Well, this is a pretty busy thread, and I feel that my idea can only stand if I can sufficently deal with the criticism leveled. So here it goes....
ags:
This process would guarantee that nobody with a degree, except Lance's desperate, would ever consider joining.
I would disagree. Again you seem to be equating "degree" with "must be an officer". My proposition is more directed to getting people from highschool at age 18; I think university graduates would be the exception rather then the norm, but the system will be structured to accommodate them. However, regardless of whether a person just finished highschool or just finished an Honours in Psyc is irrelevant. If they are interested in serving in the forces, they will both start on step one, because both are civilians with not a lick of experience in the military. Officer selection, like NCO selection, will be based solely upon merit.
While you might not care about money when you are busy, I guarantee your family (or ability to build one) would be greatly affected by it. I am not suggesting that we use salary as our recruiting incentive, but pointing out that people who want to join for the right reasons should not have to make large sacrifices in financial and family stability to do so. Is accepting unlimited liability not good enough these days?
The Officer Corps isn't the only way to make a decent living in the Forces. We are one of the best paid military forces in the world. Overseas, Corporal's were making more money then the Platoon Commander, so your salary dilemma really doesn't hold water.
As well, I don't think a soldier with a university education would automatically quit the forces upon failing Officer Selection. Perhaps he or she wants to stay as a troop for a while and progress to a SNCO. There would be nothing wrong with encouraging further professionalizing of the NCO Corps through increased education. Although I would argue that it is not as vital as the NCO's are expert tradesmen rather then expert within a profession (as Huntington has defined it), the quality of our Army can only benefit from an increasingly educated group of SNCO's. Perhaps we should have a system to provide incentives to Ranks and SNCO's who go out of their way to do this.
I am pointing out that an intrinsic result of the structure proposed would be that people who did not get into university on their highschool grades but want a degree will naturally be drawn to the possibility of getting one through the military, as other means to that end are no longer an option. I see this as a flaw, not a benefit.
Well, a rigorous set of standards combined with the challenging course of studies at the RMC should ensure that the Officer Corps will not be filled with "underachievers" (although using someones highschool grades as a determinate of their ability to do well in University is only valid for so long; perhaps 3 years in the Ranks can provide a solid grounding of real experience to turn the "underachievers" of highschool into solid students of the military discipline. The University system calls these "mature students". As well, with a military school such as the RMC, which is a top class military academy which offers much that civilian universities do not, the opportunity to attend such an institution will probably draw a very motivated crowd of young men and women into the Army. Those who do not gain entry as an Officer Cadet can leave the Forces with their "GI Bill" that I mentioned earlier; they have something to show for their three years of service and can go on with life.
This is all well and good to say, but if you were looking for a long term career, would you sign a contract for a job described as "we'll let you know what you're doing three years from now" and salary of "we might offer you a competitive salary later, but don't bet on it"? Even without the unlimited liability clause I doubt you'd sign on. Most people with a degree already in hand, regardless of how much they might want to join for the right reasons, would likely go with their second career choice.
Again, I think you're confusing the issue that a person with a degree should necessarily shoot for a commission. We should move away from this line of thinking. The military will take those who wish to work on a short term stint or a long term career within the Army. If it deems a person to be suitable for an officer position, then it can send them for the requisite training (which should include a military degree).
Either way, progression to any rank from Private to General should be based on some form of merit; nothing should be guaranteed. If a person who studied rocks at the UofA for four years cannot comprehend that this is an essential part of the profession of arms, then tough luck for him. His degree alone should not be the deciding factor in him going straight to Leadership Training.
I see university and military education as separate entities, both necessary for today's officer. A university degree is necessary because, while unrelated to leading under fire, an understanding of the world outside of your little bubble is necessary to operate in a complex geopolitical environment. While no guarantee, the university degree is currently the closest thing to an indicator of such knowledge that we have. We already have numerous ways for people with degrees to join, or those already in to get one.
A military education is simply another form of post-secondary education. Studies in tactics, theory, and military history are a sub-branch of the Liberal Arts "tree" that all Universities teach to some extent. The RMC is an accredited institution, its graduates are awarded a degree that is as good as the one on my wall from UBC. However, I advocate that a degree based upon a military education is required as it is an aspect of the professionalism of the Officer Corps. A doctor must study sciences and the human body to gain a general understanding of the medical profession; those who seek to lead and control the use of military force should be no different.
