What If.?- Place a One Year Freeze on Deployments?

[Marauder]

I have heard numerous times the suggestion of placing a freeze for a year or two on all overseas operations for the CF, with the idea being to take away one of the factors in the equation that is placing a huge burden on the forces in terms of near constant deployment. I was curious as to the thougths and opinions of the Reg F guys on the subject. I can see an advantage in giving guys a needed break to be home with family more often and focus on giving a chance for experienced troops to transmit their knowledge to new troops and get our instructional establishment back up to full manpower (cut down on PAT platoons hopefully), maybe even give an incentive to troops nearing the end of their contracts to rethink about getting out. Plus I'm sure the money that could be saved or redirected from the ops budget would be significant (that's speculation on my part).
I could also see the negative of letting the saber get a bit rusty, so to speak, and also knowing that some guys live for getting out of Canada to wherever the next tour may take them. Also cutting out opportunities for the Reserves to gain institutional experience by sending both junior and senior guys on tour.
Again, I'm curious to see what the Regs think, if this freezing ops idea would have more negative or positive, and would it actually accomplish the goals people seem to think it would accomplish?

 

[lsnavy]

Navy was suppose to stop but it‘s not good for international relation so we are back on

 

[Ex-Dragoon]

The navy slowed its tempo there was never any intention to completely stop any deployments.

 

[Staff]

I‘m all for giving the regiments a break, but, can the militia units function effectively without a Regular force component as cadre or inrastructure. I know that some battle groups have deployed or will deploy with elements made up entirely of reservists. the general impression I got, was that if left to their own devices, something always got ****ed up or forgotten. I‘m not saying that we (the Regs) are infallable, but it seems to happen alot more often with the rentals.

I know most guys are ready to deploy at a moments notice, but, the problem is, most wives (or spouses, whatever) are not. If the powers that be would reinstitute the waiver that used to be available, permitting individuals to redeploy inside the current eighteen month margin, for single members or something, we could probably field an entire battle group made up of militia with experienced Reg Force guys in key command and support positions.

On the other hand, if we could give an entire brigade a year or two off, they would be able to train as a brigade and maybe deploy as a brigade rather that the current battle groups that are basically just reinforced battallions. That used to be a pretty good training experience for reservists. They were able to see, for an extended period, (back in the days when we were on ex for longer than two weeks at a time), what the other units and trades do. There was a young infantry private in Wainwright (RV 92) that had no idea the army had it‘s own telphone repair guys and thought that assault pioneers were as far as combat engineering went. He spent a week with an HQ & sigs unit almost in awe because everyone got a chance to call home on a regular basis. He also thought it was pretty cool when we ordered pizza to a grid (not many cell phones back then, a guy ordering pizza from the top of a telephone pole was as high tech as it got).

Anyway my original point was, that having enough people home long enough to field an entire brigade might be as effective a training measure at the unit level as deploying a couple of militia types from each regiment in the region on operations.

Sure, the individuals come back with valuable experience, but they will have been gone long enough that when they return from their Class C callout the will usually have been gone almost a year. In some militia units there is a huge turnover of recruits from year to year. Cpl X comes back and knows a few faces, but who are the rest of these wogs ? Kind of hard to build any kind of unit cohesion.

I‘m still rambling but I hope you see my point.