I'm not sure whether you're deliberately missing his Evil point.

His suggestion is not that each section should be viewed on its own, but that deployed troops can be trawled. You still have that STRE who can run an oil pipeline, and an NBC Recce Sqn, and a Coy of IR infanteers, but when you suddenly find you need to organize a bank, or an audit team to review a bank, or a civil court, or a website, or a social work department, then you trawl all of your deployed troops for those key skills.

Last edited by Gravelbelly on Wed Oct 21, 2009 10:29 pm; edited 1 time in total

OK, you're crass. Thanks for clearing that up.

No, in his world the RLC are logistic gods to a man, the infantry are all square jawed heroes, fleet of foot and keen of eye, and officers are entirely born leaders of men, all of whom won the Sword and none of whom were backtermed.

Oh god, it's like trying to hold a conversation in a Special Needs School. It seems that anything said or posted which goes against the mantra is somehow automatically incorrect.

The Army, Regular and TA have their backs up against the wall both in terms of Role and funding.As is traditional in these circumstances there is lot's of straw clutching going on.

CIMIC etc is trendy at the moment and a completly unknown subject to HM Forces.

The strength of the TA at the moment is, what? 40,000 all up? Apart from the real specialists, a few of the others have other qualifications, which may or may not be useful in a reshaped TA, if they choose to make use of them. I would suggest that a Barrister who joins as a Tpr does so for a reason.

Let's look at a few of the unit's thrown on the page shall we? Of the tiny amount of detail available on the internet you can surmise that they are new, small and are not asking for specific qualifications to join. So back to my original point, there is nothing, as yet, that make them TA specific and it looks like the roles could be carried out by either.

Can I make a suggestion chaps? Given the anger and hostility to all things Regular Army here and your determination to be 'different', don't you thing that you could be the barrier to the One Army concept?

I have learnt one thing though and I must thank Saladin and Gravelbelly for illustrating this. There is clearly no difference between thick Regular or TA soldiers. Thank you.

My point, to cut through the bile, was twofold:

1. The TA does not recruit on 'putting your civvy skills to military use' in the vast majority of cases - which is why the HAC does its current role, not case law and advocacy on operations.

2. Furthermore, most people who join the TA do so for something different.

Given these two self evident truths, it is hard to argue that the utility of the TA is in taking a barrister, training him to conduct patrol activities and then mobilising him to work in an office advising nascent legal systems on practice and precedent.

If the TA believe sit can provide greater utility by 'leveraging' of unique capabilites, it has not (with a few notable and very limited) exceptions put it's money where it's mouth is.

Lots of people have said, yeah but, you can take a bloke who was MOBILISED to be a Tpr and employ him as a lawyer when you find out what his unque skills are. Of course you can, but the effect is to leave the receiving unit with one less Trooper and, potentially rob that trooper of the reason he joined the TA so long ago. We should not make a virtue out of our (collective) ineptitude - if we want the TA to provide Inf IRs, we should state it. if we desire butchers, bakers and legislation makers we should state that requirement. What we do at present is akin to asking 'is there a pilot on board' as we cross the Atlantic!

Finally, have the TA exmained this - do the HAC want to become a deployable HR, PR and law Regiment? Does the Royal Yeomanry 'rank and file' see themselves as a legal reserve of first choice? I cannot imagine a barrister in the TA offering his professional services (with all that entails for his practice) for less than the going rate and billing accordingly!

in my own unit there has been no hostility at all towards the regular army at all even from the most junior of our lads. Any hostility shown has been directed at our fcuking government. as far as we're concerned we, as in the armed forces, are in deep s*** when a situation arises when there are insufficient funds to pay our reserves. We accept that and even though we think the situation is s*** we will carry own.

my unit has always had a policy of encouraging our brightest recruits,who show a flair for infanteering, to go regular. although we lose a bod we think part of our role is to recruit for the army and our regiment in particular as well as our own unit.

and yes when it comes to the numpties from personal experience of regs and Ta on operational tours there is no difference between them

There is no anger and hostility to the regular Army in this quarter. What hostility there is, is directed at your opinions, which are mere chaff.

