We have covered the problem of the widening gap of skill sets between the Reg and Reserve Armour soldiers and as many others have said before, the main problem is money.
It is important that the Reserve Armour Units maintain their skills of Mud Recce. I would hate to see them relegated to solely doing Convoy Escort taskings, but that is one skill they must maintain. Tactics is the important thing that they must maintain, as Tactics will remain the same, with minor changes/adaptations to the vehicle you will be in. Weapons training must be maintained, as one will have to be proficient with a C6 or C9 if one is to become a CC in a Bison, or whatever vehicle one may command. All the Armour Recce skills must be maintained to keep the Reserves viable.
Are there solutions to the problem right now. Not really. Fiscal cuts and restraints have caused the Regular Armour Units to loose many of their capabilities and much of their equipment, so even they are having problems keeping skills. That makes it next to impossible to pass on those skills to the Reserves. It also makes a solution of one or two year Class B or Class C Call Outs impractical at this time, as there would still not be the equipment, nor the Instructors/Courses to train the Reservists before training their own Reg soldiers.
The Regs would like to have the equipment to keep their skill sets up to par. Money to purchase new tanks, more Coyotes, new Cbt Vehicles, etc. should also include the Reserves, or the gap between the two will only widen more. Until such time skill sets must be maintained as best they can.
By maintaining their Recce skills, tactics, and Wpns skills they could, as Command-Sense-Act 105 said, still be employed as Commanders of Bison Ambs or various other variants. Crew Commander skills will be a skill set that can be transferred from one vehicle platform to another, knowing the capabilities of the new vehicle. However, we have heard from Reservists that they don't want these jobs as they consider them "Admin jobs" and not "real Recce" jobs. They cry that they can't go and do Recce. Unfortunately, we have found that we can no longer use the Iltis and GWagen without expecting casualties. We have only so many RG31's and they are spoken for. It leaves very few opportunities for an Armour Reservist to be employed in an actual Recce Role.
Back to money. There are some good solutions that have been brought out in the discussions in this and other topics, but they are all stopped dead in their tracks due to the lack of funding from Ottawa. That lack of funding is affecting the Armour Corps right across the board, both Reg and Reserve, and causing skill sets to fade or be lost. We will know how bad, the day we start doing like they did in our early history when they used boxes to simulate armour cars and tanks. But remember, if you know the tactics and your weapons, it will not matter what vehicle you are in, you will still have the majority of the important skill sets to do the job. Skill sets that you can easily adapt to a new vehicle.
It is a serious problem, and one that has been identified. Will we get anything under the tree for Christmas? Probably not.
right out of it? right in it I'm afraid..
