Fabius
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Yes, the key difference I think though is that the USARNG Coys are all part of a Bn that has one role.
They aren’t Infantry who have also been tasked to have a CBRN Pl and a tank transport Pl etc.
Informing the Army’s Future Structure
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Yes, the key difference I think though is that the USARNG Coys are all part of a Bn that has one role.
They aren’t Infantry who have also been tasked to have a CBRN Pl and a tank transport Pl etc.
GR66
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I think a majority of people on here suggesting various reforms for the Army Reserves have suggested that the existing units get "right sized" to Companies and amalgamated into larger Battalion structures.
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Yup.
@dapaterson - just curious do you have any numbers of PRes LtCol’s and above? Would be curious to see how out of whack the structure is.
For those who want to hold on the past - perhaps they could tag those entities that have downsized to be something like 5 RCR A Coy 3 “RHLI” or B Coy 5 “GGFG” Platoon for example.
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Here is our problem with mass.
If you look closely you will see some yellow spots. Those represent the sum total of the asphalted subdivisions in Canada
If it helps I can zoom in.
The Prairies.
Vancouver
And Laurenitia (plus the Maritimes)
Together all those yellow spots house about 65% of Canada's population. That is Urban Canada. The other 35% are scattered hither and yon with natives making up about 1.5% and owning everything north of the southern treeline. The asphalted area is 0.1% of the total area.
The short form is that, in terms of concentrating mass we literally can not get there from here.
For most of Canada getting a Section or a Platoon together on a regular basis is a challenge. That is why I really like the Ranger model and I am also intrigued by @KevinB coming around to some sort of Homeguard Volunteers. That VDF looks interesting. The Rangers plus the VDF could take a lot of the odd jobs off the table and leave the Army to focus on creating an Expeditionary Force that can be Expedited internationally as well as being Expedited to the Arctic.
I intentionally chose the addition of a dedicated Transport Platoon to each Reserve Company and Squadron because everyone is always short of transport. Especially in an emergency. Of any kind.
Witness
Sweden
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Norway
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Netherlands
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Since 2019 until today all of these countries have been revitalizing and expanding their rolling stock.
And little training is necessary.
On the other hand training people for CBRN roles? You just might find a Company in Toronto and Montreal and Vancouver. Maybe a Platoon in Calgary and Edmonton and Ottawa.
For the rest of the country? I sincerely doubt if you could do more than qualify a couple of NCOs at each armoury.
Cybertechs and Signals enthusiasts on the other hand seem like a natural fit for those generations that enjoy playing with electrons.
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Last time I looked there were over 200 LCols in an Army Reserve of 20k or so.
But apparently units with a platoon plus of trained soldiers NEED a LCol to talk to the local mayor once or twice a year, or so I have been told ...
But apparently units with a platoon plus of trained soldiers NEED a LCol to talk to the local mayor once or twice a year, or so I have been told ...
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And thos are on top of the Mayor's buddies - the Honorary Colonel and the Honorary Lt Colonel. Right?
Might as well put those two Volunteers to work and get them some more Volunteers to ride herd on.
Fabius
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When I say mass it’s not in relation to the location of the disparate platoons or companies but in relation to the structure under which they fall.
Our current 16,500 reserves, as per Wikipedia for ease of open source date, represents approx 37% of our army yet can not field a single unit.
That does not offer us any mass.
It’s not the fact that our reserve subunits need to be distributed in order to attract and retain reserve personnel but rather that our structure doesn’t allow for effective aggregation and actually detracts from effective use of PYs and our personnel funding envelopes.
Our current 16,500 reserves, as per Wikipedia for ease of open source date, represents approx 37% of our army yet can not field a single unit.
That does not offer us any mass.
It’s not the fact that our reserve subunits need to be distributed in order to attract and retain reserve personnel but rather that our structure doesn’t allow for effective aggregation and actually detracts from effective use of PYs and our personnel funding envelopes.
GR66
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I'm not sure I buy that argument.
Looking at our existing Army bases and their potential catchment areas:
CFB Edmonton - Edmonton = 981,000 people
CFB Shilo - Winnipeg = 750,000 people
CFB Petawawa - Ottawa = 1 million people
CFB Valcartier - Quebec City = 840,000 people
CFB Gagetown - New Brunswick = 776,000 people
So each has a population catchment area containing at least 750,000 people to draw on that are within a reasonable travel distance to the base. Units in these areas could be integrated directly into Reg Force units to fill out their manning.
