• Thanks for stopping by. Logging in to a registered account will remove all generic ads. Please reach out with any questions or concerns.

Informing the Army’s Future Structure

As a replacement for the Fuchs surely? The Boxers are basically new, and there isn’t a gap in their carrier fleet - ie no one is walking or taking trucks.

Agreed entirely. Nobody is walking much these days at all.

And yes, the Patria is a Fuchs replacement but in the other armies using it it is just another infantry transport.

I think the thing that stands out for me is how few other forces share our concerns about managing multiple fleets of vehicles.

They seem, even with the demise of the conscript and the reduction in the size of the field force, to be quite happy to procure vehicles that are aligned with specific tasks and that permit high-low fleets where the low end is a cost effective solution.

Having said what I said about conscripts it does appear to me as if the Scandinavians and the Easterners are perceiving confirmation in the Ukraine for their practice of supplying equipment to large numbers of volunteers which can be used with the minimum training possible.

We seem stuck in a different rut.

PS - I remain convinced that the helicopter is nothing more than an All Terrain Vehicle.
 
I'd be interested in all of your thoughts on those last two points?

Which points? You typed a lot of words laced with many erroneous assumptions, so I'm not tracking what you are asking.
 
That's exactly my point. The whole thing is somewhat arbitrary. I don't keep track of what armoured regiments or infantry battalions do every year but I try to stay on top of artillery regiments and, quite frankly I see no difference between what the three regiments do with the exception that one gets involved in Maple Resolve and a few things and is certified at high readiness through the CMTC process. I'm of the view that CMTC is a waste of resources for what it does.

@TangoTwoBravo pointed out that the MRP was changed recently and I do note that in addition to the Build, Contingency, Committed cycle it changed to the DATE Europe scenarios which is a useful change, but in effect we send two battalion headquarters and two rifle companies and some other elements to Latvia annually. Why did we move 3,200 people from 2 CMBG and their gear to Wainwright for that? That size element could train quite adequately at their home base.

I'll leave it to you to tell me, did a shift to Build, Contingency, Committed really result in any practical changes or just notionally improve our readiness status to 66% with some slight of hand? Did we ever really need a two-year reconstitution and road to high readiness cycle before reaching a year of high readiness after 2011? Or is the whole thing just based on the fact that we happen to have three brigades which dictate three cycles?

I'm not opposed to what you suggest at all. I think elements should be slated for deployment and ought to be warned for missions and organized, equipped and trained for them. But we're not currently deploying brigades. We're deploying less than battlegroup sized units and their training can be left to themselves and their brigade headquarters without any need for an annual MRP-based training cycle. Let each brigade train progressively every year culminating in a brigade level 7 FTX. Concurrently lets identify elements that need specialized preparation for a given mission and train them either as part of the annual cycle or separately as appropriate in each circumstance.

I've been following the US Army's abandonment of the three-year "Reset, Train and Ready, Deploy" cycle in favour of the Regionally aligned Readiness and Modernization Model which essentially identifies an element for deployment and puts that element through an eight month equip and train cycle prior to deployment. It has merit and can be scaled downward. IMHO, eight months is a maximum. Many missions can be prepared for in even less time.

If I understand the foundation of the MRP system at the turn of the century it involved two problems to solve: the fact that the Army had not done brigade exercises for nearly a decade and the fact that the army had significant resource limitations in both equipment and funds. It created the Brigade Training Event to ensure that every three years each brigade would get one proper exercise. That occurred at just the point in time where our commitments to Afghanistan heated up and the MRP proved a useful tool in meeting the heavy commitments imposed by the six-month wartime rotation cycles.

IMHO, CMTC and Maple Resolve are resources that we can no longer afford in the same way we couldn't afford to have a plethora of Dot Coms. My suggestion is simply that we allow each brigade to go back to its annual training cycles including a Level 7 formation exercise. Concurrently we designate mission elements for deployment and put them through targeted training on a 2-6 month 'equip and train' cycle depending on the scale of effort required for the mission and then deploy them. By all means have a traveling road show team out of Army headquarters formulate training and monitor and certify the element's readiness if you don't trust the brigade to do that. (Yes I am cynical when it comes to the need to have an "independent" agency certify readiness) And yes, one can also designate a stand-by high readiness force which is not detailed for a specific deployment but just possible contingencies.

