Army Reserve Restructuring

[Remius]

And focus on the basics - turn out a disciplined body of troops that can march, drive, communicate, navigate, save lives, handle tools and shoot.

If the army wants machine gunners or cannoneers it can call for volunteers and train them for the task.

Machine guns are a basic. At least in the infantry.

But you aren’t wrong. Basics, basics, basics. And repeat.

 

[WLSC]

Army Reserves Restructuration will occur in a logical matter when the RegF will know what to to with themselves as an army and not under the white tower of infantry vs all and the 3 regimental mafia. Until that settle, don’t hold your breath.

 

[FJAG]

What you're describing is "cooperative housing".

It could be. My experience is in advising and working for commercial landlord companies and also on first nations' housing. My thoughts were more in the nature of the commercial business. On the other hand the type of first nations' housing I worked with could also work and significantly more effectively with the military. I could see cooperative housing work as well. There are numerous models which could work for individuals who want to be on a property ladder or those who just want to rent.

The key thing that they all need is an initiative to make it happen. Initiatives that aren't forthcoming.

The funding could come through the normal financial markets or through repayable government funding - either way it's basically a business that should make a profit and should be run as a business so that it can continue to expand the service. Providing decent housing for service members shouldn't be a controversial issue

Of course most of that staff work would be done incorrectly, as the “working professionals” of the reserves typically have less than stellar understanding of how the institution of the military functions. That’s why we have working professional staff officers.

Actually you don't. For the most part you have officers who are specialists and professionals in one field - artillery, naval warfare, flying a plane, whatever - who are put into numerous staff positions for which their only training and experience is knowing how to write a memo. On top of that everyone changes jobs every few years and goes into another field entirely so there is a constant period of OJT happening throughout the bureaucracy. There are some guys on this forum who've worked as civvies for years at NDHQ who can candidly tell you about the efficiency, or lack of it, shown by many of the transient "professionals" in the fundamental administration of the organization.

Add to that a systemic problem with a risk averse convoluted processes that progresses at glacial paces that would never be tolerated in most civilian businesses. Don't get me wrong, I've dealt with a lot of piss poor civilian businessmen and businesses as well. The CAF doesn't have a monopoly on that. The design of the basic bureaucracy that is DND, however, is not one optimized for success and certainly not efficiency - in that way it is in all respects typical of Canadian government organizations.

@daftandbarmy is absolutely correct when he stated earlier today that in any efficient business entity, if management couldn't find a way to save costs while still meeting its customer services then the board would fire its CEO. The trouble for DND is that the board of directors are as difunctional as DND's management. I've had one very highly placed former "DND manager" tell me he thinks the problem is about 30% government and 70% internal. I have no cause to question his assessment.

 

[dapaterson]

The difference between the Reg F and the Res F is that the Reg F wastes its excessive time, and the Res F wastes its insufficient time.

The Res F believes the Reg F has magical pools of equipment and materiel that they never get to see. Both have complete faith in the existence of "the system" that has done them wrong; neither will admit to being part of that system.

Both will devote months of effort to finding a way to circumvent a week of effort.

Neither understands change management. ADKAR is a four letter word. Short tenure means long term effort founders. Repeatedly. Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell should be the CAF Honoraries.

 

[Brad Sallows]

Don't get me wrong, I've dealt with a lot of piss poor civilian businessmen and businesses as well.

Piss poor private undertakings eventually fail (unless they aren't really entirely private and are being propped up somehow) and the resources they tied up become available for other uses. Feature, not a bug, of the system. Undertakings that are insulated from that, though...

 

[daftandbarmy]

Interesting, and largely accurate IIRC


Given all the current talk about hashtag#recruiting and hashtag#retention in the Canadian Armed Forces | Forces armées canadiennes, I thought I would resurrect this old multi-axis mapping of the career of a hashtag#Reservist from hashtag#Canadian hashtag#Military Journal (Vol. 16, No. 2, Spring 2016).

In moving through the graph, the typical reservist begins their military career with very little other than school and the military on their daily plate of events – this trend continues until the member completes their academic training and moves to the work force. As the member’s military, civilian, and personal life continues to develop, each element becomes more demanding on their available time in a given day. As these demands become more pronounced, the member becomes progressively less involved with the unit’s activities and training, illustrated by the figure’s blue inverted parabolic line. In many cases, the member is forced to make choices to forgo progression in one professional career in favour of another.

