I like the FORCE test. It's a great baseline cross functional fitness test.
IMHO, it just shouldn't be the 'only' mandatory, formal test especially for higher intensity occupations like Combat Arms etc.
Arguably, those in the combat arms will meet other fitness standards that are in the form of training standards. FORCE test gets you on the course, being able to succeed at it is what keeps you there. But not it isn't likely necessary to pass a Cooper's test to be a remote drone pilot.
Beyond that there is nothing personal about a uniform. It is the antithesis of a personal statement. It is a corporate statement. It is a statement that one soldier is like another and they are all interchangeable and replaceable. One falls another will advance a rank and top up that file. And the advance will continue. The line will hold.
If you want to be an individual in all circumstances then the forces are probably not for you.
That's not true at all. It's a personal statement if you earned medals on deployment and wear them. It's a personal statement if you earn a rank that isn't a time-based promotion. To say that the uniform and the wearer are mutually exclusive is not realistic. I have an SSI on my sleeve. It's a military insignia that simply says I spent a bunch of time at sea, but on CA DEU, it's a personal statement that I spent time doing something outside expectation. I have a CDS commendation, which is a medal, but it's for doing something considered significant and outside expectations. For me, those are personal achievements and, therefore, individual. The dress instructions say that underlying the organisational system is a personal identification system.
I am not seeking to be an individual in all circumstances, and I don't know where that came from. Criticising the things I think are flawed doesn't mean I hate the institution. On the contrary, I think the military has a lot of wonderful things to offer a person looking for career, stability, education, training, travel, experience, community, friendship. I just think we can and always should be better tomorrow than we are today. That means confronting what we think is problematic and seeing if there's a workable and good solution.
Yea, I know. But the new service dress is scheduled for issue in Q4 2026, so, troops in my unit will be without any DEU/Service Dress for another year and a half.
Eeeegh. That's poor planning on some people's parts. The sensible thing, if it was possible, would have been to try to align the end of one material with the start of the next... Or they are just waiting for enough of everything to be ready to do a mass rollout that culminates with everyone wearing the new stuff on X day.
One uniform, one standard refers to each job. It means looking the same as every soldier/sailor in the same jobs you. It doesn’t necessarily mean the whole CAF it means if you are a Stoker you all wear the same uniform and have same standard, if you are a Infanteer you have the same uniform (at least within the regiment) and same fitness standards.
It doesn’t presume that everyone is equal, it presumes that everyone should be treated equally and if you are unable to meet the standard you shouldn’t be doing the job.
I really don’t care what sex, or sexuality or nationality you have/your heritage is. I care if you’re able to do the same job as the other person beside you. If it means certain groups have a tougher time meeting the standard, that sucks but life isn’t fair and war is even less so.
I was Army and Navy, I got to experience both worlds.
That 380lb guy couldn’t do the job needed, and that is my point about the standards being too low. They couldn’t go and work where they needed to as they were physically too weak and physically too fat to fit where they needed to work. Not to mention being 380lbs on a ship puts everyone else at risk for dealing with them in the event of a injury or disaster. Can you carry a 380lb man through a ship effectively? I doubt very many people would be able to.
As to your support trades not needing any combat skills Ukraine has shown that fighting a serious enemy means anywhere can become the front line at any time. Not being prepared for that means people will die if put in that situation. I would rather overtrained and hopefully not needed than undertrained and dead.
And as to your comment about not taking a full equality stance, you are wrong. Equality means treating everyone the same. I just don’t take a equity stance. Everyone should be given the chance to meet the standard, but if you can’t thats life.
Now, in all the times you've said 'one uniform, one standard' you've never clarified that you didn't really mean one but several. It always sounded as if you meant that every person from NCM to Officer, Sailor to Aviator to Soldier needed to have one single standard. At the end of the day, if you can't do the job, you don't usually get to keep going; but that's based on training and performance standards not on how fast you run or how many pushups you can do. Currently, all people in an element are wearing the same uniform as other people in their element. That's why we have three different DEUs for the three services.
