Return of the Red Patch

[Gorgo]

Just to give everyone a head's up:

http://www.army.forces.gc.ca/land-terre/news-nouvelles/story-reportage-eng.asp?id=4447

A great day for the Army indeed.

 

[medicineman]

Isn't that the third or fourth time it's been resurrected?

MM

 

[Kat Stevens]

Good thing all the old red fire blankets were put into war stock, you're going to need to cut up a lot of them.

 

[HItorMiss]

Gen Fraser huh

Wonder if he can get a whole division killed instead of just a company.... I love how you can fail upward!  :rage:


EDIT: Sorry I shouldn't say company he only managed to get 2 Pl's of the Coy Pinned down for 6 hours no big deal... 4 dead 10 wounded, 1 seriously... I mean I would hate to exaggerate his accomplishments

 

[daftandbarmy]

Gen Fraser huh

Wonder if he can get a whole division killed instead of just a campany.... I love how you can fail upward!  :rage:


EDIT: Sorry I shouldn't say company he only managed to get 2 Pl's of the Coy Pinned down for 6 hours no big deal... 4 dead 10 wounded, 1 seriously... I mean I would hate to exaggerate his accomplishments

A long Canadian tradition, unfortunately. Just wait and see what they do with Menard. Could a senate position be far off?

 

[rifleman]

Nothing like cutting overhead by starting another HQ

 

[karl28]

              I am not trying to be rude but why on god green earth is the 1st Canadian division being re activated or what ever its called . 

 

[blacktriangle]

RUMINT in another thread was that the dot coms are standing down soon...maybe that is how they rationalize the decision.

 

[George Wallace]

              I am not trying to be rude but why on god green earth is the 1st Canadian division being re activated or what ever its called .

I guess you know little of ORBATs and such.  We have three Bdes.  Their next highest level of command is at least three levels up.  We need people experienced at the next level of command, and not skipping three levels.  Plus we need to have the infrastructure and organizations to do so. 

I think many don't see this.  With a structure in place already, and returning in 2011, it is an opportunity to put it to use.  All it takes is a "name change" and you have 1 Cdn Div HQ again.  Their old "Digs" in Kingston is rumoured to be opening up soon, as the current occupant moves to a larger facility. 

Where would we be today, without rumours to fuel our curiosities?

 

[Gorgo]

So the Canadian Forces Joint Headquarters and the Canadian Forces Joint Signal Regiment will just be re-designated as 1 CDN DIV HQ & 1 CDN DIV SIG REGT, right?

In other words, just re-designating them to what they once were back before the Division Headquarters was last stood down.

 

[George Wallace]

The Joint HQ has a purpose and is a shadow of what 1 Div HQ once was.  The TF HQ and organizations coming back from Afghanistan, on the other hand, are more geared towards commanding a few Bdes than the org in Kingston.  As for 1 CDHSR; well.........how many times have they changed their name in the last decade and still performed the same job(s).......and been a place that most Jimmies try to avoid like the plague after being "exposed" to it?..... >





But this is all speculation, rumour and fantasy.  What really happens is your guess and mine.  We will probably be "both wrong".

 

[Edward Campbell]

There was a time, circa 1960, when we had four brigade groups (12 battalions of infantry, several of them mechanized, four armoured regiments with 300± modern tanks between them, etc, etc) all wearing the “old red patch” of the 1st Canadian Division. But there was no Div HQ, there was a designated division commander but, as far as I know, he had no real staff. There were no division troops, not even a Div Sig Regt – that unit, which had existed in the 1950s in Camp Borden, was disbanded in the late ‘50s; there was a field force Signal unit (I Sig Unit) in Kingston but it was, really, a test and evaluations unit. With special emphasis on EW, and was the embryo on 2 (EW) Sqn and, now, the umpteenth EW Regt.

The operational requirement for a division was based on our commitment to NATO/Europe but, by the mid to late ‘50s the NATO strategy had changed and no one thought there would be enough time to ship two more brigades plus division troops to Europe – the formal commitment remained in place but there was neither the will nor the way to accomplish it. the "old red patch" remained on our shoulders because there was no pressing need to not have it there and it was a slight moral booster - separating the field force from the rest.

I’m not sure what the operational requirement for a formation above brigade level might be now, in 2010. Presumably we are not doing this just because we have underemployed generals, and ’gardening leave’ is no longer available as a tool to keep them out of the way, or because we just want change for the sake of change and/or to camouflage the fact that we have neither the will nor the way to do much of anything except put up camouflage.

 

[George Wallace]

ERC

We have a HQ org with all its staffs and addons currently deployed.  The work they do and the experience they have gained will be lost in 2011 as everything gets disbanded and redistributed or discarded on their return to Canada.  Whole orgs will once again disappear and lessons lost, only to have to be recreated "Next Time" we want to deploy any fighting force.  We waste so much time relearning what we knew in the past; a past that is sometimes less than a decade ago.  Is this to be our legacy once again?

 

[Edward Campbell]

ERC

We have a HQ org with all its staffs and addons currently deployed.  The work they do and the experience they have gained will be lost in 2011 as everything gets disbanded and redistributed or discarded on their return to Canada.  Whole orgs will once again disappear and lessons lost, only to have to be recreated "Next Time" we want to deploy any fighting force.  We waste so much time relearning what we knew in the past; a past that is sometimes less than a decade ago.  Is this to be our legacy once again?

Is that the operational requirement for a Div HQ and a MGen, and, and, and ... ad infinitum?

 

[George Wallace]

It would give a "home" to organizations that would otherwise likely be desolved and lessons and experience lost.  There have been large expansions in several Trades to keep up with the demands of overseas deployments.  Without a place for these people to be employed on return to Canada in 2011, we may see a return of FRP and the chain reaction that such a measure creates down the road as knowledge and experience are not perpetuated.  A sudden surplus of pers, and no place to employ them at the current moment, without the maint of some of these orgs, can create serious problems for Career Managers now, in the near future and more im portantly in the distant future (10 to 20 years down the road). 

FRP is a bad word.  It looks like the lack of an org to employ the returning posns will bring about another situation where FRP would be an option.