Given the reality that a reservist’s military career does not ‘pay the mortgage,’ it is usually this career that tends to suffer. The member then becomes progressively less involved, and in turn, less attached to the unit and its regular activities until said member reaches a decision point, whereby the member either accepts that they remains in the reserves at a rank and position below their actual level of competency, or simply releases.

There is so much potential in the Canadian Reserves as an institution. It assists young people pay for school, gives them part-time work during the school year and full-time work in the summer. For working professionals it offers active leadership training and most importantly an opportunity to be part of something bigger than ones self.

Unfortunately, this value proposition has not retained its once poignant relevance to most Canadians and perhaps that means it needs to be modernized in a manner that speaks to those in search of a vehicle to give back while gaining skills and purpose.

Dan Doran on LinkedIn: #recruiting #retention #reservist #canadian #military #caf #fac #dnd #mdn… | 29 comments

Given all the current talk about #recruiting and #retention in the Canadian Armed Forces | Forces armées canadiennes, I thought I would resurrect this old… | 29 comments on LinkedIn

www.linkedin.com

 

[WLSC]

Interesting, and largely accurate IIRC


Given all the current talk about hashtag#recruiting and hashtag#retention in the Canadian Armed Forces | Forces armées canadiennes, I thought I would resurrect this old multi-axis mapping of the career of a hashtag#Reservist from hashtag#Canadian hashtag#Military Journal (Vol. 16, No. 2, Spring 2016).

In moving through the graph, the typical reservist begins their military career with very little other than school and the military on their daily plate of events – this trend continues until the member completes their academic training and moves to the work force. As the member’s military, civilian, and personal life continues to develop, each element becomes more demanding on their available time in a given day. As these demands become more pronounced, the member becomes progressively less involved with the unit’s activities and training, illustrated by the figure’s blue inverted parabolic line. In many cases, the member is forced to make choices to forgo progression in one professional career in favour of another.

Given the reality that a reservist’s military career does not ‘pay the mortgage,’ it is usually this career that tends to suffer. The member then becomes progressively less involved, and in turn, less attached to the unit and its regular activities until said member reaches a decision point, whereby the member either accepts that they remains in the reserves at a rank and position below their actual level of competency, or simply releases.

There is so much potential in the Canadian Reserves as an institution. It assists young people pay for school, gives them part-time work during the school year and full-time work in the summer. For working professionals it offers active leadership training and most importantly an opportunity to be part of something bigger than ones self.

Unfortunately, this value proposition has not retained its once poignant relevance to most Canadians and perhaps that means it needs to be modernized in a manner that speaks to those in search of a vehicle to give back while gaining skills and purpose.

Dan Doran on LinkedIn: #recruiting #retention #reservist #canadian #military #caf #fac #dnd #mdn… | 29 comments

Given all the current talk about #recruiting and #retention in the Canadian Armed Forces | Forces armées canadiennes, I thought I would resurrect this old… | 29 comments on LinkedIn

www.linkedin.com

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In my experience, I would the high risk more at sur and WO. At MWO they usually start to settle otherwise, it’s a good graph.

 

[FJAG]

The graph actually varies a bit with what Doran said in the Journal article which is that:

Close to 95% of releases within the reserve data set come from members with less than two years of military service at the rank levels of private and corporal. A regiment can lose close to 50% of an annual recruit intake within the first 24 months after they join, and this is due mainly to voluntary release CMJ 16.2, 59.

I'll make a small caveat here in that Doran doesn't quote much in the way of a source for his statistics (nonetheless that hasn't stopped me from citing his information in my book "Unsustainable at Any Price")

The second greatest loss rate comes from those with roughly 15 years of service which is where he targets his chart.

That creates two issues. Retention of the newly recruited youngsters who give mass to the unit (nearly 357 out of 555 in a Reg F battalion are DP1 ptes and cpls and another 100 are mcpls) and retention of middle to senior leadership.

I've thrown a ton of concepts into the book which address both those issues but the key one is to maximize both education benefits and full summer employment to quickly train people to DP1 status and then, in exchange for that assistance, require an obligatory period of service with minimal mandatory collective training requirements (10 sessions of 2.5 day weekends - one per month for ten months - and a two-week exercise)

There's a lot, lot more to it than that. It's not a fine tune. It's a paradigm shift for the whole army to fix the reserve's problems.

 

[CBH99]

Is the government not distributing big bucks to cities for housing or not? Yes, it is but military housing represents zero votes. IMHO lack of military housing, either barrack modules or PMQ's modules is part and parcel to inhibit retention/recruiting. Gov't then throws up it's hands saying we don't need a military as nobody is interested.