While we're on the subject, I'm also a great fan of asymmetrical brigades. IMHO the symmetrical brigade is a large factor in what's keeping the MRP alive. We consider brigades as Swiss Army knives that should be able to do everything. That just makes me think of the Jack of all trades ... analogy. If, on the other hand, brigades were organized and equipped and routinely trained as part of their annual cycle on specific regional/capability-based operations and if deploying elements for a given mission were selected from a related regionally/capability focused brigade, it would accelerate deployment training and equipping dramatically and therefore enhance overall force readiness.

Let me throw in one final thought. @TangoTwoBravo pointed out quite rightly that the Russell paper is dated but it does still have some validity in that we are lacking strategic readiness in that we are not structured to meet the government's commitments. Just as an example, if the government is frequently looking for small mission elements to deploy internationally would we be better off strategically to create two 300-man battalions with two small command team rather than one 600-man battalion that needs to be fragmented. If we're constantly sending out NCEs requiring a Colonel and some staff, wouldn't we be better off with some additional light scale brigade headquarters that could deploy in that role as an entity. I'm as much of a fan of full-sized battalions and regiments as the next man when it comes to full-scale combat operations but we've already organized ourselves into force generation model built around sub-units aggregated into a mission specific battle-group. Frankly, based on the size of deployed task forces, we could us more unit and minor formation command nodes for rotational work to meet the government's strategic objectives.

I'd be interested in all of your thoughts on those last two points?

🍻
You are operating under some mistaken assumptions, and I think it might be useful to describe the current situation. The Reg F CMBGs go through a cycle of Build, Contingency and Committed. They train to sub-unit level in each phase, although it they can face challenges in the Committed year if they actually go on deployments like IMPACT and UNIFIER etc. The CMBG in the Build Year trains and validates to Battle Group level on Field Training Exercise (FTX) (MAPLE RESOLVE for the mech and JRTC for the light battalions) and Bde Level on the UNIFIED RESOLVE computer assisted exercise (CAX). All of this Build year training is to prepare our forces for the Contingency phase and our NATO Response Force (NRF) remits.

I think you are operating under a misunderstanding about Validation. Validation is a chain of command responsibility. The authority is held two levels above the element being Validated. So a platoon commander is validated by his battalion commander. A company commander is validated by his brigade commander. A battalion commander is validated by his division commander. A brigade commander is validated by Comd CADTC in their Army Training Authority (ATA) role. I will say it again, the validation is done by the element's chain of command.

CMTC provides the observer control team (OCT) structure along with the cadre of professional OCTs who do this all the time. They are supporting the validation authority who is the chain of command as described above. CMTC also plans those big-ticket collective training events in close cooperation with the lead mounting division.

Looking at readiness and missions, the current MRP allows for traditional close-combat units and formations in the Contingency phase who went through Enhanced Warfighting Proficiency in the preceding Build year. In the next year those units and formations may well be sent on a variety of small/non-traditional missions. We leverage the MRP to be able to meet these various operational remits.

You could try to specialize CMBGs to certain missions, but if a mission comes along that requires a concerted level of effort then you either have one bde eating all the missions or two other bdes that are not suited for that mission.
 
Agreed entirely. Nobody is walking much these days at all.

And yes, the Patria is a Fuchs replacement but in the other armies using it it is just another infantry transport.

I think the thing that stands out for me is how few other forces share our concerns about managing multiple fleets of vehicles.

They seem, even with the demise of the conscript and the reduction in the size of the field force, to be quite happy to procure vehicles that are aligned with specific tasks and that permit high-low fleets where the low end is a cost effective solution.

Having said what I said about conscripts it does appear to me as if the Scandinavians and the Easterners are perceiving confirmation in the Ukraine for their practice of supplying equipment to large numbers of volunteers which can be used with the minimum training possible.

We seem stuck in a different rut.

