What Should the Army's Role, Capabilities & Structure Be?

[Kirkhill]

What kind of knock-on effect would this have on Canada if the US adopted the Foreign Legion/Gurkha model and formed their own very well paid Foreign Legion with a Green Card after 2-5 years of service?

Any takers?

How many ex-CF personnel currently serving in Iraq and Afghanistan for Blackwell etc.?

 

[ArmyRick]

I thought I had made my previous post on another thread (canadian Army structure) but what the hey, this one works !
First I understand and even appreciate history and tradition. But if change does not take place, then lets keep riding horse into battle with sabers and first rank kneel, load, etc... Get my drift..
CHANGE IS PART OF BEING IN THE MILITARY !
I am a proponent of change as well as opponent of it. With that being said, here we go..
OK, here is my idea. 
The army (less tactical aviation wich is air force anyways) is split into two corps, Combat Arms (Infantry, artillery, armour and field engineer) and Service Support Arms (EME, Logs, medical, etc). Combat Support Arms such as Sigs, int, MP, etc will be assigned specialist within the units...
The combat arms are broken down into three Combat Arms Regiments for each brigade..
A Combat arms regiment will consist of.....
-HQ Company (RHQ, Sigs, Int, MP, CIMIC, Regt OPs, Defence platoon, HUMINT, Psy Ops, Regt ISTAR HQ or command cell for all info gathering)
-3 x Rifle companies LAVIII (Coy HQ, 3 x rifle platoons and a 4th platoon for the ALAAWS wich is either going to be Javelin or Spike) Note Yes the CF has already made a decision to purchase one, I don't wich one it is, in ref to ALAAWS
-Direct Fire Support Company (3 troops of one of MGS, one of TUA and one for MMEV)
-ISTAR Company (3 x Coyote troops and a UAV Troop)
-Mobility Company (3 x troops of field engineers + heavy equipment troop)
-Indirect Fire Company (Regt FSCC and 3 x troops of 120mm mortars or the Mobile arty system)
-Service Support Comapny (Coy HQ, 3 x A echelon resupply platoons, RQMS, UMS, REGT Orderly Room and Maint Troop)

When in combat these will break down into 3 x Maneuover Teams (replace old combat team)
More to follow, over....

 

[ArmyRick]

The Maneuover Team will consist of
-one Rifle Company
-one DFS Platoon (maybe 2 MGS, 2 TUA, 2 MMEV)
-one ISTAR platoon
-one Mobility platoon
-one Indirect fire support platoon
-one A echelon resupply platoon (follow on)

Why ??? I can hear the screams of protest now. Well forget Tanks. Tanks are history wether we want them to be or not !!! Note I have done several combat team exercises w/LdSH and RCD, I DO very much appreciate a MBT vs MGS. But the powers that be have made their decision, so lets learn to fight with the gear we have..

Training ?
We ditch BMQ for the army. We send all army directly to a COMBAT ARMS run school aka ATCs (look at the JUNK that comes out of PAT Pl in Borden)
All army pers will do a BMQ/SQ together (maybe call it Basic Soldiers Qulaification) approximately 16 weeks of training (guys now in the CF are averaging a year before they get to an operational unit)
CSS trades will go do OJT or their actual course if one is starting.
Combat arms guys will then proceed to a Combat Arms Soldier Qualification (additional 8-10 weeks training) and then after serving in the battalion for a year or two they will speciliase in either LAVIII crewman, Reconnaissance (ISTAR) soldier, MGS crewman, TUA Crewman, MMEV Crewman, Idirect fire Gun number, Mobility soldier (AKA engineer), or signaler.
For PLQ all Combat Arms troops will undergo the previous 6A infantry and for their qulaification to SGT they will specialise in their above mentioned skills.

Will this happen ? No.
Why? Too much resistance to change in the CF IMO.

Anyways that is my idea. Lets hear your opinions....
Cheers.......

