Having been involved in Individual Training in both the Regs and Reserves, the long pole in the tent is qualified instructors. Money can almost always be found. In my three years at Meaford I did not see one vacancy cut due to money. I saw lots cut due to a lack of instructors.
Well then, there's a place where the Reserves can help. Qualify a Reservist on the kit, and now (assuming sufficient rank level) now you have another instructor - in particular, an instructor who is tied to a certain geographical area and is unlikely to be posted away on you. Do this enough times, and now you have a more or less permenant instructor pool.
If the Reserves can augment deployments, then they can augment instructing too.
Lets be honest - "Train To Need" has created an adversarial system where units continually try to offload training costs onto other orgs.
I'm not interested in offloading training costs onto anybody else; I'm interested in seeing my soldiers get trained on the equipment they will have to use when sent on deployment. I don't expect anybody to foot the bill for me, but if you have space on a course that a Reservist otherwise wouldn't get, then I want a crack at that slot.
If all your courses are running at max capacity... well,then we're SOL. But I would hope that any Reg Force course officer who looked down at his course and realized that he had spots open that could not be filled out of the Regs would call someone to see if there were any Reservists available to attend. Hell, you can have *my* number if you want.
The whole "unit budget" thing has always been a mystery to me.... I would think that the training of every soldier in the Army would be pre-funded once he was brought on strength.... but I'll be doing AOC in a couple of weeks, so maybe all those deep financial mysteries will be explained then.
The common thread here is that Reserve soldiers want the gucci courses so they can do "cool" stuff if needed while deployed. (and really good stories for the armoury mess)
That's grossly unfair and, more to the point, completely wrong.
What the Reserves want is an opportunity to do our jobs; to deploy out into the real world and contribute to mission success by playing the role our trade demands. If, as a side effect, we get cool sea stories for the Mess - hey, bonus. But the PRIMARY motivation is to become the best possible soldiers we can and then be given an opportunity to use those skills in theatre.
We may be second stringers, but we still want into the game - and we have proven time and time and time again that when given the minimum subset of tools we need to train to our job, we usually get results well in excess of what could be otherwise expected from the level of support we were given. The Canadian Reservist is a self-starter, a motivated go-getter used to doing "way more with less" and a mission asset when added to the team.
But the bigger the skill delta between Reg and Reserve - and I'm not talking so much "quality" as I am "quantity" - the tougher it is to get Reservists to effectively augment. The problem here isn't that Reservists are shitty Coyote gunners, the problem is they never get Coyote gunnery training at all.
And yet, if money is the problem, it is cheaper to bring a Reservist up to speed than it is to train a fresh soldier. I've got soldiers working for me who have time gunning in Cougar. I have soldiers who have (thanks to SIMNET in Knox) have time gunning in Abrams. These guys already understand how "gunnery" works (and some of them were damn good) all they need is to be brought up to speed on the specific Coyote systems.
And there are analogues to all sorts of other systems and equipment. It takes less time to train a Reservist, because he already has a substantial skillset going, and there are crossovers and analogues everywhere. I have been in a Reserve unit that was parachuted into Bison after years of Iltis, and they adapted in the space of *days*.
The Land Forces have been living in bare survival mode for a long time. Recent interest in growing our forces is nice BUT.... we'll be stretched thin (feel the pain) for a while yet though.
Boy howdy.
I've got an 8-car recce troop, and I've been getting attendance levels such that I could actually FIELD that 8-car troop pretty much at will (assuming that there were enough running vehicles and available radios....) My counterpart in 1 Tp isn't that far behind... so let's average it out and say that we have two fully-staffed 7-car recce troops. We are also running a DP1 course and a DP2 course. Myself, my Alpha, my Golf, and my Foxtrot are all DP1 course staff, along with a patrol commander from 1 Tp. My Echo is the unit recruiting NCO, is also instructing on the DP2, as is Foxtrot. I've got two people loaded on the next roto, and I'm doing AOC starting in 2 weeks. And all of us have either full time civvie jobs, or are full-time students. Stretch us any thinner and we'd be transparent.
But it's *great*! The announcement that we might be called upon to send a full troop to Rotos has revitalized morale, has contributed to an intense training focus, and is drawing old hands out of the woodwork (including myself) We WANT the work. We WANT to help. But the obstacles that keep cropping up are getting pretty damned frustrating.
DG
We wear the same capbadge, you know damn well as I do there's always discontent when guys see newbies slated for tours with little or virtually nil Regimental time. You can't have the cake and eat the whole thing! RCD, LdSH(RC) and 12eRBC guys do this 365 days a year, many just waiting for the next chance at deployment. It's a style of life we wanted so we went Reg Army. But I believe my suggestion has merit to it........ to go as an Adm Tp. member with ample opportunities to jump into a Coyote position should be jumped at by ANY black hat Reservist. If their willing to go over as CIMIC, GD, PSYOPS or any of the other positions they usually get, they would probably jump at this if it was offered.
