Posted by Brad Sallows on July 27, 2021 at 13:21:34:
I am both amused and frustrated that every time military correspondence
makes its way into the hands of a reporter, just enough information is
available to excite people without properly informing them. In every
instance in which I have had some degree of knowledge of the full context
of a story (and this extends beyond military matters), I have noticed
that the media were nowhere near the truth. Remember the tale of the
blind men and the elephant? Phrased another way, if they (reporters)
were on a 25 m range they wouldn't even be hitting the backstop. The
Ottawa Citizen seems to be particularly weak in this regard; the quality
of its military reportage is on par with National Enquirer. One can only
imagine the spin imparted to an issue by ferreting out a single 2 or 3
page letter, extracting a few comments, and adding some wild-ass guess
analysis. What about the remaining man-months of work and correspondence
related to the matter?
Nevertheless, why would it matter if units are "prepared" to be amalgamated,
etc? The militia is not (or is not supposed to be) a loose federation of
autonomous units sucking at the CF teat. I prefer the concept of top-down
command.
In my 16 years of service, I only recall one year in which recruiting
was curtailed to the extent that attrition exceeded growth. However,
since growth is slow, that one year had an effect that has taken
several years to overcome.
The whole point of our current militia unit structure is cadres. If we
logically reduce the argument that companies can be run by captains to
its extreme, we might suppose that the ideal militia unit structure is
a company-sized element officered by 4 regulars (OC and 3 platoon
commanders). Why have any militia officers at all, or for that matter
any militia above the rank of Sergeant? Of course, large-scale
mobilization then becomes difficult. Maybe we can just drop warfighting
from our defence philosophy. But then it is attractive to note that we
could save a lot of money by reducing the Navy and Air Force to fisheries
enforcement and SAR and the Army to a few battalions of lightly armed
military police with which to further our national aims in the
international arena.