M777 challenges

[Colin Parkinson]

Might be a hard sell. The US has a large number of Paladins/M109 in storage. I suspect that the US would look kindly upon a request to buy/lease 20 or so. That could give us 2x6 gun batteries and 4 training guns.

 

[FJAG]

Might be a hard sell. The US has a large number of Paladins/M109 in storage. I suspect that the US would look kindly upon a request to buy/lease 20 or so. That could give us 2x6 gun batteries and 4 training guns.

I weep a little every time I read something like this. We (and by that I include our senior leadership) think in such small increments. 20 guns aren't even worth talking about. We'll lose our entire force within days if we ever decided to deploy it.

I've said this before many times. If we have budget issues (which we always have even though 19 billion isn't exactly chicken feed) then we need to restructure our forces seriously to take maximum advantage of cheaper reserve forces. Yes we need to make the reserves credible; yes, we need to reorganize them massively; yes we need to equip them fully if we expect them to be deployabe; yes we need full-time resources to maintain the equipment; yes we need to implement proper legislation and a culture that makes them immediately deployable; yes to all that.

Artillery is exactly one of those trades that would be suitable to be formed primarily from reserve units because it only deploys when real combat is present or imminent. For what we currently spend on the regular force artillery, we could equip and maintain a significantly larger number of properly equipped and manned reserve units.

Our problem is that our senior (and IMHO significantly negligent) leadership is that they refuse to think outside the box. They want to fine tune crap that's significantly broken rather than do the heavy lifting to fix what needs fixing badly.

:brickwall:

:cheers:

 

[Colin Parkinson]

I hear you, but trying to be realistic. We could go to South Korea and buy 300 105mm M1A2 to replace our broken C3's, great training gun, but short ranged. Being Emperor for the day, I would have 3 Reg force batteries of SPG's in Canada and 2 in Europe, one manned and one in reserve. I would also have enough SPG to equip the school and full battery for reservists, which would be a ongoing summer time commitment to be filled by artillery reservists from across the country. I would also have enough to have 3+ training vehicles that are designed to simulate firing that can be sent across the country and to have some in refit at any one time.  So we would be looking at 45ish SPG and their support vehicles. A M548 version based on the same chassis as the Paladin would also make sense. Also need a M577 type variant, looking at 10ish just for the arty. I suspect the Armoured corp would want the M548/M577 variants as well. 

 

[FJAG]

I hear you, but trying to be realistic. We could go to South Korea and buy 300 105mm M1A2 to replace our broken C3's, great training gun, but short ranged. Being Emperor for the day, I would have 3 Reg force batteries of SPG's in Canada and 2 in Europe, one manned and one in reserve. I would also have enough SPG to equip the school and full battery for reservists, which would be a ongoing summer time commitment to be filled by artillery reservists from across the country. I would also have enough to have 3+ training vehicles that are designed to simulate firing that can be sent across the country and to have some in refit at any one time.  So we would be looking at 45ish SPG and their support vehicles. A M548 version based on the same chassis as the Paladin would also make sense. Also need a M577 type variant, looking at 10ish just for the arty. I suspect the Armoured corp would want the M548/M577 variants as well.

For me the process has nothing to do with being an emperor for a day.

IMHO it is the duty of the senior leadership to look at whatever the government's defence objectives are (no matter how vaguely stated) or should be (if they gave the matter some thought) and then develop force models (based on current funding) which moves from a small expensive full-time force to a large less expensive force with a large reserve component and then let the government choose (something like buying an insurance policy with various riders.

I think what is critical in this whole equation is that the military leadership has to provide reasonable advice to the government as to how useful or survivable each force structure is in the various defence scenarios. If we were being honest now, for example, then their advice should be that our regular force as configured and equipped is incapable of high intensity conflict in Europe.  http://www.newsweek.com/putin-says-russias-defense-companies-must-adapt-war-economy-720802 We need to change our attitude and we need to change it soon.

What influences my mind heavily in this process is that the US, which is serious about these things, has evaluated that it needs light forces to battle the current mess of asynchronous warfare that it has going but has nonetheless made a considerable investment in keeping a large proportion of their heavy mechanized forces within the National Guard so that they are available in the much lesser event that war in Europe does occur.

Just spitballing here, but if we want to work on the assumption that we want to have one infantry heavy battlegroup deployed out of country indefinitely (a la Afghanistan) then we really only need one regular force brigade to sustain that (assuming one year-not six month deployments and reserve augmentation). The other two brigades are available for downsizing the regular force component (together with downsizing our bloated headquarters) and restructuring them together with the reserves into two divisions (one of which would also own the regular force brigade).