As well, I've advocated that a minor in a separate discipline in order to diversify the knowledge base of the Officer Corps as a whole. While all Officer's will have a common background with a B.A. in Military Studies, each one will also have experience with economics, literature, chemistry, psychology, etc. This will ensure that the Officer Professional does not get tunnel vision; the theory and study of War is a cross-discipline affair that involves all aspects of life.
We already have numerous ways for people with degrees to join, or those already in to get one. Why mess with that?
Rather than turning everything on it's head, why not focus on how our military education is delivered?
I propose the system as I did because I believe it is the best way to inculcate the ideas of the military profession within those who would lead us into battle. Just because we have a system now does not mean it is optimal.
pbi:
I have to wonder about the source of your data. Is that for the actual Army MOCs in Army jobs, or for all MOCs and commands across the CF? For example, the RegF Inf is severely short of officers at the Capt level, while the RegF Artillery is in a similar boat (in our Bde they can fill only one of the three Arty FTSO positions, for example). On the Res side, taking our Bde as an example, most of our 16 units have only a fraction of their required number of officers, and officer recruiting/retention is one of our biggest challenges. Taking LFWA as a whole, for another example, out of a strength of roughly around 8-10,000 RegF and Res, I doubt there is any way we have an officer/NCO ratio of anything like what you are quoting.
If you are figuring in NDHQ, I guess you could be closer to the mark, but most people in NDHQ are not employed in "Army" positions and have no direct contact with troops. The Air Force also tends to skew the results, as they have a somewhat higher ratio of officers due to our Canadian requirement that a pilot must be a commissioned officer.
I'm not saying you're totally out to lunch-I'm just wondering what your source is. Cheers.
Sir, I got the data straight from the horses mouth, so to say:
http://www.cds.forces.ca/pubs/anrpt/anxd_e.asp
Although the data is a few years old, I didn't anticipate too much derivation from the estimates for future years. Given that the Army is 1/3 of the CF strength, I simply took a third of the figures supplied to get my facts; perhaps I may be a point or two off, but I think I am hitting the ballpark. Here is what I figured
- The figures give the CF Regular Force has about 1275 officers at LCol (Cmdr) and above. Splitting that into 3 even parts, that gives us about 425 Colonels and Generals. Of these 425 about 112 are ranked full Colonel above. Does anyone see these numbers as being excessively high for an Army that has 3 Brigades and no higher fighting formations (Or a fleet of some 20-30 ships or an Air Force of 1 Air Division)?
- Current Canadian Army Officer Numbers as Compostion of Total Force: 21.8%
- Current Canadian Army Officers to Soldier Ratio: roughly 1:4
The general percentage I've seen given in books dealing with organizational trends and efficiency seem to peg 5-10% as the desired percentage. I guess that number is debateable as well.
However, from the shortages you have given, perhaps this would indicate that NDHQ and other "outside" postings are taking too much officer strength from the fighting forces, or that trade assignments are disproportionate (Branch A has an abundance, while Branch B is lacking).
More to chew on I guess. Does my math seem to be in the ballpark to you?
DrSize
Thank you, you've proved my point. Both potential recruits and the military benefit when the opportunity to serve in a dynamic and unique institution is the guiding principle of recruiting. Of course, the military should ensure that it's soldiers can make a decent living, which it does. As I have argued before, troops are payed quite well.
Inch
This next comment is going to stir up a hornet's nest I know, if you make a university educated person do 3 years in the ranks with a person that has a grade 10 education (which is by the way the min req to join as an NCM), I don't think it's going to do much for cohesion. There's always going to be resentment there because some thought processes are going to come easier to the educated person. Thus from the get go, you've got essentially 2 different people doing the same job. It's going to affect the uneducated guy's confidence since things will seem to be harder for him to understand, not that they are harder, just that a university education teaches you to think on so many levels.
I think this statement is just ridiculous. When I was a Private overseas, I was nearly done my University degree. The fact that I a may have had a better understanding of certain things and a head full of good Jeopardy answers didn't alienate me from my section mates. You were in the Army, you should understand the dynamics of a small unit and those soldiers who live and fight together.
