Rethinking the Total Force

The Force Development Process

The 1994 Defence White Paper established inter alia the type of force commitments that the Government of Canada intends to make in support of international peace and security. In brief, the Canadian Forces has been directed to maintain the ability to deploy

…contingency forces of up to a maritime task group, a brigade group plus an infantry battalion group, a wing of fighter aircraft, and a squadron of tactical transport aircraft…[and] within this upper limit, stand-by forces [consisting of] two ships (one on each coast), one battle group, one infantry battalion group, one squadron of fighter aircraft, a flight of tactical transport aircraft, a communications element and a headquarters element.

The White Paper contemplates that the former organization - the Main Contingency Force (MCF) - would number on the order of 10,000 personnel, a commitment that could not be sustained without altering the existing structure of the Canadian Forces. The latter commitment, the Vanguard, is expected to number approximately 4,000 personnel, and is intended to be sustained indefinitely from within the extant total force structure.

At the same time, the White Paper established a new mobilization planning framework intended to define how the Canadian Forces will move as necessary from a peacetime to a wartime force posture. The new framework envisioned four stages of mobilization:

• Stage One ("Force Generation"), or all measures necessary to prepare elements of the forces to undertake new operational tasks, sustain and support them;
• Stage Two ("Force Enhancement"), or improvement of existing operational capabilities through the provision of additional resources without altering the permanent force structure of the defence establishment;
• Stage Three ("Force Expansion"), or enlargement of the establishment, including perhaps the formation of new units and purchase of new equipment, to meet the exigencies of a crisis; and finally,
• Stage Four ("National Mobilization"), or the mobilization of all of the nation's resources in response to a national emergency.

The force commitments laid out in the White Paper are intimately tied to the mobilization framework. These two policy imperatives - force commitments and the mobilization framework - have combined to drive two concurrent internal force development exercises, each of which will have significant implications for the force structure of the Defence Establishment.

The Mobilization Planning Framework

The creation of doctrine for mobilization planning is based entirely upon the four-stage planning framework described in the White Paper. In essence, the requirement to generate the Vanguard (sustained) and the Main Contingency Force (not sustained) from within the unaltered force structure demands a number of key assumptions. Among these are the requirement for stand-by forces (the Vanguard) to be drawn almost exclusively from the higher-readiness components of the Defence Establishment (the Regular Force); the need to leverage the Reserve Forces to provide the necessary depth and breadth of capability beyond Stage One; and the fact that the Defence Establishment is currently neither required nor funded to pursue detailed operational planning beyond Stage Two. Furthermore, the low probability of a crisis requiring national mobilization, and the likelihood that any such crisis would be preceded by months or years of strategic warning, has resulted in Government directing the Department not to expend resources in developing force structure or employment plans for Stage Four contingencies.

During the Cold War, Canada made well-defined and predictable force commitments to the common defence of NATO based on well-defined and predictable threats. The threat, and Canada's part in collective defence, were so well defined that it was possible to determine in advance not only what units would be required, but where they would be deployed, and where, in fact, individual trenches, weapon systems and defensive obstacles would be sited. This type of foreknowledge enabled the Department to conduct its contingency planning on the basis of long-established commitments and predictable scenarios.

For better or worse, this degree of surety no longer exists to guide the Department's planning staffs. The mercurial nature of the global security environment entirely precludes commitment-based planning simply because it is impossible to predict what type of forces will be necessary, and where or for how long they will be required. As a result, the Canadian Forces is required to maintain the widest possible range of capabilities in order to be able to cater to any conceivable crisis, and staffs are required to plan on the basis of what capabilities the defence establishment is able to contribute. This important shift in how the Department prepares to conduct its core business - from commitment-based to capability-based planning - is fundamental to the mobilization planning process.