How realistic is that? If we consider that our regular force already has three brigades and a rinky dink divisional headquarters and our army reserves already have the bulk of another division worth of people. Then we are really just talking about using the money saved by cutting a brigade plus of regular force salaries into hiring more reservists, buy and maintain the equipment they should have and giving them adequate training.

To get back to the topic at hand. At present we are pretending to meet our countries defence needs, vis-a-vis artillery, with a handful of towed M777s, a bunch of 105mm guns none of us want to go to war with and a handful of 81mm mortars which the infantry were too stupid/cheap to keep within their own battalions where they belong. The $19 billion we currently spend on defence is a cruel joke that DND annually plays on the government.

:cheers:

 

[RADOPSIGOPACCISOP]

For me the process has nothing to do with being an emperor for a day.

IMHO it is the duty of the senior leadership to look at whatever the government's defence objectives are (no matter how vaguely stated) or should be (if they gave the matter some thought) and then develop force models (based on current funding) which moves from a small expensive full-time force to a large less expensive force with a large reserve component and then let the government choose (something like buying an insurance policy with various riders.

I think what is critical in this whole equation is that the military leadership has to provide reasonable advice to the government as to how useful or survivable each force structure is in the various defence scenarios. If we were being honest now, for example, then their advice should be that our regular force as configured and equipped is incapable of high intensity conflict in Europe.  http://www.newsweek.com/putin-says-russias-defense-companies-must-adapt-war-economy-720802 We need to change our attitude and we need to change it soon.

What influences my mind heavily in this process is that the US, which is serious about these things, has evaluated that it needs light forces to battle the current mess of asynchronous warfare that it has going but has nonetheless made a considerable investment in keeping a large proportion of their heavy mechanized forces within the National Guard so that they are available in the much lesser event that war in Europe does occur.

Just spitballing here, but if we want to work on the assumption that we want to have one infantry heavy battlegroup deployed out of country indefinitely (a la Afghanistan) then we really only need one regular force brigade to sustain that (assuming one year-not six month deployments and reserve augmentation). The other two brigades are available for downsizing the regular force component (together with downsizing our bloated headquarters) and restructuring them together with the reserves into two divisions (one of which would also own the regular force brigade).

How realistic is that? If we consider that our regular force already has three brigades and a rinky dink divisional headquarters and our army reserves already have the bulk of another division worth of people. Then we are really just talking about using the money saved by cutting a brigade plus of regular force salaries into hiring more reservists, buy and maintain the equipment they should have and giving them adequate training.

To get back to the topic at hand. At present we are pretending to meet our countries defence needs, vis-a-vis artillery, with a handful of towed M777s, a bunch of 105mm guns none of us want to go to war with and a handful of 81mm mortars which the infantry were too stupid/cheap to keep within their own battalions where they belong. The $19 billion we currently spend on defence is a cruel joke that DND annually plays on the government.

:cheers:

The reserves have a real retention problem that makes this a difficult plan. You get a guy join right out of high school, does the part time thing for 4-5 years while he goes to college, but by the time he is fully trade qualified he is probably a year or two max from releasing. That problem needs to be fixed, and it's a problem right now as well that people aren't willing to take on the reserves as a part time job if it's only going to be 1 night a week and 1 weekend a month. That's not really worth it for most people that aren't university students (not to mention not everyone can take 2 months off a year for training courses). You'd have to really bump up the training time, which effectively eats into the "reserves are so much cheaper" argument.

 

[Jarnhamar]

[quote author=FJAG]  and a handful of 81mm mortars which the infantry were too stupid/cheap to keep within their own battalions where they belong.
[/quote]

What level of the infantry were ultimately responsible for removing the 81mm mortar? [and TOW, and pioneers, and. 50cal hmg].

 

[FJAG]

The reserves have a real retention problem that makes this a difficult plan. You get a guy join right out of high school, does the part time thing for 4-5 years while he goes to college, but by the time he is fully trade qualified he is probably a year or two max from releasing. That problem needs to be fixed, and it's a problem right now as well that people aren't willing to take on the reserves as a part time job if it's only going to be 1 night a week and 1 weekend a month. That's not really worth it for most people that aren't university students (not to mention not everyone can take 2 months off a year for training courses). You'd have to really bump up the training time, which effectively eats into the "reserves are so much cheaper" argument.

