine, if you would, a 15% reduction in the size of NDHQ - that's nearly 1000 Reg F PYs to reinvest across the board - it would help make many initiatives a reality.

Or we can do as we always do - take a PY here and a PY there and add them to Ottawa...

I understand that was not your intent.

My intent was to highlight the fact that it is a common fallacy accross the CF (even at the highest echelons) that Op bases such as Pet, Valacatraz (Pri 2 & 3 Units) are "the busiest after CFSU(O)" and have the most customers to support. That is simply NOT TRUE. We have 8600 customers here and everybody loves to forget that very imortant tidbit of fact. (Hmmm, figure out the size of the CF ... what does 8400 equal?? Damn, we're pretty close to CFSU(O) numbers hey??)) 

This fallacy puts them higher on the manning list while we sit at Pri 6.

As the dot coms and HQs are deemed pri for staffing ... their posns are filled. Pri2 & 3s are also staffed first (as they are the Units who deploy ... and actually can be staffed over-PML because of that).  When there isn't enough bodies to fill all of those spots ... we lose our staff as the lowest pri for manning and thus sit at 72%.

When there's extra bods sitting in HQs ... I have issues with that. The Ops Units HAVE to be like they are ... HQs do not. that'swhere we need to begin fixing the problems because the workload here and the stress on the support staff is absolutely uncalled for and assinine. Ergo the release rates. Something has to get fixed ... soon ... or the ability to support the "training" branch (CTC!!) is going to fall off the tree with one huge crash heard throughout the nation.

 

[vonGarvin]

Vern:
Amen to that.
To illustrate the absurdity of robbing from the training system, or at least, not giving it its fair due, consider this quote:

Obviously General Balck as Corps commander did not receive enough replacement NCOs
from the training base in Germany. This is an endemic problem in all armies in peace and
war. His message seems to be that you must select and train these key leaders even when their
temporary absence hurts - and their training must not be interrupted, regardless of the
emergency. In short, one must not eat the seed corn.

(Source: GENERALS BALCK AND VON MELLENTHIN ON TACTICS:  IMPLICATIONS FOR NATO MILITARY DOCTRINE
by General William DePuy (U.S. Army Ret.), BDM Corporation, December 1980
reproduced and edited by Reiner K. Huber, Universität der Bundeswehr München, December 2004)

Yes, front line units will argue that they can't afford to send people off; however, that is short term gain for long term pain, vice the short term pain for long term gain.