The Mobilization Planning Framework will, in due time, become the Canadian Forces' Joint Doctrine on Mobilization. This will provide the strategic doctrine with which all mobilization activities will be congruent and complimentary. In its most basic form, the doctrine states that the CF will achieve Stage 1 and 2 mobilization tasks with standing forces, augmented by Reserves (with a planning figure, approved by Armed Forces Council, of approximately 20%). Relying on strategic warning, the Canadian Forces will expand to achieve Stage 3 and 4 objectives by activating reserve units, generating new units, and recruiting.

Throughout the mobilization spectrum, the Reserve component is expected to be able to add depth (or numbers) and breadth (or capabilities) to the Total Force structure in order to enable the Canadian Forces as a whole to achieve mobilization objectives as directed by the Government of Canada.

The Military Occupation Structure Review

The requirement for the Department to conduct detailed planning in support of Stages One and Two of mobilization (respectively, deployment and sustainment of the Vanguard, and deployment without sustainment of the Main Contingency Force) has enabled the MOS Review process to conduct a realistic and logical examination of the occupation structure of the Regular force component. Simply put, the MOS Review fixed the force commitments made in the White Paper for the first two stages of mobilization as the fundamental factor driving the Regular force occupational structure, with a view to reducing the overall number of military occupations, amalgamating or eliminating small or non-viable occupations, and determining which functions do, and do not, need to be performed by uniformed personnel.

Based on direction provided by Armed forces Council (AFC) in September of 1998, the MOS Review was able to proceed in accordance with the aforementioned strategic planning assumptions; with the foreknowledge that readiness levels stated in the White Paper would have to be reviewed; with AFC approval for the use of Reserve Force personnel in contingency operations plans; and with support for an Alternate Service Delivery (ASD) approach in staffing the National Level Unit (NLU) positions. Working from the probable commitments in Stages One and Two of mobilization as specified in the White Paper, the Review first attempted to sub-divide the overall manning requirements. Core personnel were defined as those required to fill positions in the Vanguard and MCF, with the remainder of the Defence Establishment designated Non-Core. Non-Core positions were then sub-divided into Military Essential positions, or those which must be filled by a uniformed member of the Canadian Forces, and Non-Military Essential positions, or those which do not necessarily need to be filled by a uniformed member.

Simple arithmetic enabled the Review to determine that the Vanguard required a minimum manning establishment of 4,333 personnel in order to fulfil its operational mission, a number that proved to be not too far off the White Paper estimate of 4,000. The MCF, once all Core positions were counted, was found to require some 12,000 personnel, or 20% more than the White Paper estimate of 10,000. Once the necessary guaranteeing factors (to account for personnel on leave, ill or on training), home-away ratios (to account for personnel not employed in operational units), and national command, support, training and infrastructure factors were applied, a Regular Force structure of approximately 60,000 personnel was arrived at. While this calculus served to validate the CF manning level set forth in the White Paper, it allowed more important conclusions to be drawn concerning the Reserve force.

With the AFC decision to fill up to 20% of the MCF positions with Reserve personnel, it was possible to use the same arithmetical process to determine what kind of capability the Reserve component would be required to supply in Stage Two of mobilization. 17.2% of the MCF, or 2,071 positions in total were allocated to the Reserve (the vast majority being in the Army and NLU portions of the structure). Applying a 5:1 Reserve availability factor, and allowing for a Reserve command and control structure, it could be concluded that a total Reserve Force structure of not less than 18,000 personnel is necessary simply to meet the requirements of the MCF.

In June of 1999, the results of the MOS Review were presented to and approved by the MOS Steering Committee. A considerable amount of follow-up action remains to be completed, but the most important conceptual conclusions are clear, and remain to guide the force development process: first, that although the Regular Force component is capable of meeting the requirements of Stage One mobilization with only minimal Reserve participation, the Defence Establishment cannot achieve Stage Two without extensive use of the Reserves. This conclusion - that the Reserve is a critical element of the end-state of Stage Two mobilization - precludes planning for Reserve employment only in Stages Three and Four, and designing force structures solely with this in mind. The MOS Review demonstrates more convincingly than any polemic the urgent requirement to bring all components of the Total Force into line with the Mobilization Planning Framework in order to achieve the operational capability mandated by policy.