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TEWT
Tactical Exercise Without Troops
Total Force
The 1987 White Paper on defence policy, subtitled Challenge and
Commitments, called for many changes to Canadian defence policies,
including the revitalization of the Reserve Force. Many NATO nations had
undertaken measures in the 1980s to integrate reservists more
effectively into their militaries, finding they could reinforce and
support their regular forces while being less costly to maintain than a
large standing army. The "Total Force" concept was introduced where
reservists and Regular Force personnel would serve in the same unit.
Regional structures were changed and the creation of four Land Force
Areas helped facilitate this desired integration.
The nature of operations overseas, most notably UN duties in the former
Yugoslavia, highlighted a need for reservists to augment regular force
units deployed there. While the concept was nothing new - reservists had
long been augmenting other missions such as UNFICYP in Cyprus, for
example - the scale it was practiced on accelerated as the size of the
Yugoslavia mission grew to 2,000 soldiers.
The Office of the Auditor General reported in 1992 on the state of the
reserves, criticizing cost-effectiveness, promotion policies, and
training standards. In 1994, the Auditor General reported that some
recommendations made in 1992, regarding recruiting and training, had
been accepted, but that others had not and that the level of readiness
of reserve units remained low. Another examination was made in 1994,
this time by the Special Joint Committee of the Senate and the House of
Commons on Canada’s Defence Policy. The committee called in their report
for "a significant rationalization, reorganization and retasking of the
Reserve Forces" and a bolstering of "their training and equipment to
allow them to provide more effective support to the Regular Force, both
in Canada and overseas." They also recommended that that "the Reserve
Forces, and particularly the Militia, be refocused, as part of the Total
Force concept, as a genuinely useful supporting role, drawing to a much
greater degree on civilian skills."
The 1994 Defence White Paper reinforced the commitment to a Total Force
while at the same time calling for a reduction in strength of the
Primary Reserve from 29,400 to 23,000 (14,500 of these in the Militia,
the others being in the Naval, Communication and Air Reserves) and
claiming that improved quality in training would compensate for the
difference.
The practical effects of a Total Force concept was to make training
standards higher for reserve units, to match their Regular Force
counterparts. A small number of units were selected to include both
regular and reserve force personnel.
Turret
Down:
In armoured warfare, the
term turret-down refers to a position in which the vehicle's crew
can observe to their front from roof hatches, but the vehicle remains
completely hidden to view from the front. Hull-down refers to a
position taken up by an armoured fighting vehicle such that its hull is
behind a crest, raised ground or some other obstacle, but its turret or
roof-mounted weapon remains exposed, allowing it to observe and fire to
its front while protecting the body of the vehicle from enemy
observation and fire. A hull-down AFV is also referred to as being in
defilade.
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