No, everyone should not be treated equally. That drives further inequality because not everybody needs the same things. The foundation of treating everyone equally means either you are treating everyone the same no matter what other factors are in play, or it means assuming some homogenous prototypical person against whom everyone is measured; and this latter option is where the problems arise. Who is this prototypical person? If that person is tall, are we going to kick everyone out of the CAF who isn't that height? If that person is a specific weight, are we going to kick everyone out who isn't in that weight range? Or only if they don't "look" fit at that weight? Is it fairness, equity, or justice to measure everyone off this idealised person? No, it's not. We've been saying as an organisation for well over two decades that diversity is our strength, so treating everyone the same isn't really ISO embracing diversity.
I am army, and I served on a ship and even did the shipboard NETP OJPR (so, technically soldier and sailor qualified). I can relate to differences in both environments. Doing firefighting in way-too-big boots was not ideal, but no amount of PT was going to solve that problem. That is a kit fitment issue which needs scrutiny as much as the DEU.
As an outsider, I used to find this discussion interesting. I no longer do.
I get it; I'm white, I'm male, everything is my fault.
Wow, evil English imperialism must have been powerful stuff. It has even driven countries who were never colonized to follow their lead.
Japan
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South Korea
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Yes! British Imperialism is very powerful. It has influenced every part of the globe even if they didn't actively take over a nation. One needn't be formally occupied and controlled to be colonised. Two points: 1. The UK and Japan had some very close ties in the early 1900s. The UK support for Japan helped Japan control Korea, so these examples are not as separated from the UK as you might argue. And later support by the UK and Commonwealth to Korea can also play a role in their adoption of a friendly force's uniforms. 2. Many militaries, the British included, would adopt uniform elements they liked either because they thought it stylish, or they admired a particular unit or military, or they had very close relationships with a nation. So, the fact that so many militaries have similar uniforms is absolutely tied to imperialism even if indirectly.
The lawful authority to change the QR&O is the GG, on the advice of the Privy Council (per the National Defence Act).
The RCN has never requested that the PC advise the GG to do so.
To implement without lawful authority is, "troubling" at best, gross insubordination at worst.
Then I suppose that should be brought up the next time CRCN has a townhall. I guess they have other things they think are more important than making that request. If it's the principle of the thing, seriously confront the navy about it.
However, for someone to oppose the use of S3-S1 and Master Sailor seems only to show that one doesn't think gendered terminology has problems. It was only the RCN that had gendered ranks below PO2. In the CA and RCAF, ranks have all been gender neutral. It's just a translation to English from the French versions, so it's not an insane thing to ask.
Look Cool Factor.
If a CAF member meets their moral commitment to be generally fit, this isnt an issue. You can still be chunky and look good in this. You can be jacked and look good in this. You can be skinny and look good in this. If you look like melted ice cream, you wont really look too good in anything.
Agreed.
Please explain to me what you propose then. What does a decolonized and equitable uniform look like? You keep using jargon and buzzwords but you arent proposing any solutions for what you deem problematic.
Is an homage to when we were fucking up Nazis not appropriate to modern sensibilities?
Im sorry but there really isnt much substance to the questions you are proposing. We are Western, we are of a colonial legacy and the Army is overwhelmingly masculine and probably always will be. Thats not a bad thing. What do you actually propose if you think these facts are issues?
On one had you celebrate a gender neutral option but follow that with a lament that it isnt sufficiently non-masculine to your eye. What does a non-masculine suit even look like? Does it exist? A woman's suit is essentially the same thing with a different cut, shocking.
Im sorry but this is a lot of words to say little and to offer no solutions to the perceived problem. Personally, I think it looks well-made, its obviously Army and is an homage to when we were one of thr most powerful forces for utilitarian good on Earth. Thats a win.
LCF. Got it. Thanks
I would not agree that anyone can look good in that uniform providing they are generally fit. As I mentioned, I don't have a long torso. Belts around the natural waistline are not very far away from my chest. I have broad shoulders and long arms (my arm span is like, 5'9 but my height is 5'5), so I don't even know if the women's cut would fit properly because the sleeves would be too short and the shoulders too narrow; but the men's is too rectangular and boxy. So, the problem I see is that there are these broadly general cuts and styles that are based on some sort of gendered standard male and standard female body. FWIW, neither of those mannequins in the picture had much chest to deal with, so those jackets hang differently than someone with a bigger bust. If this prototypical female body is skinny (not fit, skinny, which is not the same) and flat-chested, then maybe the uniform would look fine, but that's not going to work for a lot of people.
