Divining the right role, capabilities, structure, and Regimental System for Canada's Army Reserves

[MilEME09]

I might be young, but I was still taught field phones and splicing wire on BMQ in 2010, unfortunately, we'd have to buy our own field phones too

 

[cavalryman]

I might be young, but I was still taught field phones and splicing wire on BMQ in 2010, unfortunately, we'd have to buy our own field phones too

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_can_telephone

 

[Colin Parkinson]

I might be young, but I was still taught field phones and splicing wire on BMQ in 2010, unfortunately, we'd have to buy our own field phones too

Just looking on ebay and about $2,500 in Unit funds will buy you switchboard, wire and 8-10 phones

 

[The Bread Guy]

Just looking on ebay and about $2,500 in Unit funds will buy you switchboard, wire and 8-10 phones

If there was a CF crowdfunding hub like the Ukrainian military does, I'd donate ...

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Might be enough to embarrass them into action if we did. Actually you could work it into the button and bows heritage scheme as many of the armouries were built by subscription and units raised with private funds.

 

[The Bread Guy]

Might be enough to embarrass them into action if we did. Actually you could work it into the button and bows heritage scheme as many of the armouries were built by subscription and units raised with private funds.

>

 

[MilEME09]

Might be enough to embarrass them into action if we did. Actually you could work it into the button and bows heritage scheme as many of the armouries were built by subscription and units raised with private funds.

Just make armoury maintenance a historic restoration project, then suddenly money will come

 

[daftandbarmy]

Excellent....



This interview is part of a project to interview army reservists in Alberta about their experiences on overseas deployments. CWO Chris Tucker (Calgary Highlanders) was a young Canadian army reservist when he served with the 3 PPCLI Battle Group on Op HARMONY in Croatia (1992-93). He describes their inadequate work-up training in Victoria and Wainwright, the shock of his first week in theatre ("This is not Cyprus"), assisting wounded civilians wounded in an ambush, and his muted homecoming in 1993. CWO Tucker is the regimental sergeant major of the Calgary Highlanders. He has completed four overseas deployments.




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBAR-dIpi60

 

[rnkelly]

Great interview, thanks for sharing!

 

[MilEME09]

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/christie-blatchford-canadas-ragged-reserves-have-too-few-vehicles-little-ammo-and-now-no-radios

Christie Blatchford: Canada’s ragged reserves have too few vehicles, little ammo and now, no radios

Now, it’s radios that Canadian reserve units are expected to do without, probably until the summer of 2017.

The army recently took away the old radios because it’s replacing them, Postmedia sources say, but with the usual staggering incompetence, failed to synch the clawback with the acquisition of the new ones.

Ergo, no radios until July of next year.

Without radios, soldiers on training or exercise in the field won’t be able to communicate with one another, which rather defeats the ostensible goal of having part-time soldiers who are as well-trained as full-time or regular soldiers.

Mind you, that may matter less than it should because there are fewer and fewer such courses and exercises available to reserve soldiers anyway — even though such things are a draw and mean a paycheque for young men and women off from school for the summer.

As well, many units have fewer vehicles available to them because they’re either rusting out or unserviceable — or because mechanics can’t be trained because regulations decree that they can only trained by regular-force members and there aren’t enough of those around.

In other words, for Canada’s beleaguered militia — the 117 reserve units, many of them among the country’s oldest and most storied regiments, based in 130 cities and towns across the country — it is in the immortal words of Yogi Berra, deja vu all over again.

Most cruel is that the reserves are being deliberately starved and the culprit starving them is, as usual, the bureaucracy of the regular (or full-time) army itself.

But if the situation is dire, as reserve leaders say, it is also familiar.

The gutting of the militia is an old, familiar story. It always happens the same way.

First, reserve units have their quotas cut.

This last happened in 2010, when Brigadier-General John Collin, then the commander of Joint Task Force Central Area (this means Ontario) held a series of town hall meetings at which he said the army was looking to chop 5,000 reservists.

That’s pretty much what they’ve done.

As federal Auditor-General Michael Ferguson said in a spring report on the state of the army reserve, units have lost about 1,000 soldiers a year for several years, and instead of the 21,000 reservists the army purported to fund in its budget of last year, there were only 13,944.

Then, since recruiting is always laughably slow (last I looked, it took an average 180 days to enrol a soldier for a part-time job), the bodies coming in the door don’t begin to fill the holes left by those who are going out even by way of normal attrition.

Eventually, some of the regiments either run out of bullets (seriously, that happened once, years ago) or courses to send their soldiers on or leaders to run them, and someone like me writes about it, at which point, government and regular army folks who control the purse strings for the reserves deny or minimize the crisis, swear there’s nothing to see here, and move on.

