Report of the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence

[marct]

Hi Norfolk,

Re: the 9-12 months deployments instead of the present 6-month standard deployment. The first 3- or 4-months of each 6-month deployment is partially wasted just learning the about the enemy, the people, and the area, while acclimatizing and learning how to operate efficiently in the prevailing conditions. Nine months is better, but not good enough; full 12-month standard deployments are necessary.

I'd agree, a 12-month standard deployment would be much better.

Problem is, the CF never fully recovered from the 1990's, and probably never will, so deep was both the institutional damage and its ability to attract recruits. Standards are also not the same as they were up until the early 1990's (even if increasingly more so on paper than in reality). Consequently, 12-month tours will only serve to empty Battalions that much quicker after the end of each deployment as individuals' contracts (especially the 3-year initial engagements) end.

I've had a few chats with Alan Okros about this issue. From what I have seen and read, there are significant problems both with retention and with PME.

The fact remains that even with some very capable leadership at the highest levels, aggressive media handling, and at least lukewarm Government support, the Armed Forces are still haemoraging, only more slowly than during the 1990's. The brief uptick and partial recovery in the form of increased resources and higher recruiting levels that followed 2001 only lasted a few years, and has effectively been more or less over for the last couple years.

True, but that is possibly because the recruiting campaign is not handled well. Hmm, sorry, I'd better pull that apart. The "Fight Fear" campaign is probably one of the most brilliant recruiting campaigns I've ever seen, but it doesn't jive with a lot of the reality of PME and the skills sets that are available. Given the relatively small size of the CF, we need a PME model that is aimed at producing multi-skilled people along the line of the Roman Legionaries (high quality to make up for low numbers).

We already have quite high quality in most of the directly military areas, but a lot of the auxilliary skill sets, the ones that would also lead to higher paying non-military jobs, aren't that available. We also need to reinvigorate the social cachet of holding a commission (I know, it was a status marker because you used to have to buy them ).