PS - I remain convinced that the helicopter is nothing more than an All Terrain Vehicle.
I don’t see what you mean by High - Low. The German Army has Puma (and legacy Marder) for its Panzergrenadier Bn to support Leopard equipped tanks. It has Boxer for for the protected mobility of its light infantry. The Fuchs / Patria will be in ancillary roles. The Latvians never really had an APC in their “mechanized” Bde, just the CVRT Spartans which only carry four dismounts. So the Patria is their only APC.

Frankly I’m sceptical of any APC with large glass windows but maybe I’m just biased.
 
Question: Does the updated MRP recognize APS as a planning factor? Or do we continue to certify units as "ready", then post out large swaths of leadership, replacing them with new leaders who did not complete the workup training?
We recognize it in that MRP is impacted by APS and in theory it’s mitigated by D+90 training and the annual foundation trading but those items don’t focus on unit or formation.
At times we have the non build year formations and units participate in the UNIFIED RESOLVES to try to fix the issue.
There is an option of not having APS impact all units equally but that does not seem to be considered. At times COs attempt to limit postings to maintain continuity for a deployment 6 months out but it’s rare now.
 
I don’t see what you mean by High - Low. The German Army has Puma (and legacy Marder) for its Panzergrenadier Bn to support Leopard equipped tanks. It has Boxer for for the protected mobility of its light infantry. The Fuchs / Patria will be in ancillary roles. The Latvians never really had an APC in their “mechanized” Bde, just the CVRT Spartans which only carry four dismounts. So the Patria is their only APC.

Frankly I’m sceptical of any APC with large glass windows but maybe I’m just biased.

And yet we have military protected vehicles with windows

1675038866412.jpeg
images
300px-RG-31.JPG
220px-Kozak-5_3.jpg
DINGO1-KMW-002.jpg
1675039155224.jpeg




Hi - Lo

High Cost, High Protection, High Weight - few in number - hard to deploy - hard to learn
Low Cost, Low Protection, Low Weight - many in number - easy to deploy - easy to learn

I'm of the opinion that there is still a role for the old LAV II Bison - the simple box - cheap as possible and suitable for early deployment and domestic duties. A suitable complement to something like the Roshel Senator for reserve troops and administrative functions.

One thing I do like about the Patria AMV though, is the Drivers hatch. Closed it looks like a LAV6 hatch. Open the driver gets his own little greenhouse with windows on three sides. It gets cold in Finland.

1675041178046.jpeg

Patria users - Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia
CV90 users - Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Czechia, Slovakia,
BV users - UK, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,

There does seem to be a sense of this group of nations cooperating and standardizing - and a notable steering away from the German and the Swiss offerings. (Boxer, Puma and Mowag Piranha - Slovakia just cancelled their Boxer order). Perhaps they trust each other to allow them to use them.

AMV and the Pasia are both in use.


Again - multiple solutions

Bv206/210 - ATV (5 to 10 tonnes)
Patria 6x6 - MPV (Mobile Protected Vehicle - 12 to 24 tonnes)
Patria 8x8 - AMV (Armoured Multi-Role Vehicle - 32 tonnes)

And most armies have an armoured wheeled solution in the 5 to 10 tonne range. With windows.
 
And yet we have military protected vehicles with windows

View attachment 76121
images
300px-RG-31.JPG
220px-Kozak-5_3.jpg
DINGO1-KMW-002.jpg
View attachment 76122

Armoured Patrol Vehicles, ambush protected vehicles, not designed for peer conflicts.

Hi - Lo

High Cost, High Protection, High Weight - few in number - hard to deploy - hard to learn
Low Cost, Low Protection, Low Weight - many in number - easy to deploy - easy to learn

I'm of the opinion that there is still a role for the old LAV II Bison - the simple box - cheap as possible and suitable for early deployment and domestic duties. A suitable complement to something like the Roshel Senator for reserve troops and administrative functions.

What domestic duties would a Bison preform ?

One thing I do like about the Patria AMV though, is the Drivers hatch. Closed it looks like a LAV6 hatch. Open the driver gets his own little greenhouse with windows on three sides. It gets cold in Finland.

View attachment 76124

Patria users - Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia,

Oh how ground breaking…..

Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia
CV90 users - Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Czechia, Slovakia,
BV users - UK, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,

Latvia uses none of those vehicles. Wait they have BV 206s for some fire fighting on the range. But Patrias and CV90s no.

There does seem to be a sense of this group of nations cooperating and standardizing - and a notable steering away from the German and the Swiss offerings. (Boxer, Puma and Mowag Piranha - Slovakia just cancelled their Boxer order). Perhaps they trust each other to allow them to use them.

AMV and the Pasia are both in use.

Minus Lithuania using Boxers, and all having heavy use of commercial Mercedes sure. The Danes of course use Pirahnnas.

Again - multiple solutions

Bv206/210 - ATV (5 to 10 tonnes)
Patria 6x6 - MPV (Mobile Protected Vehicle - 12 to 24 tonnes)
Patria 8x8 - AMV (Armoured Multi-Role Vehicle - 32 tonnes)

And most armies have an armoured wheeled solution in the 5 to 10 tonne range. With windows.
 

Attachments

  • F2853801-34AA-47D3-B336-9679D3EED49B.jpeg
    F2853801-34AA-47D3-B336-9679D3EED49B.jpeg
    103 KB · Views: 6
Armoured Patrol Vehicles, ambush protected vehicles, not designed for peer conflicts
And yet in peer conflicts we will find soft skin vehicles and lightly armoured vehicles employed in various capacities - cf current engagements

What domestic duties would a Bison preform ?

The RCMP launched one of the largest police operations in Canadian history, including the deployment of 400 tactical assault team members, five helicopters, two surveillance planes and nine Bison armoured personnel carriers on loan from the Canadian Army

Oh how ground breaking…..
You sir have no compassion for your driver.... ;)


Latvia uses none of those vehicles. Wait they have BV 206s for some fire fighting on the range. But Patrias and CV90s no.
I'll give you the CV90 (I misread a blurb) but



Minus Lithuania using Boxers, and all having heavy use of commercial Mercedes sure. The Danes of course use Pirahnnas.

You are of course correct on the Danes and the Piranhas (along with their MOWAG Eagles). They were purchased before Switzerland put the brakes on shipments of their kit to Ukraine. The Danes have been big contributors, especially of the CESAR artillery.

You are also correct on the Lithuanian Boxers.


My broader point stands. Even small armies invest in multiple micro-fleets in order to have a suitable assemblage of tools available. They don't just buy one vehicle and expect it to do everything.
 
Thanks for that an I appreciate the time you are spending on this.
You are operating under some mistaken assumptions, and I think it might be useful to describe the current situation. The Reg F CMBGs go through a cycle of Build, Contingency and Committed. They train to sub-unit level in each phase, although it they can face challenges in the Committed year if they actually go on deployments like IMPACT and UNIFIER etc. The CMBG in the Build Year trains and validates to Battle Group level on Field Training Exercise (FTX) (MAPLE RESOLVE for the mech and JRTC for the light battalions) and Bde Level on the UNIFIED RESOLVE computer assisted exercise (CAX). All of this Build year training is to prepare our forces for the Contingency phase and our NATO Response Force (NRF) remits.
This is actually what I understood to be the case when I stated some time back that two thirds of the Army is unready and perhaps it would have been less controversial to say that 2/3 of the brigade headquarters are unready. @Infanteer's comment above that "All Army units do foundation training annually, which means Bde and Unit HQs are being trained every year" got me wondering if battalions as entities and brigades as a whole formation are training more frequently than I thought. That got me into looking back again at the artillery yearbooks and sure enough there were exercises beyond MAPLE RESOLVE and UNIFIED RESOLVE being conducted at up to the brigade level - which is much more like it was back in my time where brigade concentrations with a "whole brigade exercise" were an annual event. If I have it right now, then while battalion and brigades may do some training on top of foundation training throughout the year, the real thrust, however, to train battle groups is once every third year on Maple Resolve or JRTC and for brigades by way of CAX on UNIFIED RESOLVE (annually or triennially?)