Those are all problems looking for solutions which can be found if people are willing to look for them. Terms of service clearly could and ought to be changed. There is nothing within the NDA that provides for automatic releases (or even six month ones for the regulars) Those are all internal regulations and policies.

BUT - we've gone severely  ff topic: here so I think I'll stop now.

:cheers:

 

[GR66]

The reserves have a real retention problem that makes this a difficult plan. You get a guy join right out of high school, does the part time thing for 4-5 years while he goes to college, but by the time he is fully trade qualified he is probably a year or two max from releasing. That problem needs to be fixed, and it's a problem right now as well that people aren't willing to take on the reserves as a part time job if it's only going to be 1 night a week and 1 weekend a month. That's not really worth it for most people that aren't university students (not to mention not everyone can take 2 months off a year for training courses). You'd have to really bump up the training time, which effectively eats into the "reserves are so much cheaper" argument.

I think that FJAG made it quite clear in his previous post that there are a bunch of other things that need to be addressed in order to make the Reserves an effective force.  The problem is a significant one and as he says "tweaking" around the edges is not a solution. 

I weep a little every time I read something like this. We (and by that I include our senior leadership) think in such small increments. 20 guns aren't even worth talking about. We'll lose our entire force within days if we ever decided to deploy it.

I've said this before many times. If we have budget issues (which we always have even though 19 billion isn't exactly chicken feed) then we need to restructure our forces seriously to take maximum advantage of cheaper reserve forces. Yes we need to make the reserves credible; yes, we need to reorganize them massively; yes we need to equip them fully if we expect them to be deployabe; yes we need full-time resources to maintain the equipment; yes we need to implement proper legislation and a culture that makes them immediately deployable; yes to all that.

Artillery is exactly one of those trades that would be suitable to be formed primarily from reserve units because it only deploys when real combat is present or imminent. For what we currently spend on the regular force artillery, we could equip and maintain a significantly larger number of properly equipped and manned reserve units.

Our problem is that our senior (and IMHO significantly negligent) leadership is that they refuse to think outside the box. They want to fine tune crap that's significantly broken rather than do the heavy lifting to fix what needs fixing badly.

:brickwall:

:cheers:

 

[MilEME09]

The reserves have a real retention problem that makes this a difficult plan. You get a guy join right out of high school, does the part time thing for 4-5 years while he goes to college, but by the time he is fully trade qualified he is probably a year or two max from releasing. That problem needs to be fixed, and it's a problem right now as well that people aren't willing to take on the reserves as a part time job if it's only going to be 1 night a week and 1 weekend a month. That's not really worth it for most people that aren't university students (not to mention not everyone can take 2 months off a year for training courses). You'd have to really bump up the training time, which effectively eats into the "reserves are so much cheaper" argument.

Reserve recruitment has become a numbers game under the new system, retention issues can't be solved by the purchase of a piece of kit, it is up to leadership to develop training plans that keep troops engaged, learning, and appreciated for their work, That makes soldiers stay.

 

[FJAG]

Reserve recruitment has become a numbers game under the new system, retention issues can't be solved by the purchase of a piece of kit, it is up to leadership to develop training plans that keep troops engaged, learning, and appreciated for their work, That makes soldiers stay.

Very true but do not underestimate the hit on morale that a reservist gets by being handed cast-off unusable equipment or no equipment at all. You quickly understand your second class citizen status.

What reservists need is 1. a meaningful role that indicates the value that they will bring to the CF/country in a warfighting scenario; 2. all the equipment necessary to effectively carry out their role if mobilized; 3. the organization and training to make them competent and capable to carry out their role; 4. the legislative enablers to ensure that they are cared for if mobilized (from employment protection to care for the wounded and everything in between)

I'm sure that there are others but if you take away or minimize any of the above four, you are undermining the core structure of the system from the get-go.

:cheers:

 

[BDTyre]

Very true but do not underestimate the hit on morale that a reservist gets by being handed cast-off unusable equipment or no equipment at all. You quickly understand your second class citizen status.

I've seen this first hand. We had one recruit do his sizing in September and it wasn't until his third weekend of course (first week of November) that he received his initial issue and even then the wrong sizes had been put in. It took two whole months to get him the right stuff, and even then he had no boots. Imagine being the only one on your course with no uniform...

Add on to that having to use weapons that are broken because we can't provide an immediate replacement as we don't have enough for the course without dipping into the rifle company's stores.