To my mind, if you're going to only maintain 12 x Mech Companies then you'd be better off having a single Brigade with 3 x fully manned Mech Battalions along with all the tanks and a full Artillery Regiment with 3 x 6-gun Batteries. The remaining 3 x Mech Battalions could be your "Force Protection" Battalion which would also provide some extra depth if you ever had to deploy the Brigade. On top of that you'd have the single, fully-manned Light Infantry Battalion.
12 Mech Companies - used to mean 3 Battalions (4 Rifle Coy / BN).
So that would be 1 Medium Bde of LAV Inf, if you go to the 3 Rifle Coy/BN then you get 4 BN's
I see zero net gain for the CA in this at all, and generally a Loss.
I agree that this is a net zero gain. In fact I think it's a loss but not for the reason that there isn't a full three or four company battalion. I's because there are, IMHO "useless" divisional headquarters, too many "useless" brigade headquarters and barely enough "useful" battalion headquarters.
The major problem facing the CA is a lack of people in the RegF while the ARes is relegated to providing infill to RegF units. Concurrently we are doing day-to-day deployed missions that are built around less than full battalions and on occasion supervised by a truncated brigade headquarters. During Afghanistan those brigade headquarters were overstuffed but the long and the short of it was that to maintain sustained deployments (whether peacetime or wartime) at six month rotations, we had to adopt destructive readiness cycles which had units rotating and reconstituting at a furious rate.
I know that most here see the solution to the CAs problems as "full" battalions. I don't. I think that "undermanned" battalions, and brigades, but more of them, are the answer.
Firstly, If there is no deployable role for a division headquarters (other than 1 Cdn Div in CJOC) then get rid of them and harvest the PYs out of them.
Second, get rid of the superfluous nondeployable ARes Bde headquarters. If it doesn't deploy then it shouldn't exist. Again, harvest the PYs. That to me means calculate what constitutes a reasonable number of deployable bde headquarters that the total number of personnel in the CA could fill and maintain the appropriate number of bde hq properly manned for that task. One can debate the numbers but IMHO we can sustain eight deployable bde HQs and the nondeployable CADTC as a brigade equivalent entity with our current RegF and ARes authorized strengths.
Again while one can debate the brigade mix as between manoeuvre and support, but I think a reasonable one which allows for both the operation on a day-to-day basis as well as the expansion to a full 1 Cdn Div, if ever required, would be a mix of five manoeuvre brigades, a sustainment brigade, a combat support brigade and an artillery brigade. That would create a full division with two manoeuvre brigades left over as a reinforcement capability.
The switch over from the current three deployable and 11 non deployable brigades means a reduction in the number of total manoeuvre battalion headquarters from 12 deployable manoeuvre bn headquarters and roughly sixty-eight non deployable ones to a total of 23 deployable manoeuvre battalion headquarters. I count infantry battalions, armoured regiments and recce/cavalry regiments as manoeuvre battalions.
Obviously the manpower to fill out 23 deployable manoeuvre battalions with a full complement of full time soldiers isn't there. But there is more than enough staff there to fill the battalion headquarters with full-time leadership when one adds up the PYs associated with the deleted divisional headquarters, the non deployable brigade headquarters and the number of personnel currently in the RSS.
That leaves the question of how many full-time and/or part-time companies does each manoeuvre battalion
need. And I emphasis need here for day-to-day training and career progression and not for operational deployments. The question of what a battalion
needs in garrison and what does it
need on operations are two very distinct ones and should not be confused. IMHO, each battalion is adequately served with both career progression and training capability if it has a minimum of one full-time, fully equipped company as well as skeleton full-time leadership staff for the remaining companies which are manned by reservists. A battalion with just one company is obviously not on high readiness by itself, while a battalion with two full companies would be at a higher level. To create a battalion at very high readiness could require the designation of a third company from another battalion in the brigade or having a "ready" company fleshed out by reservists.
Effectively, battalions with a reduced number of soldiers but with at least one company of full-timers and the cadre headquarters for the other companies could still train both the full-time and part-time components in up to full battalion exercises. This would be a steady state activity to bring the entire force (not just the RegF component) to an overall higher state of readiness and capability than it has now and would also give an end-state overarching structure to the force which would be the goal for the development of doctrine and equipment programs.
To sustain operations, a program of managed readiness would be superimposed on only a part of the force depending on the missions selected. Specific battalion headquarters would be designated for deployment well in advance and would be filled out with the requisite manpower from with their organic RegF component augmented, if necessary, by additional RegF or ARes companies from across the force. Since there are now a total of 23 rather than 12 deployable battalion headquarters such rotations are more easily managed across the entire force structure. Similarly, if there is a need for a brigade headquarters there are now five manoeuvre brigade and three support brigade headquarters to choose from.
As a result of having a larger pool of brigade and manoeuvre battalions headquarters to choose from for deployments, the force as a whole would have less interruption allowing it to train both its RegF and ARes companies to a higher state of individual and collective training.
I've previously put up a potential org chart for such a force to illustrate the concept. Quite frankly I've been rethinking aspects of it particulalry from the service support side (I'm leaning more towards a US brigade support battalion concept) but the old model will do.
The one thing you'll have to admit is that this isn't a mere rearranging of deck chairs proposal.
for this exact purpose.