I fully appreciate that neither units nor brigade headquarters are bone idle during the Build year but they are considered "building" which by definition makes them "not ready". In the same way under an annual training cycle, a brigade is "not ready" during the first portion of the year. In effect, under an annual training cycle you went through "build" and "ready" in three shorter phases - three months to rebuild battalions and regiments after the APS, three to four months of winter schools to develop individual skills further while available as a unit for contingency and a final three months to further develop unit proficiency (using the newly trained personnel from phase 2) and to train as a whole brigade. All followed by two to three months for leave and APS and reserve training. Essentially you were ready as a regiment by the end of November and ready as a brigade in May/June just in time to take it all apart and start over again after APS with a core of maybe 2/3 to 3/4 of your regiment from the year before and 1/4 to 1/3 being newcomers (frequently back from 4 CMBG or the school)

Quite frankly I don't use the term "not ready" in a pejorative sense. I simply use it in its practical sense as the Army sees it. This is where I think Eyre saw it as well when he changed the cycle as Build, Contingent, and Committed. It doesn't take two years of "reconstituting and road to high readiness" to make a battalion ready for deployment. Regardless of ready status, any unit can be sent on an operation if the risk of the unit not being adequately ready is accepted.

I fully appreciate everything that you and @Infanteer are saying but I still firmly believe that an annual training cycle provides a significantly higher readiness posture during peacetime and more adequately caters to the realities of the APS and absence of key personnel for career training. Especially if you add on to that a system like ReARMM which selects specific elements for deployment and provides them with just-in-time manning, equipping and training to ready them for the mission. Annual training cycles and ReARMM can coexist quite efficiently.
I think you are operating under a misunderstanding about Validation. Validation is a chain of command responsibility. The authority is held two levels above the element being Validated. So a platoon commander is validated by his battalion commander. A company commander is validated by his brigade commander. A battalion commander is validated by his division commander. A brigade commander is validated by Comd CADTC in their Army Training Authority (ATA) role. I will say it again, the validation is done by the element's chain of command.

CMTC provides the observer control team (OCT) structure along with the cadre of professional OCTs who do this all the time. They are supporting the validation authority who is the chain of command as described above. CMTC also plans those big-ticket collective training events in close cooperation with the lead mounting division.
You're right. I assumed more centralized control over the validation process. I guess the proof in the pudding is how easily a commander can ignore or reject the advice of the CMTC support personnel. I have no experience with that process so can't really comment on it and the bottom line is that I firmly believe in validation being a chain of command responsibility anyway so there is no argument. I'm very used to and value the RCAS's Instructor/Assistant Instructor-in-Gunnery support teams sent out to help artillery regimental commanders evaluate his own unit's proficiency. I see nothing wrong with such teams on a broader scale even if their reports go the the next commander up in the chain (although that sometimes interferes with candor). I do wonder though if CMTC is still value for money considering the resource limitations the Army labours under. I could see smaller, roving teams being deployed to the units home bases on their regular exercises to do this throughout the year.
Looking at readiness and missions, the current MRP allows for traditional close-combat units and formations in the Contingency phase who went through Enhanced Warfighting Proficiency in the preceding Build year. In the next year those units and formations may well be sent on a variety of small/non-traditional missions. We leverage the MRP to be able to meet these various operational remits.

You could try to specialize CMBGs to certain missions, but if a mission comes along that requires a concerted level of effort then you either have one bde eating all the missions or two other bdes that are not suited for that mission.
At the moment we really only have two core skills - light infantry and mechanized infantry. To these we graft other capabilities - recce, tanks, arty, STA, engineers, etc. Would we really be worse off if one brigade was light and two were mechanized (one of which would also have the tank function) if in peacetime we continue to deploy mostly smaller than battle group elements? There would be significant benefits if a given brigade had ongoing responsibility for preparing rotos for a given theatre/mission even if there may be times where some adjustment or cross-training is needed for a given battlegroup or company from another brigade.

Which brings me to the other question that I asked a post ago is; from a strategic level, knowing what our government is tasking the Army to do in peacetime, do we need to form, out of the existing PY envelope, additional (but perhaps lighter) "deployable" brigade and battalion headquarters to facilitate multiple missions working on six month rotations?

