I hate to indicate how old I really am, but: about 40 years ago, when Canadian infantry battalions in 1st (BR) Corps were just short of 1,000 men in strength, had 100+ APCs , 75+ wheeled vehicle, 150+ radios,* etc, etc, etc … we simply got used to sharing spectrum and we made it work, day-in and day-out.
You're not the only old fart on here Mr. Cambell.
The practice when I did my Phase 4 so many moons ago was 2 radios in the Tp Ldr's car - one for the Tp net, one for the Sqn net. (and I guess they still teach it that way) Not once have I *ever* seen that outside of the course environment.
Standard practice (in my experience) has been forever 1 frequency for all armour, and I've been in situations where we had one frequency for two squadrons of Sabre and three troops of Recce, and yes, we made it all work through impeccable voice procedure and extensive use of other-means comms (particularly hand signals).
But we don't live in that world anymore.
1) The overall status of voice procedure in the Corps is *terrible*; just horrid. I blame this on two factors:
a) Equipment availablity: Once upon a time, every single callsign had a 524 set mounted in the vehicle and a 77 set strapped to the trunk monkey. Nowadays, if you have 1 X 522 manpack for every patrol, you're doing well, and on VG I was beside myself with joy to have a single A set in my callsign, plus 522 manpacks in 6 of the remaining 7 callisgns.
b) The lack of speakers. When we all had 524 sets, which have built-in speakers, everybody in the crew was constantly exposed to the radio chatter. Voice procedure has a rythym and flow to it, and with the speaker on, everybody got to hear it even if they weren't actively using the radio themselves. It made it so one learned by osmosis. Nowadays, the radio is limited to the phones on the crew commander's head, so the driver and observer just don't get the exposure any more, and VP quality is suffering accordingly.
Not only is this bad for voice procedure, it's bad for SA as well.
Yes, there exist speaker boxes for TCCCS. See point 1a.
2) The size of the Primary Training Audience has shrunk. Once of a time, the summer concentrations would exercise Regiments, with the Regimental CO (or the Combat Team CO) getting orders, doing battle procedure, issuing orders to Squadron Commanders, and down through the chain to Tp Leaders and Patrol Commanders. Everybody on that shared frequency was on the same mission at the same time, working towards the same end state.
This year, the size of the PTA was the Troop/Platoon (although it is my observation that the Infantry fudged that somewhat and they were operating more at the Company level) At any given point in time, you had three Infantry companies and two Recce Tps, operating out of the same task force and same FOB, working on 5 completely separate and independant tasks - and here's the important part - under separate umpire/Observer/Comtroller control.
When we did the Regimental sized tasks, any enemy seen by one was enemy seen by all. But when we are doing the smaller-scale stuff, it was entirely possible (and in fact commonplace) that enemy activity that was part of a given unit's training scenario "wasn't actually happening" for another unit's scenario.
And for small unit training, that's entirely appropriate. Each subunit is trying to learn a set of skills appropriate for that subunit, and you don't want training for other, unrelated subunits bleeding over and contaminating the training for each other. When we run an Armoured Phase 4 and an Infantry PLQ in the same training area, we don't want the PLQ suddenly executing section attacks on contacts called in by the Phase 4. The courses effectively inhabit separate realities.
Now multiply that by three task forces....
That's what happened to us on VG. The "reality" of a pair of unrelated units carrying out unrelated missions under separate Observer/Controller control bled into each other, and the result was lost training value for both sides.
We *probably* could have worked it out on the fly, except that the other unit's "reality" included the frequency being compromised, and as a direct result, their Observer/Controller tried to kick us off our own means - which resulted in even MORE lost training value as we tried to sort THAT out.
OK, so a reasonable approach is to treat their "reality" as if it was "real" for us too - play it like OPFOR had compromised OUR means too and act accordingly. Well that's fine and dandy, but we weren't issued an alternate frequency, and my only alternate means (the Tp FRS radios) had been banned - meaning we were stuck.
The point I'm making here is that if the next few iterations of the XX Guardian exercises are going to continue to be Tp/Platoon level focussed, then we need separate frequencies exclusive to each subunit to ensure maximum training value.
I know that I've identified crappy voice procedure as a major problem, and I intend to adjust unit training accordingly in order to rectify it.
Incidently, the comms situation wasn't all bad. We did two combined arms tasks with two separate Infantry companies, using their company frequency, and that I think added a lot of training value. It got us used to working as subordinate callsigns on someone else's net (so Tango 42 instead of 42, etc) it taught me a lot about liasing Command and Sigs with another arm (making sure my report lines make it onto their trace) and it provided an opportunity for Armour to add value to Infantry training when we wound up acting as their radio relays. But note that this is a step towards the "Regimental" exercise level, away from the "Troop/Platoon" exercise level.
And man, as bad as Tango voice procedure is, the India callsigns are WAY worse....
I also had no problems dealing with Zero - in fact, I don't think Zero ever wanted to talk to me. Three Niner, however, had issues with Zero harassing him about his H-Hour being pushed back while he was chest-deep in a swamp....
And finally, I have no issues with TCCCS as a technology. I think there are flaws in implementation, especially with the user interface, but that's not a killer tomatoe by ANY means - when we have it, it works. My problem with TCCCS is that we DON'T HAVE ENOUGH OF THEM. I was short 7 X A sets and 2 X 522 manpacks, and I'm beside myself with joy that I had the stuff that I DID have - I was quite possibly the best-equipped Recce Tp on the whole exercise with my 1 X A set and 6 X 522.
DG