If we have a look at officer training as it stands, I'm a pilot but we're going to look at the army side of stuff. CAP, Ph 3 & 4 take about a year to do, following 1 year of basic & french school. University degrees are 4 years for honours and 3 for general degrees, most take 4 year degrees, RMC for example is 4 years period. We're now at 6 years of training, if you want to add 3 years of time in the ranks it's now going to take you 9 years to get a platoon comd. This is all well and good, but it's taken half of someone's career to get to be a Capt platoon comd, now in the next 26 years (assuming they're going for a full career) they have to advance to CDS. It's not realistic, no one will ever make it that high, not to mention that the average career is 25-30 years. So my question is who would lead this band of merry men? A General who spent 9 years getting to Lt and 20 years going from Lt to Gen (8 rank changes)? So less than 3 years in each rank, he's got to do advance operations courses, staff school, etc, as well as instructing at those levels, the amount of time he'd actually spend at each rank physically leading someone would be maybe 1.5 years.
I layed it out in my initial proposition and have worked it out on paper and by reading through similar ideas; it is not as infeasible as you make it sound. Take a recruit from highschool at 18. He goes through BE and is selected at the end to attend officer school (21). Three years at RMC (A degree can be done in three years, if anything, an extra workload can be a character builder that can be managed in the regimented environment of a military academy) to earn a B.A. followed by comprehensive exams (24) - teach'em French at the University if we insist on bilingualism. A year of Leadership training in the field (you don't need CAP and basic, covered by time in Rank) followed by commissioning and first assignment by age 25. Considering that today RMC grads are first assigned at 22-23 following graduation and a fresh DEO is assigned at about 24-25 (4 years Uni + 2 years Officer Training), the system I have proposed is no where near the 9 years you pointed out, rather it would be pretty close to our current trends.
Personally, I don't think that being an NCM for 3 years would have made me a better officer, you don't need to have been a Pte to understand when someone is in the hurt locker and needs a break. You don't need to have been a Pte to understand the significance of bringing a haybox of Timmy's coffee to your guys on a winter ex. I think that in the quest for better officer's, one could simply implement a better recruiting system to help weed out the careerists and gold diggers, leaving you with Officer's capable of leading and caring for troops without having to add 3 years to the officer training.
I feel my three years sure did, so I guess it that is a matter of opinion. What I have proposed here
is, in my opinion, "a better recruiting system to help weed out careerists and gold diggers." Bottom line is, I can't really see any serious disadvantages by having officers do time in the Ranks, while there are express advantages as I mentioned in my propostion.
Since it was mentioned a couple times, the seemingly top heavy CF being skewed by the Airforce req for Pilots and Navs to be Officers. We're not the only ones, RN, RAF, USAF, USN, etc, the armies of our 2 closest allies are the only ones that have NCMs as pilots so it would seem that NCM pilots are the exception rather than the rule the world throughout.
I will admit, my proposal pertains specifically to officers within the Army. The Officer Corps' of the Air Force and the Navy are much more technical and managerial in nature, so they would require a different approach. However, I would advocate the essential nature for a military education to be present in the training of Officers in those branches. As one Colonel so eloquently put it "The Air Force, for all its technical knowledge, is ind anger of becoming a mob of glorified truckers in that its pilots understand the airframes that they fly but have a serious deficiency in the doctrinal theories under which they fly them in. They understand Aircraft and not Air Power." (this was my version of a quote from a journal).
As well, I would advocate a split in pilots. Those who wish to fly can take a track that allows them to do so for the majority of their career; by taking this path they acknowledge that they will never hold high rank (Perhaps these pilots will be NCO's instead, like WWII or something akin to the US Warrant Officer system) while a separate track is for those who will fly but who will also be experts at the Air War. They will be commissioned officers who will command and staff the formations of the Air Force.
Bruce, I don't equate a degree with having more knowledge, believe me, I didn't learn anything in university that I couldn't have learned in the mess. You my friend are the exception, but I have, in my time, met quite a few people with grade 10 educations that don't have a shmick of how the world works and as such are quite limited in their opinions and usually leads to comments like "f***ing officers"
I agree with you here. Although I would venture that education and intelligence are two separate things, I believe that generally a higher education can open up new horizons and add many "analytical tools" to the thinking mind. I would like to see Highschool graduation as the minimum for entry into the Forces; like any other institution the standards and competitive nature are rising, and I don't think the Army should be forced to maintain the image of "Green Welfare" or a "Dumping Ground" for failures in the civilian world (not advocating that those without HS fit into this category, just that it seems to be a general perception; why not raise the bar?).
Anyways, good discussion guys.
Cheers,
Infanteer
as I have argued against this line of thought vigorously in other threads. However, I will say that history as shown a military education to be one of the essential foundations of the move from amateur adventurism to institutionalized excellence; it was begun by the Prussians in 1806 and copied by all other industrialized militaries to some extent.