🍻
 
Talking to a TC of a Condor (Malaysian APC) They liked the glass driver position as his awareness is high, they also have steel plates to cover them if required.
 
Which brings me to the other question that I asked a post ago is; from a strategic level, knowing what our government is tasking the Army to do in peacetime, do we need to form, out of the existing PY envelope, additional (but perhaps lighter) "deployable" brigade and battalion headquarters to facilitate multiple missions working on six month rotations?

🍻

Not that I have any detailed knowledge about the resourcing ins and outs of the CAF these days, but I often wondered why we had to 'twiddle our thumbs' every couple of years or so as our Division/ Brigade was, once again, relegated to the MRP back burner resulting in bored (keen, well trained) soldiers abandoning the corporate ship.

As Patton once observed "There are more tired corps and division commanders than there are tired corps and divisions."
 
And yet in peer conflicts we will find soft skin vehicles and lightly armoured vehicles employed in various capacities - cf current engagements

It’s still apples and oranges but fine.


We’re that to happen today you’d see those Sentiels doing the job they were actually built to do.

You sir have no compassion for your driver.... ;)

On the contrary I provided a picture of the exact same set up we use when driving on highways. Although I always preferred to be hatches down as they let in an annoying amount of wind. I think you’ll find these are infact ubiquitous on road capable AFVs for training, much like the wind screen on a bison that will of course never be used in operations.

Honestly teaching some one to drive a LAV, and assume this extends to the wheels IFV as a rule, isn’t terribly hard because of the platform. It’s the introduction of off road driving and maintenance and making up the KM requirements that takes the time.

I'll give you the CV90 (I misread a blurb) but


You posted a picture of the AMV Patria 8x8 the. Listed the users… including Latvia which uses the 6x6. They also have 1 t-55 rusting to pieces in Adazi but I don’t really count that.

You are of course correct on the Danes and the Piranhas (along with their MOWAG Eagles). They were purchased before Switzerland put the brakes on shipments of their kit to Ukraine. The Danes have been big contributors, especially of the CESAR artillery.

I know
You are also correct on the Lithuanian Boxers.

I know
My broader point stands. Even small armies invest in multiple micro-fleets in order to have a suitable assemblage of tools available. They don't just buy one vehicle and expect it to do everything.

I don’t think I’d look to Finland as the way forward in terms of fleet management myself, I wonder how often the end up shipping 30x165 to people needing 30x176 and vice versa. Norway, Denmark, and Sweden actually all operate on IFV (CV90) and then a support vehicle (Pirhanna, Patria, ect) . Which is precisely what we do with LAV and TAPV.
 
. Norway, Denmark, and Sweden actually all operate on IFV (CV90) and then a support vehicle (Pirhanna, Patria, ect) . Which is precisely what we do with LAV and TAPV.
Other than this segment I agree with you.
 
Other than this segment I agree with you.
We can debate its merits as an IFV, but that’s the role it’s in and how we employ it. The TAPV is a turd no doubt, but that’s also how we’re trying to use it.
 
Thanks for that an I appreciate the time you are spending on this.

This is actually what I understood to be the case when I stated some time back that two thirds of the Army is unready and perhaps it would have been less controversial to say that 2/3 of the brigade headquarters are unready. @Infanteer's comment above that "All Army units do foundation training annually, which means Bde and Unit HQs are being trained every year" got me wondering if battalions as entities and brigades as a whole formation are training more frequently than I thought. That got me into looking back again at the artillery yearbooks and sure enough there were exercises beyond MAPLE RESOLVE and UNIFIED RESOLVE being conducted at up to the brigade level - which is much more like it was back in my time where brigade concentrations with a "whole brigade exercise" were an annual event. If I have it right now, then while battalion and brigades may do some training on top of foundation training throughout the year, the real thrust, however, to train battle groups is once every third year on Maple Resolve or JRTC and for brigades by way of CAX on UNIFIED RESOLVE (annually or triennially?)