At the risk of starting a whole new issue, that we call ourselves a western nation is also a problem because to be western places somewhere as a centre, and that centre has often been Europe and the UK at the expense of everyone else. I heard a scholar say that it's colonial language to call a region "the Middle East" because it comes from centring certain places. Instead, this scholar used North Africa and South Asia as accurate descriptors... But like I said, that's another issue to open, and this isn't the thread for it. Problematising something doesn't mean it's completely wrong or that I'm vehemently opposed to it. It means examining with a critical eye and being aware of one's positionality. It's not bad that we have a colonial legacy? Ok, there may be elements of our heritage that are worth keeping (like paved roads, a functional democracy that doesn't stop government services when leaders throw a hissy fit, etc.), but there are loads of people who would argue that colonialism has been pretty bad for a lot of people. Can we fully decolonise? Probably not. Can we try to be our own people instead of always throwing back to some other thing? Maybe. This thing called "Canadian Identity" has been a subject lately because most of how we define ourselves has been summed up to "not American". Only some Canadians are very British and happy about it. If we're trying to attract new people to the CAF, they might not be so enthusiastic about an organisation that is so fervently tied to an empire that maybe oppressed the hell out of their ancestors. I come from very British people, so I'm not fervently anti-British even if it sounds that way. I'm saying it's worth considering many sides of an issue and how choices we make about how we present our military may land.
The real "homage to when we were fucking up Nazis" would be in the lessons we learned and the tactics we developed that we still use today and that we teach to other militaries. We don't need to look like grandpa's (or great grandpa's) military to be as effective or more so. We need to keep what's useful and move on.
I have been thinking about what a gender-neutral uniform might look like, and I keep thinking that it needs to get rid of pockets, forego buttons that require one side of the tunic to overlap the other, and maybe the collar needs to go. I am not a fashion designer, so I couldn't tell you precisely. Sometimes, it's not easy to define what something should be other than to point out what it shouldn't be. One thing we do well in the CAF is to encourage people always to come with solutions rather than just gripes; but sometimes we don't know the solution and need others to help. Something we don't do well is accept that people can identify a legit problem without knowing a solution right away. Two things can be true.
Someone many posts ago mentioned that the DWAO had input and asked for more feminine features and options. For those who want to be uber-femme, those options might be fine. For someone like me who's not masculine, but who isn't into high femme fashion, wearing a suit looks manly instead of like a woman in a suit. There's no good middle ground for someone like me. It's either super masc or super femme. Binaries like that don't work for everyone. I can't make it make more sense than that. I just know how it feels and looks. So, I don't want to wear skirts and heels, but I also don't want to be called 'sir' all the time. This isn't an issue that many men in the military need to even think about. And there's a deeper cultural connection to masculine attire that automatically and subconsciously assigns more legitimate authority, power, and professionalism to those wearing masculine uniforms. Just look at those two concepts and see if you think the one on the right with skirt and round-hemmed tunic is the one you think is more authoritative and professional and legitimate. I'm looking into scholarship that examines how the military manages masculinities and femininities and how the former is perceived compared to the latter. Maybe when I'm finally done my thesis, I'll have a clearer answer for you.
, the kind of figure seen on some Victorian men but not much since. Upon scouring the web and examining closer (I'm doing a thesis on the CAF uniform as public and embodied pedagogy), I realised that these are both women's styles. This did two things: 1. a brief celebration that one option was devoid of most of the current gendered modifications that impose femininity, and that it was cut for bodies with different shoulder-to-hip ratios (which would accommodate every person who has this shape from cis-women to transmen to transwomen and some cis-men). 2. a lament that the style was simply a men's suit, thus reinforcing that the socially acceptable presentation of professionalism that we are hellbent on preserving is that of a WWII-era man.
In retrospect, that wouldn't even make sense. I have never seen anything that indicated how they are supposed to be worn, so I think mine have been upside down with the juncta closer to the shoulder seam when maybe it's supposed to be closer to the collar? I don't know why we didn't stick with the Vimy star. That makes loads more sense, and I was surprised to get the pips I did given what the image is on the CAF identification system site.