With the way Trudeau promises troops for this and that, we'll need a military for a while yet!

 

[WLSC]

The graph actually varies a bit with what Doran said in the Journal article which is that:



I'll make a small caveat here in that Doran doesn't quote much in the way of a source for his statistics (nonetheless that hasn't stopped me from citing his information in my book "Unsustainable at Any Price")

The second greatest loss rate comes from those with roughly 15 years of service which is where he targets his chart.

That creates two issues. Retention of the newly recruited youngsters who give mass to the unit (nearly 357 out of 555 in a Reg F battalion are DP1 ptes and cpls and another 100 are mcpls) and retention of middle to senior leadership.

I've thrown a ton of concepts into the book which address both those issues but the key one is to maximize both education benefits and full summer employment to quickly train people to DP1 status and then, in exchange for that assistance, require an obligatory period of service with minimal mandatory collective training requirements (10 sessions of 2.5 day weekends - one per month for ten months - and a two-week exercise)

There's a lot, lot more to it than that. It's not a fine tune. It's a paradigm shift for the whole army to fix the reserve's problems.

That retention issue before cpl is ok in my view. The army is not for everyone and the life load of the ARes either. So loosing that many people is not necessary a bad thing. Now that being said, it depends on who’s leaving. Is the training is challenging enought to make a good impression of the ARes? Is the ARes seems serious enough to keep them in, etc?


In my experience, the people who leave because it’s not hard enough is in the minority. Most leave because of conflicting priorities, beliefs or simply because they taste the army and didn’t liked it.

 

[Eaglelord17]

I imagine the second biggest release point for the Reserves isn’t 15 years, rather 12 years after you get the CD. Its a good point for people to re-evaluate what they are doing and they have something to show for all that service.

 

[ueo]

It's good to hear that that many are interested, but how many actually join, and of this who join, how many of them become CIC? This number may be hard to find because many members are not too willing to admit that they were former cadets. I also know many members who were cadets for less then a year in the 12-14 age range, quit because they didn't like, but still decided to join the Forces later on.


As far as uniforms go, if the CIC were wearing the same uniform as the cadets, there would not be a need to add a new uniform, maybe a few sizes. I don't see why CIC officers need to be wearing CADPAT, or eventually the new combat uniform.

I know that the UK has created a separate commission for them. I'm not completely sure of the differences, but it isn't the same thing. They are however still saluted and have mess privileges.

Particularily mess priviledges!

 

[FJAG]

That retention issue before cpl is ok in my view. The army is not for everyone and the life load of the ARes either. So loosing that many people is not necessary a bad thing. Now that being said, it depends on who’s leaving. Is the training is challenging enought to make a good impression of the ARes? Is the ARes seems serious enough to keep them in, etc?


In my experience, the people who leave because it’s not hard enough is in the minority. Most leave because of conflicting priorities, beliefs or simply because they taste the army and didn’t liked it.

There are two issues in what you say.

The first is that losing "that many people is not necessarily a bad thing." It is. If you waste resources - both pay and instructor time and training resources - on people who leave immediately after a summer, then you might as well just burn the money in a big bonfire rather than running a recruit course. Any company that gets only a 5 - 10% return on investment in an activity would drastically change the activity immediately.

I agree that there needs to be something that holds people, but job satisfaction isn't the only thing. Yes. You definitely want to make things so that people are motivated to stay - and I suggest many ways to do that in the book - but you also have to retain the people who aren't thrilled by the army if for no other reason than to fill out the ranks during training (and if necessary war) for a reasonable period of time. In my view, if you concentrate on students, and full summer employment, then you can train NCMs to DP1 status in 14 months (essentially two summer sessions of two to four months each and a winter session of 10 x 2.5 days. After that you demand 24 months of obligatory service consisting of mandatory collective training of 41.5 days per year (ten monthly weekend sessions of 2.5 days and a summer exercise of 16.5 days). For officers it would be four summer sessions (2 months for the first, three months for three subsequent ones) and 10 2.5 day weekends during the winter prior to and during university in order to complete their DP1. The obligatory years of service would be at least three years (and one could stretch that to 4 or 5 if one included the military paying tuition and related costs.) Similarly we could pay for tuition costs for desirable trades training for community college students (mechanics, food services, health services, transport, etc)

What's killing the reserves right now is that with the voluntary attendance format you cannot have viable collective training above platoon, if that. In order to take the next step, a certain, minimal amount of mandatory training is necessary. This is why the KR&O have a section on "ordered to train" which DND doesn't use. The law is there. The will is missing. It's the same for releases. The NDA says you serve until released. Enrolment contracts use terms of service - clean those up and rigorously police attendance.

