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From Lew Mackenzie:
http://www.cfc.forces.gc.ca/spotlight/2004/09/02/mackenzie040902.html
We are driving good soldiers out of the Army
Since my early retirement from the Canadian Armed Forces in 1993, the strength of our military has steadily declined from some 83,000 to less than 55,000 deployable personnel. The Army, which was my home for 36 years, is now 3,000 soldiers short of being able to fill the seats in Maple Leaf Gardens. The Toronto Police Services have 2,000 more police officers than the Canadian Infantry has soldiers from private to general. As a result, we have little to offer our allies when they set about taming rogue states, war criminals, ethnic cleansers, and various goons such as those immolating villages in Western Sudan.
In an effort to deal with the shrinking force pool, the previous commander of the Army, Lieutenant-General Mike Jeffery, introduced a new method of preparing contingents for overseas deployments. Rather than building a contingent around an established 600- to 700-strong unit -- like the 3rd Battalion of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry (3PPCLI), which served with the United States in Afghanistan in 2002 or the 1st Battalion of the Royal 22nd Regiment (1R22eR, a.k.a. the "Van Doos"), which secured the Sarajevo airport in 1992 -- contingents would be created from company-sized building blocks, each one being approximately 100-soldiers strong. These companies could be plucked from units spread across the country. This method has become known as "plug and play" and came into effect in 2002.
On the day before the official announcement of the policy change, General Jeffery was good enough to include me in a conference call with his subordinate commanders. I asked the question, "If you had the budget and the soldiers you should have to do the missions you are being assigned, would you be introducing this new method of creating contingents for operational missions?" His immediate answer was a simple "no."
That did not surprise me. Despite the fact politicians praised "plug and play" as a visionary and brilliant concept, it compromised two sacrosanct Army principles. General Jeffery realized this fact, but had been forced to make such a distasteful decision due to a lack of resources."
The first principle to be sacrificed is that of unit cohesion. Most soldiers don't risk their lives for God, Queen or country. They do so for their buddies, particularly the ones a few metres on each side of them. Don't take my word for it; ask someone who landed on the beaches of Sicily or Normandy. And the best way to foster that intense loyalty and commitment is within a unit based on the time-honoured regimental system.
In civilian language, your regiment is your family. It looks after you, it nurtures you, it shares with you its history and obliges you to meet the standards of those who went before. In return, you might just owe it your life. The regimental names are usually reduced to acronyms and confuse TV anchors and journalists, who rarely get them right -- PPCLI, RCR, R22eR, QOR, LdSH(RC), RCD, 8CH, RCHA, CER, etc. To you, they are alphabet soup. To a soldier, they are structure, order, support, security -- just like a real family under ideal conditions. By contrast, smaller groups of 80 to 100 soldiers -- brought together from disparate sources to perform a temporary mission and then be disbanded -- could never hope to approach a high level of unit cohesion.
The second principle to be trumped by the move was flexibility. Over the years, the Canadian military brass has been conditioned by relatively stable peacekeeping missions in places such as Cyprus, from 1964 to 2002. In such cases, Canada deployed custom-organized units that fit a specific and consistent mission. On the other hand, combat-arms units -- infantry, armoured and artillery -- have been organized since the 19th century to adapt to changing missions in volatile environments. That flexibility is squandered when we cannibalize these units to produce smaller forces with narrow roles.
For example, a Canadian contingent that just returned from Kabul was deployed without its mobile logistics company, relying instead on a static base camp manned by civilian contractors. When NATO officials requested that Canada expand its mission to include mobile operations, we had to turn them down -- proffering the phoney excuse that our soldiers were not adequately trained.
Many soldiers at the sharp end have noted the folly of the compromises. The current commanding officer of the 1st Battalion of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, the same unit I had the pleasure of commanding in the late 1970s, has tendered his resignation after only one year in command.
Lieutenant-Colonel Shandy Vida is an outstanding officer. You would be proud and comfortable to have your son or daughter serve under his leadership. He is a soldier's soldier and bristled at the compromises forced upon him, as he patched together a large part of the infantry component recently deployed to Afghanistan. To him, "plug and play" is not the way to send our soldiers to do dangerous work.
I have to agree, and can't help but think that if the Army had not chosen to introduce such questionable policies, officers of the calibre of Colonel Vida would not be resigning. I, for one, admire his commitment to his martial profession.
Invaluable soldiers like Colonel Vida should not be driven to this. The questionable policies motivating his decision resulted from the disconnect between the military's taskings and resources -- a strictly political failing. Over the past few years, the previous Prime Minister and the current incumbent, as well as the previous Minister of National Defence and Foreign Affairs Minister, all repeatedly promised a new Defence White Paper to replace a woefully dated 1994 document. Now, we are told we don't need one.
What a shame. Our defence policies are in serious need of review. And until reforms are implemented, our military will be at risk of losing its best and brightest.