You left the Army in 1996. Things have changed.

New COIN doctrine will be published this month. It marks a substantial shift away from the tactics, techniques and practices with which you are familiar from Northern Ireland.

The force elements required to implement these changes are being put together right now: but no amount of internet trawling will give you the detail and I cannot, for obvious reasons, give it to you here.

So when you say "CIMIC etc is trendy at the moment and a completly unknown subject to HM Forces", you are talking shoyte.

Equally, you clearly know little about the type of expertise which the Jt CIMIC Gp, MSSG, MOG, 15 Psyops actually require.

Fundamentally, your point is that the civilian expertise held by the TA is not relevant or necessary to the task at hand and so should be ignored by the very force elements which need it.

You're wrong.

RF.

The one slight flaw in your analysis is that its NOT the TA that makes the decision on using our civvy skills. Yes, folk join up as Inf, RAC or whatever but I can't imagine that any of them would argue if trawled to do a version of their day job. Its our paymasters in LAND who have never asked what it is we do Mon-Fri.

I'm not sure when it was first suggested - but certainly I remember that having a database of civvy skills was suggested in discussion with the then D TA&Res when I was on a course at least 20 years ago. He thought it would be "too difficult to maintain". This same clown also told us that the TA was only useful for providing drivers and ammunition humpers.
Anyway, the MoD has used me as an Inf Officer, as a Media Ops bod and in a technical SO2 job for which I had no qualifications whatsoever. It has not asked me to do Logistics. Which is perhaps a waste because that was my civvy job, moving 6000 containers a year, distributing FMCG through a network of 34 warehouses across Europe.

Not sure any bile was directed at you, my good man. Both of your points above are true.


You are making too much of a leap from the self-evident truths to your next point.

Our barrister chum (I can tell he is a legend, this fella) would join as a Tpr and train to patrol, etc. He would be mobilisable in either the nation-building or combat role. Put it this way: for the price of training him as a HAC steely-eyed dealer of death, the Army would gain him as a potential nation builder, too.


That's mainly because the Army has not asked it to. The Army has not yet produced a collated list of identified skills and expertise in the TA. As CIMIC, etc., assumes the limelight then those skills will become more necessary and so the collation task more worthwhile.


The idea is that this hapazard method of using TA soldiers' skills would end. A proper skills identification system would mean that TA soldiers would mobilise either in role (and stay that way) or as nation builders.

It is crucial to understand that I am talking about increasing the utility of each TA soldier: not excluding one role in preference for the other.


I agree.



This is a marketing issue. People might want to join the TA to jump through bushes at weekends. But if the Army makes clearer that it is now engaged in a COIN effort, where non-kinetic effect counts at least as much as kinetic, and expressly includes in the tasks given to TA units (all of them, not just the HAC and RY) then, yeah, the role people sign up to do would change. It's either that or not have a TA.


You never know: it could happen.

This is all far above my former substantive pay grade, however I did once meet a chap who worked for the Scottish water board who deployed after the first Gulf War. He was the most qualified person in the country in this respect and led much of the restoration and rebuilding of the water supply there. Such are trades that the Army long gone once had, but of course don't retain any more, and yet are still tasked with the same job in an environment where civilian contractors aren't best suited to work.

Mind you, when he got back, and was no longer so useful, he told me his OC didn't like him and told him he could look after the pipers or leave, and that left him a little embittered.

I heard a Brigadier speak who led an element in Iraq a few years ago stating that what was really needed was a special task force, possibly from the civil service, that could go in to such places and restore civil governance and restore civic functionality. I always thought that if the TA needed a future role then it would be a natural direction for part of it, but the chap in question said the whole idea fell on deaf ears.

I see a MOG member reporting on our Regional TV news most nights of the week. Has been seen in an RHF tie....

Evil

my submission, then, if the Army has not asked for it, is to provide one to them in a well trumpeted coup, proving how the TA can solve some of our collective problems. It may be that matching requirment to skills is the future role of TA RHQs to ensure coherence.