I fully appreciate that neither units nor brigade headquarters are bone idle during the Build year but they are considered "building" which by definition makes them "not ready". In the same way under an annual training cycle, a brigade is "not ready" during the first portion of the year. In effect, under an annual training cycle you went through "build" and "ready" in three shorter phases - three months to rebuild battalions and regiments after the APS, three to four months of winter schools to develop individual skills further while available as a unit for contingency and a final three months to further develop unit proficiency (using the newly trained personnel from phase 2) and to train as a whole brigade. All followed by two to three months for leave and APS and reserve training. Essentially you were ready as a regiment by the end of November and ready as a brigade in May/June just in time to take it all apart and start over again after APS with a core of maybe 2/3 to 3/4 of your regiment from the year before and 1/4 to 1/3 being newcomers (frequently back from 4 CMBG or the school)

Quite frankly I don't use the term "not ready" in a pejorative sense. I simply use it in its practical sense as the Army sees it. This is where I think Eyre saw it as well when he changed the cycle as Build, Contingent, and Committed. It doesn't take two years of "reconstituting and road to high readiness" to make a battalion ready for deployment. Regardless of ready status, any unit can be sent on an operation if the risk of the unit not being adequately ready is accepted.

I fully appreciate everything that you and @Infanteer are saying but I still firmly believe that an annual training cycle provides a significantly higher readiness posture during peacetime and more adequately caters to the realities of the APS and absence of key personnel for career training. Especially if you add on to that a system like ReARMM which selects specific elements for deployment and provides them with just-in-time manning, equipping and training to ready them for the mission. Annual training cycles and ReARMM can coexist quite efficiently.

You're right. I assumed more centralized control over the validation process. I guess the proof in the pudding is how easily a commander can ignore or reject the advice of the CMTC support personnel. I have no experience with that process so can't really comment on it and the bottom line is that I firmly believe in validation being a chain of command responsibility anyway so there is no argument. I'm very used to and value the RCAS's Instructor/Assistant Instructor-in-Gunnery support teams sent out to help artillery regimental commanders evaluate his own unit's proficiency. I see nothing wrong with such teams on a broader scale even if their reports go the the next commander up in the chain (although that sometimes interferes with candor). I do wonder though if CMTC is still value for money considering the resource limitations the Army labours under. I could see smaller, roving teams being deployed to the units home bases on their regular exercises to do this throughout the year.

At the moment we really only have two core skills - light infantry and mechanized infantry. To these we graft other capabilities - recce, tanks, arty, STA, engineers, etc. Would we really be worse off if one brigade was light and two were mechanized (one of which would also have the tank function) if in peacetime we continue to deploy mostly smaller than battle group elements? There would be significant benefits if a given brigade had ongoing responsibility for preparing rotos for a given theatre/mission even if there may be times where some adjustment or cross-training is needed for a given battlegroup or company from another brigade.

Which brings me to the other question that I asked a post ago is; from a strategic level, knowing what our government is tasking the Army to do in peacetime, do we need to form, out of the existing PY envelope, additional (but perhaps lighter) "deployable" brigade and battalion headquarters to facilitate multiple missions working on six month rotations?

🍻
The time to get a BG ready for deployment did not change with the MRP adopted in 2019. The Build year remained the Build year. What changed was that the known deployment were moved into the third year, since they did not really need the Lvl 5 Cbt Tm and Lvl 6 training that occurred in the Build. Going into Contingency meant that the readiness (from a training persepctive) generated in the Build was not immediately consumed by missions that did not need that level of training. Latvia is a funny one - they essentially spend the tour training.

Regarding the Bde HQs, UNIFIED RESOLVE involves more than just the CMBG HQ in the Build Year, it also brings in the HQ in the Contingency year. The Build Year CMBG executes UR Stage 1 (PD and staff training), an LMD-run warmup CAX called Stage 2 and then the full CAX on Stage 3 as the Primary Training Audience. In the following year that CMBG HQ will participate in UNIFIED RESOLVE as a secondary training audience. They will have a smaller footprint, but they will still go through the OPP cycle and execution with LOCONs etc. The tactical problem changes over time, but at a minimum the CMBG HQ in their second year will plan and execute a different Bde set of task/terrain than the year before.