That leaves a number of major population concentrations that could be used to host Reserve Battalions or other formations:
Greater Vancouver Area - 2.5 million people
Greater Calgary Area - 1.4 million people
Greater Toronto Area - 6 million people
Southwestern Ontario - 2.5 million people
Greater Montreal Area - 4 million people
Nova Scotia - 1 million people
Yes our population is spread out across a huge country, but it is also clumped together in fairly tight groups that can each generate enough "mass" to support viable hybrid Regular/Reserve units as well as primarily Reserve units.
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I don’t think those Volunteers are worth much, and I’m equally sure that they won’t bring anyone of much value to the party.
So 200 of those and probably 4+ Majors for each of them, and maybe another 100 Col and above?
Seems about 5% of the PRes by rank are fairly useless to its actual structure.
Even worse using @Fabius data point
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I'll accept that there are a few local pools of talent that could be exploited as a targeted effort to supplement the Regs.
But that is different to building a national institution.
One thing is not like the other.
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What are you trying to build?
You aren’t going to be able to make a Territorial Defence Force out of Urban Canada simply due to the fact y’all live much closer to the border than you like to admit.
However your RPG’s offer the best possible solution for those areas of fairly low population.
The PRes just need to be interconnected with Reg Army to make a functional force, and switching to a better integrated force would allow for vastly more efficient use of the limited PY the CA has.
1 Corps (higher level command, training, doctrine, force mod/acquisition and sustainment) short of a NLI conflict I don’t see Canada ever fielding a Corps.
This Corps consisting of 2 Div’s , 1 as a deployable expeditionary force, the second as a Domestic Static HQ for FE domestically- and FG to 1 Cdn Div.
1 Heavy Bde 100/0 (Latvia)
3 Medium Bde all 30/70
2 Light Bde 100/0 and 70/30
1 Arty Bde (30/70)
1 Engineering Bde (30/70)
2 Forward Support Bde both 50/50, (to provide support both internally and in the case of multi theatre tasking).
Because Canada doesn’t have Divisional bases like we do down here, I suspect it would make sense to break up some of the Divisional assets geographically, and attach them as needed to support the Maneuver Bde training.
The amalgamation of PRes units would then fall under parent Regular units.
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See, perhaps that's the thing right there innit?
The way I see it is National Defence is everybody's business and it needs to be sold to everybody. I regularly hear that Canadians don't give a toss about Defence or the Army or whatever.
And yet the entire focus of much of the discussion is about financing a Praetorian Guard. Make your Government give us more money and leave it to the Professionals. They have wars they want to fight in far off places. Pass the hat and we'll let you fill in some blank files on our next expedition.
Look. There is a need for a professional army. I get it. Frankly I think the paper size of the force is not far from the needs. And yes it needs to be better manned and equipped and maybe it needs to be better led. But you're never going to get the things that are needed for an Expeditionary Brigade or Division to carry a flag next to Old Glory if you continue circling the wagons and locking the community out. The recruiting teams are only half the battle.
The CAF seems to have become a tight little community that serves its own interests and shows little interest in reaching out to the rest of Canada.
So, if all you want is some spare bodies to work some extra shifts then fill your boots. Set up shop next to Ikea and I sure it'll go gangbusters. But most of Canada doesn't shop at Ikea because there is only one in each of those major metropolitan clusters.
But if you want to engage Canadians then you need to find something to offer that youngster in Yorkton and Truro. And I doubt establishing the Yorkton CBRN battalion will be a great success.
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Here's another problem you will have with focusing on the Metro areas:
www.pa-ic.com
So with a substantial portion of the population coming from away, most of them in their 30s and young professionals with families, do you reckon tha volunteering to serve in the army is going to be top of mind for them?
They may have got their fill of uniforms, one way or another, in the old country.
And they will be shopping at Ikea, stocking their lives.
Which Cities In Canada Attract The Most Immigrants
Canada is the most preferred destination for most immigrants around the world. All the immigrants in Canada have a reason to call Canada their home.
So with a substantial portion of the population coming from away, most of them in their 30s and young professionals with families, do you reckon tha volunteering to serve in the army is going to be top of mind for them?
They may have got their fill of uniforms, one way or another, in the old country.
