plagasse said:
Just a quick note about my last quote in the story. Most here take me to mean that no overhead should be cut. That's not my view. I'm simply pointing out that overhead cuts should be done with care and caution. There's no point cutting parts of DND or the CF's C2 that will be recreated sometime in the future. Similarly, it would be unwise to cut areas, such as the policy group or DRDC, that do useful work. Finally, it will serve no real purpose to let certain people go only to hire contractors or consultants to replace them. There are savings to be made, but I worry that the Leslie report was a bit too cavalier.
PL
milnews.ca said:
Thanks for jumping in with some more info - always good to hear these things "straight from the horse's mouth", so to speak, and allowing a bit of exchange/dialogue.
Indeed, and welcome Prof Lagassé.
I'm not so sure LGen Lesie was all that
cavalier: HQs have grown in both number and size since Gen Hillier took over. The fault cannot
all be laid at the feet of senior officers but:
1. We seem, to me, to be in thrall of US military organizations. In my opinion the US DoD and the US armed services are not well organized for either operations or administration, and they certainly offer a poor model for small countries;
2. The very worst aspect of American military organization and one which is fundamentally wrong is command/staff relationships. The US staffs are too big, too
rich (in rank) and lacking in responsibility - the US military took the worst of the Franco-Prussian staff systems and left the good bits behind. We adopted the US command/staff model and we need to get away from it if for no other reason than it breeds
fat;
3. We pay too much attention to public relations, which is
sexy, and too little to combat service support (administration and logistics) which is dull and difficult.
But, the main failings, in my opinion, lie with senior civil servants who could have
and should have reined in the worst aspects of military management years and years ago. I blame the Clerk and the DM DND for not saying "enough!"
circa 2006 when HQ bloat was evident.
To you main points:
1. We certainly do need a robust - able to withstand the shocks of war in FM Wavell's words - effective and efficient C2 system. I (and others) do not advocate wholesale slash and burn but I, for my part, want fewer HQs (accepting that some of those that remain will be large) in which the principle staff officers, beginning with the CDS if I can have my Xmas wish early, are all one rank lower than today, while commanders in the fleet and field forces remain the same or, in the case of brigade group commanders, are one rank higher;*
2. I agree with you re: both ADM (Pol) and DRDC. I have no brief for how the DM organizes his HQ and I believe that R&D is, currently, too low in the pecking order;
3. Contractors are excellent for
surges but we cannot rely upon them. For one thing the contracting world's main source of the experts we need for a surge is the CF, if we cut functions and rely upon contractors we cannot train the next generations of contractors.
So, I suspect we are in violent agreement, except, perhaps for my desire for fewer, lower ranked military HQs.
__________
* I hold firm to a principle I have advocated often in these pages: the principle staff officer in any HQ must be outranked by the subordinate commanders. Thus in a corps HQ (where the commander is a LGen and the subordinate (Div) commanders are MGens) the principle Ops and Adm/Log staff officers should be BGens; in Divs (where the subordinate commanders are Cols but should be BGens) the principle staff officers should be Cols, and in brigades, where the principle subordinate commanders are LCols the principle Ops and Adm/Log staff officers should be Majs.