Canadian Army Strength

[MAJOR_Baker]

Today I looked at a listing of Army units in Canada, lots of Brigade Groups? What is exactly a Canadian Brigade group? I was under the impression that Canada has but a few BNs of Regular Force soldiers? Are Brigade groups nothing more than a BN plus some reserve units? One last thing, I notice a lot of reserve units with a Regimental designation, is that mere history and nostalgia or do they actually have full up regiments?

 

[stukirkpatrick]

Well, for the reserve/militia ‘regiments‘, they are basically the incarnations of units that were at full strength during the World Wars and prior.

My unit, for example, has roughly a full strength of about 1/2 a company, so the regimental designation is more for tradition than for practical reasons.

Hope this helps sir.

 

[Grunt_031]

Currently the Regular Canadian Army is broken into Three Brigade Groups each roughly consisting of:

2 Mechanized Infantry Battalions
1 Light Infantry Battalion
1 Armoured Regiment
1 Combat Engineer Regiment
1 Artillery Regiment
1 Service Battalion
1 Tactical Helo Sqn
1 Field Ambulance Unit
1 Brigade HQ and Signals Unit
1 MP Platoon

In terms of size for Engineers/Armoured/Artillery, a Regiment is about the size of a Battalion.

The Reserve Brigades are group differently.

 

[rolandstrong]

To expand upon the previous post (reserve regiments), in times of "war" they will be brought to full "regimental" strength (as happened in WWII). To keep up the unique traditions of each unit, we maintain regimental identities and culture. In peacetime we are not at true regimental strength in the reserves. A good person in this discussion room to speak to about this is Michael Dorosh. It is quite different than the National Guard structure, however.(which our reserves are most simliar to in the US forces).

 

[30 for 30]

Essentially our three regular brigades are full, conventional brigade size (with perhaps a few manpower shortages here and there), and our nine or ten reserve brigades are close to battlegroup size, essentially "mini" brigades. This is due to the fact that each reserve unit only stands at about company strength. So each reserve brigade could probably mount one infantry battalion, a few armoured recce squadrons and a few squadrons/companies/batteries from the other units. With about 19000 reg army troops and 15000 res army troops, the Canadian Army could theoretically be organized into two divisions, though mobilization would be out of the question. We tend to send battlegroups abroad (two overseas right now), which seem to suit our mandate at the moment.

 

[Infanteer]

Remember, our "Regiments" are Commonwealth in nature, being a tribal group, as opposed to the US, where a regiment is an actual field unit consisting of three battalions.