I think if we could somehow square the circle and ensure that the skills of the TA can make a direct contribution to defence AND still attract people to splash through puddles then we are on the way to improving the utility of the TA. Much of the dripping on some of these sites seems to yearn for the halcyon days of 3rd ShocK Circus and long weeks in Sennelager on 'camp.' Few people have acknowledged the world has changed and the current mass reinforcement TA set up is no longer relevant.

The TA must evolve or it will be bred out - the RAF and RN are making huge plays for some of the 'softer' less kinetic bits of the spectrum and, as alwyas, they will sell the case very well! In many ways an RAF admin officer is almost entirely civilianised already!

Last edited by saladin on Thu Oct 22, 2009 8:57 am; edited 1 time in total

Righty-oh, although I suppose there are two sides to everything. I sat on a ferry with him to France and he was not a happy man! Interesting stories though.

The TA needs direction on what it is the regulars want from it. The 'few' who have not acknowledged that the world has changed are not in the TA... it is almost as if the TA is invisible to anyone over the rank of Lt Col.

msr

I agree with every single word.

For those terrified that this means "we are all CIMICists now", or that we would be better off having two streams of TA (one very junior and warry, the other older, fatter and fluffier), think on this.

Would it be more cost-effective for the two streams to be trained and administered separately across the entire country by (for example, RTCs, regular units and the various specialist groups)?

Or would it make sense to retain the existing structure in order to get as much of this training and administration done by cheap volunteers?

The latter would give us the means to provide the 1,800 or so mobilisees per year which the TA needs in order to justify its existence: it's just that of those 1,800 a much larger proportion than hitherto would be going out to fight the key fight - nation building. It would also give us the means, should it be required, of reverting to providing an LSDI/contingency capability.

This is not at all an argument for no change: training, admin, marketing of the TA "offer", career and mobilisation planning (ahem!) would all have to radically alter. But this would be happening amidst a big change in the way the Army (regular and territorial) is going about its job in the Stan and so would, I hope, not necessarily appear as hom as it clearly does to some people.

Gentlemen,

I've read the debate on this thread with both interest and at times some sadness. One question which does remain extant and hasn't been touched on here in this thread is the subject of proper compulsory mobilisation for Ops.

Many employers now know the score that the guys are putting their hands in the air to be mobilised, and said soldiers either suffer the consequences of this before or after their tour (or they do not deploy at all!).

What are your thoughts on how this panacia for "NU TA" will work in reality once the glorious plan makes contact with employers under current legislation?

Concerning "mass reinforcement" ... the regs couldn't have done TELIC without mass reinforcement from the TA. You can of course decide that UK PLC does not need the capability to do LSDI, but that inexorably leads to slicing large chunks of the regs away as they are not needed either if all we are to be is a home defence and peacekeeping force.

You are of course entirely correct that the TA needs to change, adapt, evolve ... but from my corner I would arge that we have. I can't remember that last time I met a Cold War dinosaur hankering after 58 pattern webbing and BAOR. I might raise an eyebrow at the inability of the under-30's to recognise a T-62 but that's something I can teach them - at the same time absorbing what they have to teach me about their tour.

That said, my capbadge has been very well supported and looked after by the regs and while I know some of my TA colleagues might not like the concept of regular COs and RSMs I think it's done us nothing but good.

I am 100% with Dr Evil and Saladin on this one however I have it on very good authority that the reserve element of 15 (UK) Psyops Gp (which is a regular AND reserve unit, just like...oh, CIMIC) was informed at the weekend that there would be no more training until April. So no evaluation of the utility of specialist skills is going on, apparently.

And to those who decry "new & fluffy" units such as Media Ops, Psyops, CIMIC etc...all have been around for much longer than you might think and all have punched way above their weight in several operational theatres.

Cheers,

AS

AS, the fact that 15 has been caught by the same budgetary freeze as the rest of the TA does not mean that its utility is being undervalued. It's just ass vs elbow disconnect.