 

[ArmyRick]

Oh, woops wait the new structure army wide ?
1st Canadian Maneouver Brigade (West in shilo/wainwright)
Brigade HQ
1,2 PPCLI
LdSH (same orbat as the other combat arms units)
1st CSS Regt

2nd Canadian Maneouver Brigade  (gagetown)
Brigade HQ
1,2 RCR
RCD
2nd  CSS Regt

5th Canadian Maneouver Brigade (valcartier)
Brigade HQ
1,2 R22eR
12RBC
5th  CSS Regt

4th Canadian Airmobile Brigade (petawawa)
Brigade HQ
3 RCR
3 PPCLI
3 R22eR
4th  CSS Regt (restructured to support LIBs not mech combat arms units)
emphasis on placing more tac hel squadrons in Petawawa
Pet is not very conducive for any type of mech trg which is why I reccomend it be set aside for the LIBs/spec ops guys

 

[McG]

I think that it is very important that we do not over emphasis our force generation structure mimicking our typical force employment structure.   The original recommendation to convert our brigades into regiments would have merged the manoeuvre regiments and transposed the regimental identity to formation level.   Beyond that I did not see much in the way of anything new proposed.   ArmyRick proposes (as others have before) a permanent force structure identical to the BGs that we send overseas.   Such a permanent structure would be a mistake.

It would strip us of our ability to operate at brigade level.   It would prevent us from deploying a CER (which we have done twice in recent history).   It would force technical skill sets down to a level where there will be insufficient depth for those skills to be sustained.

There is nothing wrong with pooling PsyOps, MPs, Engr, some Sigs, Medics, etc at Bde level and then inserting them into BGs for deployments.   Specifically looking at your Engr element, you have called for increasing the numbers of Engr by a factor of a bout 3.   At the same time, you will have stripped the Engr from providing any support beyond the capability of pioneers.   ROWPU, MCM, Resources, dive sp, assault mobility (armd engr), and construction are all gone from your force structure.   The minimum organization to sustain these capabilities within a force generation unit is three troops.   However, three troops is also enough to support a full brigade.   Here we win by keeping everything together.   Also gone from your force structure is the Engr planning structure that a CER provides to a Bde HQ while deployed.  

Where would the FSCC and ASCC from the Arty be found?

I do not oppose transferring regimental identities to the formation level and grouping the manoeuvre arms.   I do oppose permanent BGs structured for Bosnia & Kosovo.   They will lack flexibility and/or contain redundancies that would be eliminated through our current force generation structure.

 

[ArmyRick]

When I set the new orbat I described above, I was thinking of what kit we are going to see (not wanting to see) and I planned each regt for war fighting. For lower scale peace support ops, I would reccomend leaving certain elements of your regt on rear party (as we do now anyways).
As far as the engineering side of the house, I would split engineers up. Their are your hard chargin, blow up, build any obstacle you need in 3 seconds type Field Eng and I have also seen what construction engineers, plumbers, mapping dudes, etc do.
I would put the more technical engineering into CSS regiments and keep the hard core fighting engineers in the combat arms regt.
You will note I did reccomend keeping a heavy troop in the Combat arms mobility coy (bridge layers, Badgher AEV, that new engineering kit you guys got that looks like a back hoe but is wickedly fast and what ever kit you guys feel you should keep including ROWPU ?)

 

[pbi]

Because we were talking about UAVs here earlier, and I made a comment about the baddies eventually developing that capability, check this out from the CBC News site this AM (08 Nov):

Hezbollah drone plane enters Israeli airspace
Last Updated Sun, 07 Nov 2004 16:55:25 EST
BEIRUT - For the first time, the militant group Hezbollah has violated Israeli airspace by sending an unmanned spy plane into northern Israel.


INDEPTH: Lebanon

In a statement Sunday, the militant Islamic group said the move was in response to Israel's own repeated violations of Lebanese airspace since it withdrew its forces from the south of the country four years ago.

Hezbollah says the drone flew as far as the northern Israeli coastal city of Nahariya.

It wasn't clear whether the spy plane was homemade or had been bought from a foreign supplier.