And while governments have been more or less inept or uninterested, the problem is not one created by politicians; rather, by craven officials in the regular army who see any increase in militia size or power as a threat and who even get away with ignoring the will of the government of the day.

The previous Conservative government, for instance, promised to increase the reserves by 10,000, reneged on that promise, then slashed reserve pay budgets and made things worse. Then-defence minister Peter MacKay ordered his department to develop policies to stop militia paycheques being used for other purposes, but never got an answer, let alone a result.

As the military scholar Jack English wrote in a scathing report several years ago, for the military, compliance with government orders has come to be seen as a voluntary matter.

Ten years ago, the Canadian army, in the form of Task Force Orion in Kandahar — the core regiment the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, but with plenty of reservists too — was on the ground in Afghanistan.

That wonderfully nimble battle group, headed by then-Lieutenant-Colonel Ian Hope, was punching way above its weight and about to suffer some of its most significant losses.

And a century ago, on July 1, in the village of Beaumont-Hamel, France, 700 members of the First Newfoundland Regiment were being slaughtered in the first phase of the Battle of the Somme.

Yet with these two historic events on the military calendar, one modern and one from the First World War, the biggest mission on the Canadian Forces’ radar today is Op Honour, the purported “fight” against harmful and inappropriate sexual behaviour in the military.

How very sad that this army — under-led, over-managed and risk-averse as it is — may just be up for that fearsome task.

 

[RedcapCrusader]

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/christie-blatchford-canadas-ragged-reserves-have-too-few-vehicles-little-ammo-and-now-no-radios

I will agree with the Ammo part, however Vehicle and Radio complaints maybe be regional issue.

We have radios out West, they're the old 522 Manpacks,  heavy as shit and don't work 90% of the time, but we have them.

Vehicles, again, we're losing more and more vehicles. Vics are either not being repaired because of parts shortages or are being taken out of service due to age,  irreparable issues, and lack of parts but I wouldn't say we have too few vehicles.

Last maneuver I was on, we were short drivers and gunners and had to actually park vehicles. Weird.

 

[RedcapCrusader]

Ah yes cell phones, PRes comms, I think i'll be making the carbon paper/runner recommendation to my chain, I found it sad on a EX I was on sentry and due to a small hill I couldn't communicate to the CP anyone else from my OP unless they were 50m away with a kenwood. Given our lack of working radios, the reserves really should invest in alternate comms, heck i've suggested using funds to buy better PRR's and a signal amp to hopefully create comms.

Good god if only we did our training in areas with cell coverage, we'd actually be able to communicate.

Even the Sigs only brought enough Motorola PTTs for HQ elements (who demanded to have the radios, even though they never left the Ops Centre), the 4 Manpacks that were brought out weren't vetted and turned out to be paperweights.

When our Op Tempo/Force Pro Condition changed, we wouldn't know until we got back to the FOB, met by a screaming RSM demanding we bloused our trousers, and then jacked up our convoy for only being in combats with bush cap vice the now-required FFO with helmet carried.

Sometimes, our army really makes me mad and I question why I still put myself through the suffering.

 

[MilEME09]

Good god if only we did our training in areas with cell coverage, we'd actually be able to communicate.

Even the Sigs only brought enough Motorola PTTs for HQ elements (who demanded to have the radios, even though they never left the Ops Centre), the 4 Manpacks that were brought out weren't vetted and turned out to be paperweights.

When our Op Tempo/Force Pro Condition changed, we wouldn't know until we got back to the FOB, met by a screaming RSM demanding we bloused our trousers, and then jacked up our convoy for only being in combats with bush cap vice the now-required FFO with helmet carried.

Sometimes, our army really makes me mad and I question why I still put myself through the suffering.

I went on an EX a few months ago where we were actually told we were not to take radios in the convoy, this EX was using simunition through built up areas. Now try communicating your lead vehicle was just taken out by OPFOR safely without radios

 

[PuckChaser]

How are you going to communicate with that lead vehicle if a near-peer (or tech savvy) enemy is jamming your command net in the same ambush?

Yes, not having radios for exercises sucks. In that same notion, think outside the box and work to solve the issue. Maybe you develop a new TTP with hand signals or vehicle horn signals to indicate certain things after contact? Combat isn't a perfect world where everything is going to work electronically for you. I've seen the TCCCS radios reset mid convoy in a really sketchy area, but other than having my GIB work the problem, I knew what to do if certain things happened, because we rehearsed actions on.

