DF Commission Report

Yeah, that was fairly depressing, all right. It looks like a fairly serious restructuring is required (Again). There's enough wrong that we can probably have an RDF-specific thread.

Some observations, though.

1) They are making most of the right noises. The existential question of "Why do we have a reserve?" was brought up several times. There needs to be some purpose for it, for two reasons. Firstly the morale purpose of folks training to do a job they never get to do, and secondly, so that the taxpayer gets some practical return on the investment that they are putting into the organisation. Whilst having a surge capacity for WW3 may have its own merits, it's silly to not use reservists on the operations currently being conducted. The 100-day-limit referenced for activation is silly when tours tend to be six months. If the PDF suddenly realises that they are in a position that the RDF can actually help them, then the RDF concerns will be thrown to the bottom of the priority list less frequently since helping the RDF will then help the PDF.

2) You can't get something for nothing. There seems to be some idea going around, not exactly voiced in committee, but I think the undertones are there, that the answers for the reserve are primarily regulatory. "Let PDF come in at their prior rank. Outsource medicals to private doctors. Add employment protections". That's all well and good, but Euros need to be thrown at it as well. Reservists will give you more 'value for your dollar' than equivalent PDF personnel, but even if EUR 3 is less than EUR 5, you still need to fork out the 3.

3) Very briefly mentioned towards the end, but soldiers have one standard. The bullet coming at you doesn't care if you're a reservist or not. No particular discussion directed towards how to achieve that standard. Granted, you need to have the people first.

4) Distances to reserve training centers. Sure, if you can have a training hall in every town of 50,000 people or more (or whatever), then great, but as alluded to in the discussion, modern training requires more than just the church parish hall. It requires some solid infrastructure which may cost more money than practicable to install in every town. If this means you need to drive a whiles to a place where meaningful training can be conducted, then so be it. In my 23 years in the Guard, I have never been less than a 90 minute drive from my unit. My current unit of assignment is over 750km from my house. US regulation defines "Not in the local area" for reservists as over 150 miles, or 2 hours. Yes, it costs me money to get there. However, yes, I get paid to train. Bottom line, though, if people are motivated by the idea of training in whatever unit they selected, they'll make it there as long as they are not actively penalised by it. It may mean changing to a 'weekends' model instead of a 'weekday evenings' model.

5) Matching RDF training schedules with PDF training. I get it, I'm an augmentee to an active duty unit. I spent two weeks in February on an exercise, and then three in April on the next one. It was the major training exercise for the Division, and it wasn't done with folks' university schedules in mind. The idea that reservists should only be asked to train in the summer and on weekends can't stand if you're going to be assigned to a PDF unit. We can get away with it because we go on paid orders, and have employment protection. And if some folks really couldn't get away because of their final exams the next month, we didn't force them to. Courses, however, often can be taken with a prioritisation on Summer dates.

6) Entry physicals. I disagree a bit with the idea that folks shouldn't have to pass fitness tests or medicals to be in the Army. I mean, we're talking basic fitness levels here. If they're going to be in the military, then the organisation will take responsibility for taking care of their health and there is a certain level of reliability required. Fit people are less likely to suffer from ailment or disease, have greater resilience to infection. Even if they're not running up a hill with a GPMG, they may well find themselves in austere environments, sitting behind a computer keyboard in a non-air-conditioned building in Lebanon, for example. If the government wants a team of part-timers who can leap into action at the next cyber-attack, I'm sure there is some form of civilian contractor position which could be created in the Dept of Defense to keep them on retainer for emergency use.

7) Matching units with the local environment. There was a comment made such as 'put a signals unit next to an IT school, a medical unit next to a doctor school.' The commission made a similar comment, and I fear they might go a bit too far. People don't always want to join to do on the weekend what they do during the week. I worked in IT when I enlisted in the US, the recruiter immediately wanted to slot me into signals as it was my civilian job. No, I wanted to blow things up. I sat behind a computer Monday to Friday, why on Earth would I voluntarily do it more? Give recruits a reasonable choice of options. The guy mentioned who was studying to be an astrophysicist may well have just wanted to do nothing more than charge up hills with a machinegun.

8) Presumably when new PDF recruits turn up, they get assessed by a medical. Since the doctors and facilities etc are already there, why don't they just add the reservist applicants to the end of the queue? We run a similar structure here in the US, when you show up at MEPS, you're thrown in with recruits from every branch, active and reserve.

9) I was surprised that the committee weren't actually sure of their purpose and authorities. But it'll be interesting to see how far they get at attempting to gain accountability for their questions.

Please continue to link any other such videos.

As an aside, what was the end result, if any, of the consultative forum?

I have to say, I don't see any reason why that should not be the case. Still plenty close enough to Dublin and main roads. The UK's HQs for Navy and Army are both located near the major concentrations of military training and basing areas, near Portsmouth and Warminster/Salisbury/Aldershot. I see little reason for geographic centrality over military concentration.