Israel says it was made in Iran and confirmed that it had flown over western Galilee.

The Israeli army says the flight proves that Lebanon does not have control over its own territory.

Hezbollah says it will stage more drone flights over Israeli territory in the future.

Interesting. Nobody owns ideas. Cheers.

 

[McG]

Proof that instead of getting out of the AD business, we should focus on getting AD assets down to lower levels and with greater precision to use against miniature aircraft.

 

[pbi]

Proof that instead of getting out of the AD business, we should focus on getting AD assets down to lower levels and with greater precision to use against miniature aircraft.

Excellent point, McG. A further incident to reinforce your point is the recent air attack by the Govt of Cote d'Ivoire on the French force there, killing nine French soldiers. Who says there is "no air threat in the Third World?" Cheers.

 

[a_majoor]

This would seem to indicate an organic AA ability for deployed sub and sub sub units, since I find it difficult to envision an AA system which has the portability, flexibility and mobility to keep up with small groups of soldiers.  (The alternative would be to huddle under some sort of AA umbrella, which would make manoeuvre difficult).

I wonder how adaptable the new generation of fire and forget missiles are?

 

[pbi]

I agree fully with integrating AA down to sun-unit level(in my article in CAJ I suggested that it be organic to a Close Combat Unit.) As well, we need to integrate our Navy into providing theatre air defense (TAD) in littoral areas such as Cote d'Ivoire, using AD platforms offshore. We should also look at an expeditionary capability for at least one sqn of CF-18s. The world is always changing. Cheers.

 

[DJL]

As well, we need to integrate our Navy into providing theatre air defense (TAD) in littoral areas such as Cote d'Ivoire, using AD platforms offshore.

[Cheap Plug] I remember reading somewhere, that a single Burke class destroyer is more capable then a Patriot Battalion....[/Cheap Plug] 

 

[Kirkhill]

What size of umbrella would a TAD vessel create DJL?

 

[DJL]

Raytheon lists the SM-2 as having a range of ~80 km.....

 

[Kirkhill]

.........And HOW far upriver can you drive one of those boats?

 

[pbi]

.........And HOW far upriver can you drive one of those boats?

That's why I said "littoral areas": sea-based TAD doesn't do much good in a place like, say, Kabul. However, there is a current school of thought that says since most population centres are located in littoral areas, these are likely locations for conflict and thus for deployed ops. TAD would probably have worked in Croatia and parts of Bosnia, East Timor, Haiti (if there had been a threat...), etc. Right tool for the right job: a Joint Expeditionary Force gives you a bigger toolbox. Cheers.

 

[a_majoor]

Various proposed upgrades to the Aegis system suggest you will get an even bigger umbrella; this is an element in the US ballistic missile shield with Block 3 missiles. Link extended range capabilities with space based sensors, and your real limitation will be time of flight.

 

[Kirkhill]

I need to be more careful when trying to be humorous....'pologies.

I just checked the SM2/SM3/SM6 capabilities. 

SM2 Block III out to 160 km.
SM2 Block IV Extended Range out to 368 km
SM3 Block I  Theatre Ballistic Missile Defense Missile - no range published but might it be fair to assume it is greater than 368 km?
SM6 Programme Theatre Cruise Missile Defense Missile - likewise no range published but would it be less than previous generations?

Maybe DJL won't have to sail that boat that far upriver to support you pbi.

http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/factfile/missiles/wep-stnd.html
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/sm.htm

Cheers.

 

[pbi]

Hmmmm. I had no idea sea-based AD could reach so far. Impressive. Given the size of  most of our recent AOs (Bosnia and Croatia are tiny on a Canadian scale of distance...) a TAD system with a 300-400km slant range would cover much of the AO. More support for the  JCEF idea! (We would still need some kind of deployable AD for those AOs in which a UAV/manned air threat existed.) Cheers.

 

[Acorn]

think of how much help a Tribal would be standing offshore supporting a Canadian evacuation of, say, Abijan (moot, now that the French have done for the Ivorian airforce, but the concept still exists.)

Acorn