Conversely, the mandatory training needs to be as little as absolutely necessary and should be rigorously scheduled well in advance so that families and employers can easily fit in. (Yes, Canada needs much better employment protection legislation). One needs to take conflicting priorities and make them meshing priorities.

In addition to mandatory training you open up additional voluntary training opportunities for those with more time and desire to progress beyond the basic DP 1 standard. Add to that reenlistment bonuses for those who are prepared to extend their terms of service. In my book I've coined three different Classes of Reserve service. Class M is attendance for the initial DP 1 training and thereafter on any attendance at the 41.5 days of mandatory training. Class V is voluntary training or employment of any duration which could be additional individual days at the armouries, additional summer training or what we now consider Class B contracts. Finally, Class C is what it is now - a contract for an operational deployment and predeployment training and post-deployment employment.

The second issue, the 15 - or 12 - year issue is solvable in several ways. The first is to have enough RegF staff to take up all administrative functions including the planning of training. ResF leaders should be left entirely to the 41.5 days of collective training. Similarly the rank level for ResF NCMs and officers should generally peak within the company level. Battalion (real battalions of 6-700 consisting of several RegF and ResF companies) should be run primarily by RegF personnel - again with the aim of managing all admin and training organization planning (not to mention equipment maintenance). ResF personnel wishing to rise to the ranks of CWO or LCol and above should be limited to those with the desire to take the necessary training to be able to function at those ranks (and generally be oriented to brigade and above staff jobs rather than battalion command).

Effectively there is no burning need to keep people beyond 12 or 15 years. The CAF should be happy if a ResF member stays for 12 to 15 years and never advances beyond the rank of major or MWO. In a battalion there is only one LCol and one CWO. That's two out of 6-700. If we aim to develop five majors and five MWOs out of 6-700 reservists as a steady state on a 12 to 15 year cycle then it is a manageable task. Much easier than generating 1 LCol, 1 CWO, 3 majors and 3 MWOs out of a pool of 60-100 .

 

[KevinB]

I imagine the second biggest release point for the Reserves isn’t 15 years, rather 12 years after you get the CD. Its a good point for people to re-evaluate what they are doing and they have something to show for all that service.

Given Admin in the PRes, it’s probably 15 years till the CD gets awarded…

 

[KevinB]

@FJAG most PRes should be complete DP1 at the end of the first summer.

Back in the 80’s when I joined the PRes, there where fall and spring intakes (basically) and the fall intakes did their recruit and basic courses on weekends and weeknights before summer training. The spring intakes did the Recruit phase, then Basic and QL3 (basic trade then) that summer. The fall intakes often got a QL4/STT that first summer as well.

That did require those candidates to miss out on summer concentration as well as the instructors. I don’t think we even had a Milcon in Ontario the summer I joined.

Subsequent summers, I taught on BTT and STR courses and had MilCon at the last two weeks (exception being 1990 as we had On Guard 90 which was primarily a Reg Force Ex for Late April and May, and switched to PRes for June). In 1994 I was teaching in both Petawawa and Meaford at the RCR BSL until I went Patricia, and didn’t have much visibility on the PRes Side of the house.

Most major units ran their own Platoon sized serials, with the smaller units providing an instructor or two to the major units and sending their candidates to those.

 

[FJAG]

Given Admin in the PRes, it’s probably 15 years till the CD gets awarded…

My first CD - which should have been when I was still with the RegF - didn't get to me until my second year after transferring back to the ResF. The three bars to my CD - all in the ResF - came on time.

 

[Kirkhill]

Relocated to a more appropriate thread.

 

[FJAG]

@FJAG most PRes should be complete DP1 at the end of the first summer.

That would be desirable but in my view is impractical.

The start point is that most ResF recruits join up in high school or at the end of high school before university or community college. Basically they have at max eight weeks of training which barely covers BMQ.

I'm a proponent that the DP1 training for ResF and RegF should be near identical for both NCMs and officers.

