The Future of the Army Reserve - Discuss

[Charlie Echo]

Source?

[Saab]

Good to see the balance.
One very negative and one positive
So I guess the truth will lie somewhere in between.

[paul g]

there is an intresting discission in the foreign forces section on this board about the T.A. in the uk, and how at the moment there are only 15,000 members of that force that are effective.

if you look at the army reserve, i'd be shocked if there were more than 1500 members who actually could serve any military purpose.

to be honest, the VFM probably recommended that the AR go, and the cabinet want to keep it on.

[hptmurphy]

Thankfully it doesn't appear that political influence determined whose barracks closed and whose didn't.

You forgot the PMSL smiley......

Clonmel was closed as Soth Tipp hasn't a minister..Kilkenny was saved because it has!!!!!

Very negative Murph. Too negative

Good to see the balance.
One very negative and one positive
So I guess the truth will lie somewhere in between

I'm looking at a worse case scenario if social welfare and health have to maintained given 50% of the country are on medical cards and a large proportion of the remainder are using public health options as opposed to using their own health insurance.

A cash starved government will attack that force that cannot respond for itself and the public have little perception of its roles or reason for existence.

I had an oppertunity to discuss this with a recently retired Lt. Col. (AC) who is of the opinion, the DF ain't seen nothing yet!!!

The only ships tied up will be those on refit or off Patrol

.

Or beyond economic repair?

If your looking at the delivery of a new OPV in 2014 whats the chances of one ,two or even all three PVs being laid up in the second half of 2014?

The DF have already made considerable savings compared to all other government agencies, managing to almost half their budget spend annually,

If its their training and aquistitions budget, the force is suffering, they certainly couldn't have reduced their wage bill by the same which is their greatest outlay.

If the DFs budget is reducded to a 'wages only' expenditure , they might as well hand it out in pension format as we'll be back to stagnation equipment and training wise.

[Goldie fish]

there is an intresting discission in the foreign forces section on this board about the T.A. in the uk, and how at the moment there are only 15,000 members of that force that are effective.

if you look at the army reserve, i'd be shocked if there were more than 1500 members who actually could serve any military purpose.

to be honest, the VFM probably recommended that the AR go, and the cabinet want to keep it on.

From a parish pump point of view, loss of the reserve is bad for votes. The voter gets very nostalgic about the reserve when it is taken from them, even though they cared not a toss when it was active. See the outpouring of horror when the reserve Cav unit in the west moved house. See the frequent dail questions asking for assurances their unit would not be moved.

They treat the RDF like the dog in the manger. Won't use it, but won't let it go either.

[paul g]

And its a relatively cheap parish pump.

The AR is safe, althought its the drinking club/extension of boy scouts/once a year for grat side element of the organisation that's safe.

[Goldie fish]

You forgot the PMSL smiley......

Clonmel was closed as Soth Tipp hasn't a minister..Kilkenny was saved because it has!!!!!

Clonmel closed because it was too close to Cork, Kilkenny and Limerick. It should have been closed in smithys time. It served no practical purpose splitting the 12th in 2, and having a reserve Cav and artillery unit with their vehicles and guns kept 70 miles away.

I'm looking at a worse case scenario if social welfare and health have to maintained given 50% of the country are on medical cards and a large proportion of the remainder are using public health options as opposed to using their own health insurance.

A cash starved government will attack that force that cannot respond for itself and the public have little perception of its roles or reason for existence.

I had an oppertunity to discuss this with a recently retired Lt. Col. (AC) who is of the opinion, the DF ain't seen nothing yet!!!

Or maybe he means the Air Corpse? It survived for mny years as the Government Air Taxi service, but the current lot aren't as keen to be seen flying about in private jets, when there are plenty of scheduled flights available. Any Savings made from further DF cuts to divert into the Health or Welfare bill would be like throwing water in a bucket of sawdust. Cutting Health or Welfare funding is a better option, in the long term.

Or beyond economic repair?

If your looking at the delivery of a new OPV in 2014 whats the chances of one ,two or even all three PVs being laid up in the second half of 2014?

When OPV1 arrives(followed soon after by OPV2) you can guarantee that one PV will be laid up. That is why they are being built. However P22 and P23 are not suffering from age as much as P21. You'll probably sooner see them sold before they are laid up.