And they will be shopping at Ikea, stocking their lives.
FJAG
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You're reading my mind. Our numbers and structures vary slightly but they work.
Give me another month and I should be finished with "WAFGs" and can start revising "Unsustainable"
FJAG
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We're not trying to build a 1,000,000 man army. All we need is 20 to 30,000 to fill out what's there.
I think your view of immigrants is skewed. Take a look at the nominal rolls of some of the units in Toronto and Vancouver some day. There's plenty of diversity and if you give them a unit to be proud of the numbers will swell.
The point is we need to exploit those population centres. We keep whinging that its too expensive for a soldier there but the urban populations keep swelling at the expense of the rural ones. We just need to offer stability so that people's spouses can have jobs and they can stay near their families. The trick is to design an annual training cycle that works around urban basing. That's easy for reservists and a bit harder but by no means impossible for the regulars.
MilEME09
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Engagement is part of our problem, Calgary should be able to have little issue with a population that large recruiting but we are struggling, heck most reserve units except the QoR are struggling. Our approach to recruiting isn't working, and reading statistics on DWAN we have a fair amount of applications, but the red tape is slowing things down and people loose interest. Example last year at one point we had 79 applications in process, of those we actually got two people. That is a terrible ratio of potential vs actual output. The process needs to get better.
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As opposed to all the wars inside Canada?
I and several others here have noted that Canada is in the enviable location of having only one other country it shares a land border with, and that country is also a major security guarantor.
My point on the population centers as focus areas doesn’t ignore the smaller towns.
I just don’t see the ability to put a BN in those towns.
Maybe a company or Platoon, but it needs to tied to a larger entity. As well the PRes weeknight training won’t work in some areas, as while I do think some personnel will put up with a 45min one way drive for 3hrs, not everyone will, and anything longer will see even fewer people have interest.
I do think Canada’s current basing structure is extremely inadequate. The ‘super base’ concept was significantly selfish to the Regular Army in theory, and in practice just a bad idea.
Edmonton to me sticks out a terrible location. Part of that is I didn’t like the city, but not having a real training area as part of it was also a major annoyance. I accept that Calgary was losing Sarcee, but Petawawa just crosses the Highway, and Valcartier has one integral as well.
Geographically the loss of BC bases made a huge hole. One that I believe needs to be corrected.
Southern Ontario is another area that should have some sort of reasonable base and training area, and I don’t consider Border or Meaford to be significant in that respect.
Saskatchewan is fairly devoid of Army presence, as is Southern Alberta and Western Ontario.
I’m of the opinion a LIB should be able to find a home somewhere on the BC coast and another near Merritt, with other units as well, that could provide a tether for satellite sub units as spokes around the wagon wheel.
Mech units should have a footprint in Wainwright, Southern Alberta, across the Prairies.
Assuming that 6-7 Maneuver Brigades is what Canada is able to provide using Canada’s geography should be a focus for those - and the related other structures.
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We're not trying to build a 1,000,000 man army. All we need is 20 to 30,000 to fill out what's there.
I think your view of immigrants is skewed. Take a look at the nominal rolls of some of the units in Toronto and Vancouver some day. There's plenty of diversity and if you give them a unit to be proud of the numbers will swell.
The point is we need to exploit those population centres. We keep whinging that its too expensive for a soldier there but the urban populations keep swelling at the expense of the rural ones. We just need to offer stability so that people's spouses can have jobs and they can stay near their families. The trick is to design an annual training cycle that works around urban basing. That's easy for reservists and a bit harder but by no means impossible for the regulars.
I know that a diverse population of people is serving in the Forces. But I doubt if many of them are immigrants unless they, like myself, were brought over as children and raised in Canada. They're parents are considerably less likely to be suitable recruiting fodder. My parents certainly were not. My Dad had done his bit in the UK and had little interest and no time to pursue any endeavours outside of establishing his family securely in this country.
That is the problem to which I refer when I suggest that the major population centres, with their high percentage of recent arrivals, may not be as fruitful a recruiting ground as perhaps anticipated.
TMV are certainly major concentrations of Canadians but what can we expect from them? If half the population of Toronto are immigrants then I would suggest that that population would skew upwards in age from the age at which they immigrated.