Obviously the length of DP1 training varies between trades and classifications but generally for NCM, 20 weeks is about the minimum. I break training into one month (or 25 day) modules. 20 weeks equates to 5 modules - that's where my 14 months come in - 2 summer modules, one winter module and 2 or more summer modules in the second summer - that's 20 to 25 weeks which should cover every NCM trade except for some very high technical skills one (which I think should be done in large measure with community colleges). IMHO, we should be able to redesign all NCM DP1 training to make it viable in a 14 month cycle.

You could push the winter training to two weekends per month and two nights per week as many units do now but that breaks my rule on minimal demands during periods where there are conflicting responsibilities - work, family, school.

Back in the 80’s when I joined the PRes, there where fall and spring intakes (basically) and the fall intakes did their recruit and basic courses on weekends and weeknights before summer training. The spring intakes did the Recruit phase, then Basic and QL3 (basic trade then) that summer. The fall intakes often got a QL4/STT that first summer as well.

That did require those candidates to miss out on summer concentration as well as the instructors. I don’t think we even had a Milcon in Ontario the summer I joined.

Not too dissimilar from my own experience. Back in the late sixties we ran a student summer recruit course at the armouries which lasted six weeks followed by a concentration. In the winter, my battery - 130 Battery - paraded every Saturday morning. (other batteries on weekday evenings). During that winter I took my basic gun numbers course (so basically some 30 half days or 15 days in total. That qualified my the equivalent of DP1. For those who wanted, there was a driver wheeled-arty course on Saturday afternoons which I also took. Again, with 15 days equivalent I was now qualified to drive jeeps, 3/4 tons and 2 1/2 tons towing a gun.

I took my two week junior NCO course in Pet and did a two week concentration. Now I'm a DP2 equivalent and promoted bombardier (the equivalent of MBdr these days) My (2 week equivalent) sigs course the next winter and became the Bty CP sig. In my last course before going to the RegF was a two-week arty tech course in Pet and a concentration.

The point here is that I was able to do the job with minimal training (Hell in my third month while still a recruit I was flown to Shilo for our regiment's annual competition at the RCSA and with a half hour of instruction was made the #3 on a 105 and a year later, while still a gunner taking my gun number training I was made a #1 on a live fire exercise in Meaford because none of the sergeants and only two bombardiers showed up. That's not right though. I was way undertrained for many of the jobs that I did as a reservist. The RegF on the other hand overtrains and wastes a lot of training time. There should be a happy medium where both ResF and RegF meet the same levels of qualification.

Subsequent summers, I taught on BTT and STR courses and had MilCon at the last two weeks (exception being 1990 as we had On Guard 90 which was primarily a Reg Force Ex for Late April and May, and switched to PRes for June). In 1994 I was teaching in both Petawawa and Meaford at the RCR BSL until I went Patricia, and didn’t have much visibility on the PRes Side of the house.

It was the same for the guns. 2 RCHA in Pet had lots of interaction with the ResF regiments in Ontario, 3 RCHA in Shilo had very little. At most it was some summer augmentation to the NRQS/ARTS run in the summers at Shilo.

Most major units ran their own Platoon sized serials, with the smaller units providing an instructor or two to the major units and sending their candidates to those.

 

[RangerRay]

I think at the junior levels, there are 3 categories of soldiers that leave after a few years.

- Those who had lives compatible with militia life who all of a sudden got a life that wasn’t compatible. This probably happens mostly with students who graduate and have to move for employment or the academics become more challenging and need more time for study, or those whose family lives or employment changes.

-then there are those who are able to stay in longer, get the training up to and including junior leadership, then stagnate and get bored as more advanced training opportunities become harder to get and regular training becomes routine.

-those who for whatever reason can’t get loaded onto basic or trades training in a reasonable time and never feel like a “full” member, whether their fault or the army’s. Doesn’t matter.

In my limited experience, very few stayed long enough for a CD.

 

[dapaterson]

Year zero attrition is about the same in the Reg F and Res F - they are mostly selection failures, people who can't adapt to the military (or who had unrealistic, Hollywood expectations, and for whom self-discipline is a four letter word.)

The CAF IT&E enterprise is federated, with varying degrees of internal cooperation, but is badly under resourced; it's overly reliant on augmentation, and does not do an effective job of load balancing across the year.

Res F attrition numbers need to be examined with some degree of attention to detail. In an average year, over 2% of the P Res will join the Reg F. Data rules, however, include those as part of the "release" dataset - so if the overall P Res release rate is reported as 15%, for example, it's actually 13% releasing, and 2% transferring to the Reg F.