 

[MilEME09]

How are you going to communicate with that lead vehicle if a near-peer (or tech savvy) enemy is jamming your command net in the same ambush?

Yes, not having radios for exercises sucks. In that same notion, think outside the box and work to solve the issue. Maybe you develop a new TTP with hand signals or vehicle horn signals to indicate certain things after contact? Combat isn't a perfect world where everything is going to work electronically for you. I've seen the TCCCS radios reset mid convoy in a really sketchy area, but other than having my GIB work the problem, I knew what to do if certain things happened, because we rehearsed actions on.

Tried to horn thing, was told in a not so pleasent way it was bad noise discipline in a tactical environment, and I am not even going to start on hand signals cause that is a loosing battle i've been fighting. To sum it up radios are broken, troops are trying to create a solution, COC says no in one way or another

 

[PuckChaser]

If you're in a TIC and your CoC is worrying about noise discipline, they've not paid attention to any military training, ever. Hand signals are taught on the AVCC course, you can find that on the CTC website and print it out.

I believe there is a project ongoing to give the PRes Motorola Astro 2500s as a stop gap, perfect for training but not deployable. They're a decent radio, with comparable range to a 522 manpack.

 

[daftandbarmy]

If you're in a TIC and your CoC is worrying about noise discipline, they've not paid attention to any military training, ever. Hand signals are taught on the AVCC course, you can find that on the CTC website and print it out.

I believe there is a project ongoing to give the PRes Motorola Astro 2500s as a stop gap, perfect for training but not deployable. They're a decent radio, with comparable range to a 522 manpack.

The Yanks use these. They are excellent. Why don't we buy some off of them (and tell everyone they were made in PQ)?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/PRC-117F

 

[dapaterson]

Because the moment we buy a radio with crypto, CSE is part of the process, and they are concerned with managing crypto through its lifecycle.  Which takes time, and is not necessarily as responsive as one might like.

(Plus, the Army decided to spend lots of money on vehicles for which the necessity has yet to be determined - imagine if the Army had sunk that kind of money into acquiring radios instead.  But the Army has huge blinders on anything "support", so radios, logistics and support vehicles, and anything like that goes far down the list after mistakes like the TAPV).

Plus, since the device includes encryption, and is from an American supplier, the US will enforce more wonderful restrictions on their use, storage and training.  Remember the Controlled Goods and Security Awareness training?  Add several levels of crap to that.

For the CAF for routine admin and DomOps there's no need for complex radios, no need for encryption (at least, not on the radio).  KISS.

 

[PuckChaser]

The Yanks use these. They are excellent. Why don't we buy some off of them (and tell everyone they were made in PQ)?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/PRC-117F

Depending on your options, a AN/PRC 117F is upwards of $30k USD each, as it's a multiband radio and those are inherently more expensive. I also don't think they're making many 117Fs anymore, as that's a plenty old radio (by technology terms), and a quick look at the Harris website doesn't show it on there anymore.

DAP brings up some good points, any US radio (or Canadian radio with US crypto because we don't have our own Type 1 industry here) is subject to their ITAR regulations as well as our CTAT rules. Take the US crypto rules, throw CSE's 2 cents in making it more restricted use, and you have a whole hockeysock full of problems to deal with. You also are not allowed to have Cl A pers as COMSEC custodians in an account, so either you dual-hat each of the unit's limited pers as the custodian, or you don't get the radios. The 117F isn't handled through the CF Supply System like a 522, its a CCI item and handled like any other crypto, we got a temp-loan at my old unit a few years ago, and its not as easy as just signing a 638 for it.

 

[daftandbarmy]

Depending on your options, a AN/PRC 117F is upwards of $30k USD each, as it's a multiband radio and those are inherently more expensive. I also don't think they're making many 117Fs anymore, as that's a plenty old radio (by technology terms), and a quick look at the Harris website doesn't show it on there anymore.

DAP brings up some good points, any US radio (or Canadian radio with US crypto because we don't have our own Type 1 industry here) is subject to their ITAR regulations as well as our CTAT rules. Take the US crypto rules, throw CSE's 2 cents in making it more restricted use, and you have a whole hockeysock full of problems to deal with. You also are not allowed to have Cl A pers as COMSEC custodians in an account, so either you dual-hat each of the unit's limited pers as the custodian, or you don't get the radios. The 117F isn't handled through the CF Supply System like a 522, its a CCI item and handled like any other crypto, we got a temp-loan at my old unit a few years ago, and its not as easy as just signing a 638 for it.

I'd just like to see a man pack radio that is actually lighter than the one it supercedes... for a change.