ARmy Rumour SErvice

Originally Posted by theblindking

I don't think that this is just an interesting academic excercise; I would suggest that it is fundamental to the survival of the Army.

"All the best Generals leave as Captains."


Sword of honour = career fail?

Originally Posted by jimmys_best_mate

If a TA soldier is too old to deploy then they're essentially useless to the core business of the Army. Anyone can learn how to drive a minibus and anyone can be taught how to sign the rifles out of the armoury on a Friday night. Why do we need to keep on paying what is essentially a useless mouth who's blocking the system for the young lads who are still able to return the Army's investment in them? I'm not suggesting regular age limits because I know the TA generally join older. What I'm suggesting is that if you're too old to go on tour then you're no real use to the Army just like if you're too unfit to deploy you're no real use anymore. I've seen several very good regular soldiers who were outstanding at their jobs, held various driving licences and instructor quals and had a wealth of operational experience who've been told they no longer have a job in the regs because they've got long term injuries they're not going to recover from so why does the TA need to keep geriatrics who are similarly unable to deploy?

Apples and oranges. Regs and TA. Whilst anyone can be taught to drive a minibus, or sign out rifles do you trust them to? Or will they want the job? When the whole Coy is champfing at the bit to get away on a drill night, will they have the tenacity to stay there and ensure everything is back in the stores? You want to say they will, but we ALL know thrusters who may think such work is beneath them and thus fcuk it off, both reg and TA. What is 'too old to go on tour'? I know of 50 year old TA blokes on tour... one of whom acted as a Inf Section Cdr.

Originally Posted by chocolate_frog

Apples and oranges. Regs and TA. Whilst anyone can be taught to drive a minibus, or sign out rifles do you trust them to? Or will they want the job? When the whole Coy is champfing at the bit to get away on a drill night, will they have the tenacity to stay there and ensure everything is back in the stores? You want to say they will, but we ALL know thrusters who may think such work is beneath them and thus fcuk it off, both reg and TA. What is 'too old to go on tour'? I know of 50 year old TA blokes on tour... one of whom acted as a Inf Section Cdr.

Not sure what the age limit is but I'm aware that there is one. I believe it's waived for surgeons and the like.

Who's to say the old 'enabler' will do any of those things either?

Can we all please stop talking about what's necessary to 'go on tour'? Once Herrick's over, that's it - no more bleeding sore wars for the foreseeable and hence no need to fill up an under-recruited Regular Army with casual labour from the TA.

As tediously noted several times above (and not just by me), the future Army is going to look very different from today's, or even the Army I joined in 1978 - a very small cadre of high-readiness units on short NTM (days to weeks), a slightly larger cadre of medium-readiness units on longer NTM (weeks to months) and the bulk of the Army, which will be low-readiness on long NTM (years). The major aim of the low-readiness units will be to preserve sufficient skills, trickle-posting back and forth with high- and medium-readiness units, to allow standing up of a heavy metal force within, say, two years - on national mobilisation.

In practical terms, this will give us a brigade for short-term intervention and the ability to maintain a brigade on a longer-term intervention for months, not years. Anything more is going to require proper national mobilisation and hence will mean that a political decision, audited by Parliament, will have to be made to undertake it. This strikes me as a deliberate policy feature.

Again, repeating what's been said upthread, my educated guess is that the Army finds itself in the Last Chance Saloon as far as sorting this out for itself is concerned. If we go back and either don't answer the exam question - or answer one which hasn't been asked - or even produce an answer which essentially says, petulantly, "the Regular Army must stay exactly as it is", we won't get show again, we'll get something imposed on the Army from outside.

It has to be stressed that, whatever one can say about politicians and the appalling lack of strategic direction of combat operations shown by government since 2001, the Army is widely seen as having failed at the operational level - and that the population of the country, while recognising the gallantry of the troops and the difficult circumstances in which they have found themselves, do not, generally, consider either Iraq or Afghanistan to have been anything other than a complete waste of our blood and treasure.

Originally Posted by msr

Absence of evidence is absence of evidence in academia... if you cannot substantiate your claims, no-one is going to take you seriously: Erich von Däniken - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Since we're citing wikipedia as an authoritative source, and at the risk of heading into "Socratic wanking"...: Gödel's incompleteness theorems - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

P.S. It's "its" not "it's" - there's another great way to undermine your credibility ;)

Wrong. Passes the substitution test. Reshow.

Originally Posted by chocolate_frog

I know of 50 year old TA blokes on tour... one of whom acted as a Inf Section Cdr.

The age limit debate is quite an interesting one (that applies to both regular army and TA).

While we all appreciate that there probably needs to be an age limit of one sort or another for deploying troops, the post the soldier will be filling has a bearing on what that limit should be. My view is that an undeployable soldier should not (normally) be retained in uniform. If he is a vital enabler them he should be employed as a civilian (either part or full time) as this (should be) cheaper. The example would be the aforementioned TA SNCO who is undeployable but who holds the licences etc that enable the TAC to function; there is no point in paying to keep him trained up and in uniform if he is undeployable, but equally he provides value which could not readily be attained by using a keen young spark instead. I recognise that the policies pertaining to employment of civilians is not sufficiently flexible to allow this to happen at the moment and in any case the civil service unions would demand that a post created like this were put out to open competition with a preference toward a non-military applicant, which unfortunately defeats the object of the exercise.

The other part of the debate is: are the upper age limits for servicemen (regular and TA) set at the right levels?

While I think that 50 is much too old for an infantry section commander (Cpl), there are Cpls posts in the army that a 50 year old would have no problem with. While VEng has made it possible for regular army soldiers to serve for longer than in previous years, there are few who serve much beyond 50 (and 55 for officers). (While I'm not aware of the cut off ages for the TA) I do wonder whether, given that people more are living and working for longer, the army should be thinking about pushing the upper age limit out towards 60 or 65, dependant on rank and trade or better still looking at the US model where military retirees are employed as civilians to fill those vital enabler posts which require military knowledge/experience but don't actually require a serving soldier/officer. In either case, regular or territorial, I think it is vital to the interests of both soldier and service that upper age limits remain applied to the physically exerting posts within the army.

Originally Posted by brave-coward

the army should be looking at the US model where military retirees are employed as civilians to fill those vital enabler posts which require military knowledge/experience but don't actually require a serving soldier/officer

Yes - they were called RO posts until we decided that employing untrained civilians was better and cheaper.

Originally Posted by Counter-Bluffer-Ops

Yes - they were called RO posts until we decided that employing untrained civilians was better and cheaper.

Not strictly true, some of the RO's were almost good at their jobs.