I don't think we need additional deployable HQs. The CAF already has 1st Cdn Div to set up an NCE. With a CMBG in the Contingency phase and another CMBG HQ in Committed we have the ability to have a CMBG in a warfighting role and another one in an NCE role or a non-traditional HQ role (UNIFIER, IMPACT etc). We also have unit HQs in the Committed year that could form those nodes without poaching from the Contingency forces.
 
At the moment we really only have two core skills - light infantry and mechanized infantry. To these we graft other capabilities - recce, tanks, arty, STA, engineers, etc. Would we really be worse off if one brigade was light and two were mechanized (one of which would also have the tank function) if in peacetime we continue to deploy mostly smaller than battle group elements? There would be significant benefits if a given brigade had ongoing responsibility for preparing rotos for a given theatre/mission even if there may be times where some adjustment or cross-training is needed for a given battlegroup or company from another brigade.
With regard to the highlighted portion...do we REALLY have two core skills - light infantry and mechanized infantry - or do we really just have three Infantry Battalions that we're too cheap to provide vehicles for?

To be honest, due to the risk aversion of our Government I can't really see us deploying a truly light force (i.e. not mounted in protected vehicles) in any type of peace support operations and in case of any major peer conflict I'm sure our focus will be on deploying our mechanized forces.

My impression is that we don't really have the doctrine or the required equipment/enablers/logistics capability to deploy an effective Light Battle Group or Brigade to a peer conflict at the same time as we're also surging our Mechanized forces. The only inherent capability of our Light Battalions that we can really leverage is the ability to deploy them rapidly by air due to the lack of heavy vehicles. Is this not something that can be overcome in Europe by pre-positioning equipment for the NATO mission and if urgently required elsewhere could we not deploy our Mechanized infantry without their vehicles and have the heavy equipment follow?

Does trying to split our focus on two different skill sets (light and mechanized infantry) not dilute our capabilities in both when we are short on both personnel and equipment?

Taking a more pragmatic approach I'd suggest we'd have a better concentration of effort (and more focused equipment/vehicle recapitalization plan) if we were to have three symmetric Mechanized Brigades. I'd suggest each with 1 x Armoured Regiment and 2 x LAV Battalions per Brigade. I'd convert the 3rd Battalions of each Regiment into 30/70 LAV Battalions. This would free up some existing Infantry PYs to fill out the remaining 100/0 LAV Battalions and at the same time begin the restructuring of the Reserves into a more deployable force.

In my dream world I'd have all three of the Armoured Regiments as Tank Regiments, but I honestly don't see the GOC replacing our existing fleet of 82 tanks with the approx. 150 that would be needed. Realistically I see them upgrading/replacing the existing fleet with similar numbers so I'd go with 3 x Cavalry Regiments each with 1 x Tank Squadron. That would allow all three Brigades to practice tank/infantry co-operation and if required we could pool the three Tank Squadrons into a single Tank Regiment.
 
Taking a more pragmatic approach I'd suggest we'd have a better concentration of effort (and more focused equipment/vehicle recapitalization plan) if we were to have three symmetric Mechanized Brigades. I'd suggest each with 1 x Armoured Regiment and 2 x LAV Battalions per Brigade. I'd convert the 3rd Battalions of each Regiment into 30/70 LAV Battalions. This would free up some existing Infantry PYs to fill out the remaining 100/0 LAV Battalions and at the same time begin the restructuring of the Reserves into a more deployable force.

If we had leadership that was politically attuned, which we don't it seems, we could probably easily sell a 'Climate Change/ Disaster Response/ Home Defence Force' based on an airborne/mobile/portable, littoral/light Brigade, and align the Reserves into that somehow.

The Reserves are already defacto acting as this kind of force, mainly during fire season, in partnership with Reg F IRUs etc, so it shouldn't be a tough sell. We wouldn't need new kit for that, and the TAPVs might actually turn out to be useful as route recce/comms vehicles.

If we had politically attuned leadership...
 
I wonder how the GDLS/MOWAG license regime holds up here in Canada?

Is the LAV6 sufficiently different to the LAVIII that Swiss interests are not involved? Or is the ACSV acceptable because it doesn't have a turret?


Piranha caught in the same trap as Leopards and Gepards.
 
Back
Top