Note to the bold print: Of course civil service pers with NO concept of esprit de corps and true teamwork would think that something like "plug and play" wouuld be revolutionary. In military terms we used to call it attachments and detachmnets....
http://www.cfc.forces.gc.ca/spotlight/2004/09/02/mackenzie040902.html
We are driving good soldiers out of the Army
Since my early retirement from the Canadian Armed Forces in 1993, the strength of our military has steadily declined from some 83,000 to less than 55,000 deployable personnel. The Army, which was my home for 36 years, is now 3,000 soldiers short of being able to fill the seats in Maple Leaf Gardens. The Toronto Police Services have 2,000 more police officers than the Canadian Infantry has soldiers from private to general. As a result, we have little to offer our allies when they set about taming rogue states, war criminals, ethnic cleansers, and various goons such as those immolating villages in Western Sudan.
In an effort to deal with the shrinking force pool, the previous commander of the Army, Lieutenant-General Mike Jeffery, introduced a new method of preparing contingents for overseas deployments. Rather than building a contingent around an established 600- to 700-strong unit -- like the 3rd Battalion of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry (3PPCLI), which served with the United States in Afghanistan in 2002 or the 1st Battalion of the Royal 22nd Regiment (1R22eR, a.k.a. the "Van Doos"), which secured the Sarajevo airport in 1992 -- contingents would be created from company-sized building blocks, each one being approximately 100-soldiers strong. These companies could be plucked from units spread across the country. This method has become known as "plug and play" and came into effect in 2002.
On the day before the official announcement of the policy change, General Jeffery was good enough to include me in a conference call with his subordinate commanders. I asked the question, "If you had the budget and the soldiers you should have to do the missions you are being assigned, would you be introducing this new method of creating contingents for operational missions?" His immediate answer was a simple "no."
That did not surprise me. Despite the fact politicians praised "plug and play" as a visionary and brilliant concept, it compromised two sacrosanct Army principles. General Jeffery realized this fact, but had been forced to make such a distasteful decision due to a lack of resources."
The first principle to be sacrificed is that of unit cohesion. Most soldiers don't risk their lives for God, Queen or country. They do so for their buddies, particularly the ones a few metres on each side of them. Don't take my word for it; ask someone who landed on the beaches of Sicily or Normandy. And the best way to foster that intense loyalty and commitment is within a unit based on the time-honoured regimental system.
In civilian language, your regiment is your family. It looks after you, it nurtures you, it shares with you its history and obliges you to meet the standards of those who went before. In return, you might just owe it your life. The regimental names are usually reduced to acronyms and confuse TV anchors and journalists, who rarely get them right -- PPCLI, RCR, R22eR, QOR, LdSH(RC), RCD, 8CH, RCHA, CER, etc. To you, they are alphabet soup. To a soldier, they are structure, order, support, security -- just like a real family under ideal conditions. By contrast, smaller groups of 80 to 100 soldiers -- brought together from disparate sources to perform a temporary mission and then be disbanded -- could never hope to approach a high level of unit cohesion.
The second principle to be trumped by the move was flexibility. Over the years, the Canadian military brass has been conditioned by relatively stable peacekeeping missions in places such as Cyprus, from 1964 to 2002. In such cases, Canada deployed custom-organized units that fit a specific and consistent mission. On the other hand, combat-arms units -- infantry, armoured and artillery -- have been organized since the 19th century to adapt to changing missions in volatile environments. That flexibility is squandered when we cannibalize these units to produce smaller forces with narrow roles.
For example, a Canadian contingent that just returned from Kabul was deployed without its mobile logistics company, relying instead on a static base camp manned by civilian contractors. When NATO officials requested that Canada expand its mission to include mobile operations, we had to turn them down -- proffering the phoney excuse that our soldiers were not adequately trained.
Many soldiers at the sharp end have noted the folly of the compromises. The current commanding officer of the 1st Battalion of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, the same unit I had the pleasure of commanding in the late 1970s, has tendered his resignation after only one year in command.
Lieutenant-Colonel Shandy Vida is an outstanding officer. You would be proud and comfortable to have your son or daughter serve under his leadership. He is a soldier's soldier and bristled at the compromises forced upon him, as he patched together a large part of the infantry component recently deployed to Afghanistan. To him, "plug and play" is not the way to send our soldiers to do dangerous work.
I have to agree, and can't help but think that if the Army had not chosen to introduce such questionable policies, officers of the calibre of Colonel Vida would not be resigning. I, for one, admire his commitment to his martial profession.
Invaluable soldiers like Colonel Vida should not be driven to this. The questionable policies motivating his decision resulted from the disconnect between the military's taskings and resources -- a strictly political failing. Over the past few years, the previous Prime Minister and the current incumbent, as well as the previous Minister of National Defence and Foreign Affairs Minister, all repeatedly promised a new Defence White Paper to replace a woefully dated 1994 document. Now, we are told we don't need one.
What a shame. Our defence policies are in serious need of review. And until reforms are implemented, our military will be at risk of losing its best and brightest.
Note to the bold print: Of course civil service pers with NO concept of esprit de corps and true teamwork would think that something like "plug and play" wouuld be revolutionary. In military terms we used to call it attachments and detachmnets....
