Re: Land Force Reserve Restructure
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Posted by Brad Sallows from Burnaby BC Canada on March 22, 2021 at 19:38:37:
In Reply to: Land Force Reserve Restructure posted by Maj B Mainville on March 17, 2021 at 23:38:34:
Unit evaluation is a red herring. The only difficult
criterion is for units which started well under
establishment to try to achieve their manning targets.
Since the recruiting and training systems never kicked
into sufficiently high gear to support these units they
will have to hope for the best in the remaining
evaluation categories. Couple that with the reduction
in funding and it would seem the entire viability
evaluation process has lost credibility and should've
been discarded.
I suspect no units will actually fail the evaluation
except those which were severely undermanned at the
start of the process, and we will be right back where
we started, having to make decisions either politically
(senseless, but likely) or based on force structure
(wise, but unlikely). It puzzles me that LFRR isn't
being driven clearly and completely by the latter
(force structure). It only makes practical sense for
the reserves to complement and reinforce the regular
army at each stage of mobilization. In the absence of
employment legislation, reserve roles other than
warfighting (such as assistance to the civil power)
should not even be discussed, except to realize that
there may be some reservists voluntarily available at
short notice.
I have yet to hear any clear vision articulated as to
exactly what the regular army's capabilities should be,
let alone observe the regular army equipping and
training to have those capabilities. We seem to be
entirely in a state of reaction, not proaction.
It makes no sense to restructure the reserve until we
decide exactly what we need to provide the required
individual augmentation for operations other than war
and additional units for war.
The common argument that the Cold War is over and we
should be structured for more likely operations is
only partially credible. Yes, it is over. But many
of the less peacable nations of the world are equipped,
organized, and trained to fight somewhat like our
assumed opponents of the Cold War. Some of them have
chemical capability, and with the right connections
and cash could have nuclear capability. Further
arguments that the day of the massed mechanized army
is passing have merits, but are used only to support
reduction in expenditures without accepting the likely
alternatives - which include the costly reality
of increased air and aviation capabilities. We may
be avoiding the folly of preparing to fight the last
war, but we may be doing an even poorer job of
preparing to fight the next one. Perhaps the
aforementioned arguments, which I hear frequently, are
substitutes for a truth which is more correctly
expressed by stating that we have every intention of
avoiding participation in such a conflict.
Regardless how the debate on regular army structure
concludes, LFRR should at least lead to a reserve
capable of providing the initial augmentation of the
regular army field formation(s) and cadres for the
next formation. This includes looking beyond the
brigade level at the higher formation combat, combat
support, and service support functions and deciding
which of these can be adequately filled by reserve
units in order to at least retain some semblance of
the institutional knowledge required to fight at
those levels. I am aware that studies in this regard
are being conducted, but get the distinct impression
they are isolated from LFRR>
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