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www.cicnews.com
The Daily — Immigrants make up the largest share of the population in over 150 years and continue to shape who we are as Canadians
Immigrants accounted for 23.0% of the population in 2021, the largest proportion in over 150 years. Among them, 1.3 million new immigrants were admitted from 2016 to 2021. Coming from many countries, immigrants settle throughout Canada and contribute to the growth of the population and the...
The half of the population that is not immigrant tends to skew upwards in age due to low rates of reproduction.
The half of the population that is immigrant will also tend to skew upwards from the age of immigration.
In both cases the pool of potential recruits is small.
The immigrant population presents other challenges as well.
First and foremost is that they have been sold Canada as a secure destination, safe from war, where one can comfortably raise a family and make a profit. They are not only too busy to engage with the military, they are disinclined to engage with the military and, in addition, they will have little sense of any Canadian military. In fact they may have negative perceptions of soldiering in general.
Those are the Weaknesses and Threats the CAF recruiting process faces.
The Strengths and Opportunities the CAF has/had is its domestic reputation and its ability to engage with the public. To be frank the domestic reputation today is not as good as it was. For a variety of reasons that need no rehearsing. And it is losing contact with large cohorts of the public that might be of use to it.
Major league sports spends a large portion of its marketing budget in building up fan clubs and minor leagues and amateur leagues precisely so that those afficionados will spend money that makes its way into to pockets of owners and players.
The Cadets are the juniors. The Militia is/was that minor league home of the afficionado. It supplied the occasional body for call up to the Majors. But more importantly, in my opinion, it supplied a body of taxpayers that had personal insight into the needs of the CAF and were willing to proselytize on its behalf. And that happened in every town with one of Sam Hughes's armouries.
As to your comment about not wanting a million man army.....
Where are you going to find that reserve to fill your national emergency force that you wish to have manning howitzers in storage?
One of the reasons Sam built those armouries all the way across the country, a young country with an even more diverse immigrant population than now if you consider the high percentage of towns with single country and single religion origins on the prairies, one of the reasons was to engage that immigrant population in the defence of a country that was trying to establish itself as distinct from both the UK and the US. Another reason was to establish a Federal Government imprint on those new communities. It is why it invested in town clocks and sandstone post offices and land registries. They encouraged a sense of permanence in dusty and cold little places where people had difficulty understanding each other. And the armouries were places that counteracted the churches and the social clubs. The churches and the social clubs encouraged diversity right enough. They created little insular places of comfort where the like-minded gathered and talked to themselves.
The armouries were different. They were meeting places for Ukrainians and Brits and Jews, Catholics and Masons. They assisted in breaking down barriers.
And they built support for new uniforms, new rifles, new machine guns, new artillery pieces, new wagons and tents, new solar topees...
That is what the armouries, that is what the Militia, brought to the making of modern Canada. That is what is being lost as the CAF turtles. Turns in on itself.
I understand why the CAF is doing it. When money is short it is difficult to think of anything but the short term. Growth is not a priority for those under threat. But it needs to be. That is where the emphasis on recruiting and reconstitution has it right I think. But the vision has to be broader than a narrow focus on maintaining one single deployable brigade group in Latvia.
In short, I guess, I am arguing for more marketing, more fans, more "unpaid" lobbyists to help you build the support necessary to field a credible national defence.
And part of that effort has to be making the CAF relevant to Canadians.
----
Working through this, it occurs to me that the success of the US defence establishment has been in selling pessimism since the Reagan years and Caspar Weinbergers slick threat assessment coffee table books. The books that created the image of the Russians that we are only now discovering was, or at least is now, "overstated".
That image is directly at odds with the optimistic "sunny ways" that our current government is so keen to promote.
Canada is not under threat. It is Safe, Secure and Engaged.
Fabius
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I’m of the opinion that reconstitution has been a disaster of small minded short term thinking.
Case in point, recruiting is an issue yet the CA has massively curtailed support to community relation tasks.
Seems a bit counterintuitive but since the CA as a L1 and CFRG as part of CMP as an L1 have minimal relationship with each other, each looks after it’s own small piece without consideration for the consequences to the whole.
Case in point, recruiting is an issue yet the CA has massively curtailed support to community relation tasks.
Seems a bit counterintuitive but since the CA as a L1 and CFRG as part of CMP as an L1 have minimal relationship with each other, each looks after it’s own small piece without consideration for the consequences to the whole.
