chowchow1 said:
Comparing us to USMC FR, which is the SF of the marines is an unfair, and unfit comparison. There is a very tough selection, and the course is brutal. Anyone who wants to compare Canadian army battle school to USMC FR, watch the video 'Making the Cut' with them in it.
*Surviving the Cut
I believe you are referring to the episode about the Basic Reconnaissance Course. That course is for Recon Battalion Marines, not Force Recon.
Our military is well trained, but IMO our Infantry Battalions are not the equivalent of other nations SOF.
George Wallace said:
Take a look at the normal/base working rank in the US and it is Sgt. Our Cpls and Ptes know more than those Sgts. The NATO rank of E5, places those Sgts at the same level as our MCpls. Our overall, all around, training is many levels above those of foreign nations.
I'm sure there are a number of US Army and USMC Sgts that are quite good at their jobs and know more then our Ptes and Cpls. Some may not, but I think it's unfair to make a blanket statement such as our Ptes/Cpls know more then their Sgts.
The NATO code is OR-5, the US Military uses the E coding.
As for our MCpls being equal to a US Sgt, not sure how you see that as us being above the Americans. We use different rank structures so not every rank is going to match up, such as our Sgt to their Sgt(E5). Equiv to our Sergeant is their Staff Sergeant(E6), both are OR-6 on the NATO code. As well our Cpls are equiv to a US Cpl on the NATO rank code (OR-4)
As well, US Army and USMC Infantry can use mortars, while for us it is an Artillery weapon
George Wallace said:
Our elite units do basically what the Canadian soldier has been doing for decades, just now we actually went and separated some of those roles off to "special" units and added a few formerly RCMP tasks. Sadly, it is an indicator that we are swinging a bit to the American way of having soldiers becoming "specialists" and all the problems that entails. (Crews that made ineffective by the loss of one member.)
Can you give an example of tasks being taken away from the Conventional Military/Infantry Battalion that is now only done by SOF? And how this will cause problems later on?
I've only been in the CF in the 2000s, so I'm not sure what it was like or how units were employed in the 90s, etc but AFAIK our Infantry are still doing their job with no changes, if anything they have had to do some new tasks such as training/mentoring(OMLT) - Not sure if this was done before or not.