If its their training and aquistitions budget, the force is suffering, they certainly couldn't have reduced their wage bill by the same which is their greatest outlay.

If the DFs budget is reducded to a 'wages only' expenditure , they might as well hand it out in pension format as we'll be back to stagnation equipment and training wise.

The DF, and the DoD have been pushing for the last 15 years to maintain the DF budget in as close as possible to a 2/3 rule, where Pay makes up no more than 66% of the allocation. This has reduced from the original situation in the 90s, when pay made up 75% of the Defence Vote.

[Archimedes]

Newly added to the dept of defense website

http://www.defence.ie/WebSite.nsf/Su...9?OpenDocument

[paul g]

The Steering Committee considered three options for the Reserve:
1. Retention of the existing Reserve organisation
2. Abolition of the Reserve
3. Retention of a re-organised Reserve
The Steering Committee do not believe that option one is viable. The Steering Committee strongly considered option two based on the current organisational outputs. This included concerns regarding the level of capacity of the current organisation and whether the required reforms can be achieved. However, there remains an ongoing requirement for a Reserve. Accordingly, option three was recommended subject to improved cost effectiveness, including its use in a voluntary unpaid capacity for certain tasks.
The Steering Committee considered a variety of options for a sustainable Reserve organisation. Having regard to the current budget for Reserve training, the re-organisation of the PDF and associated resource constraints for PDF Cadre staff, the recommended option is for a Reserve with a strength of 4,000 personnel (3,800 Army Reserve and 200 Naval Service Reserve). The sustainability of Reserve strength is directly linked to the budget for paid training and a strength level of 4,000 could only be achieved within the existing resource constraints if gratuities were withdrawn and the money re-allocated to paid mandays. If gratuities were retained, a Reserve strength of some 2,600 to 2,700 personnel could be retained. Ultimately, this factor will determine the final organisational model.

My money is on the paid man days with no grat , with about 1000 of the force trained to an adequate standard.

[Docman]

Been looking through it - they do not like Cadre.

But a lot of it is common sense and has been said many times. Look like someone was listening.
NSR look untouched except for their cadre

[paul g]

From page 88

Consolidate RDF Units, those units outside barracks with a revised geographical spread and trained and administered by PDF Cadre. Those units in Barrack based RDF Units trained and administered by PDF Units.
A revised geographical spread centred on eight AR locations outside of PDF occupied barracks in each brigade, in addition to barrack based locations. Based on the available allocation of 48 PDF Cadre for the AR, this would see Army PDF Cadre teams (of 3) based in 16 locations outside of PDF occupied barracks. This would retain a revised broad geographical spread whilst significantly reducing PDF full time Cadre training and administrative costs.
AR Units, including those based outside of barracks should be designated sub-units of PDF Units and responsibility for training these Units should rest with the Officer in Charge of the PDF Unit. For barrack1 based RDF Units training and administration should be undertaken by PDF staff as part of their ongoing duties. The Steering Committee recommends the implementation of a system to capture associated indirect costs for PDF personnel subsuming Reserve duties in order to provide greater transparency with regard to new Reserve costs. For non-barrack based RDF Units, the locally based PDF Cadre should be on the establishment of the associated PDF Unit, reporting within that chain of command, and subject to other duties as required.

[Saab]

[QUOTE=paul g;382459]Accordingly, option three was recommended subject to improved cost effectiveness, including its use in a voluntary unpaid capacity for certain tasks.
[QUOTE]
Gosh I wonder what that could possibly mean????

Maybe as I said
Doing the cadre hours?
or
Duties as part of training?
or
any other dog work that makes the RDF earn a crust.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Will it play, as suggested, to the drinking club element or to the gong-ho soldier wan-a-be who will be perfectly happy for less in the way of remuneration if it means more "getting down and dirty"?


Well I guess we are there now.
So how long before change is upon us? 1-2 years, more, less??????????

[The real Jack]

I love how they only compared Reserve forces from English speaking countries ignoring Sweden, Norway, Finland etc. Joke of a report.

[paul g]

Been looking through it - they do not like Cadre.

But a lot of it is common sense and has been said many times. Look like someone was listening.
NSR look untouched except for their cadre

Can you blame them, they spent more on cadre (115 Million) from 2006-2011 than they spent on buying APC's for the DF.

[goc132]

There was no reservist on the Steering group was there?