I think before having a conversation about placing the M777's with the reserve;a serious conversation needs to be had as to what role the reserve is to have in the ADF.
Do we have a defence force of just full and part / part time soldiers, or can we once and for all have a true ready reserve style force for the long term.
I don't have the answers, but have seem many attempts and combinations over the years.
Can the levels of proficiency we expect of the reserve Commando units be carried over to other Corps or regiments.
Using reserve Artillery of M777s as a microcosm for a future ADF across the trades.
Would they be a training capability only?
Would we expect them to deploy in high intensity operations?
Would we have separate reserve and regular units or a 50 /50 mix or some other combination.
Again I am positive to the concept as it reflects the current and future work place so see many opportunity's
Whatever course is taken, it must be for the long term and embraced by both the regulars and reserves and be fully supported financially and culturally across the service.
All the best with that challenge
Regards S.
My POV is that the Reserve is very useful - but only at the individual and small team (section / platoon level). With the current framework the Reserve simply can't sustain anything that requires a lot of collective training (outside of general mobilisation anyway). The utter failure of the reinforcing battlegroup to provide a meaningful capability (rather than just 400 blokes in uniform that happen to be in the same place at the same time) has made that pretty clear. Looking at the future, it is likely that the most useful role the Reserve can play is filling holes in regular units created by manning shortfalls.
For example, being a gun number on a gunline (punching bombs out of an M777) is not difficult. It doesn't take a lot of training to get good (enough) at it. All the difficult stuff in Joint Fires happens in the OPs, JFECC etc where the work out what to drop bombs on and how to do it. So while there is no way the Reserve could sustain something like a full battery at a remotely useful NTM, maintaining enough qualified gun numbers to augment a regular unit would be relatively simple. A battery construct that had all the difficult stuff manned by ARA, and four guns manned by ARA, with Reserves tasked to provide the warm bodies to man the last two guns when needed, would be entirely workable. Such a model could be used to augment all Regular units/capability.
For me the key thing is that the unit would still have to function only with ARA staff, without Reserves. The Reserves are there to take the capability from some acceptable minimum to some better level. Otherwise, your entire capability becomes dependent on whether Johnno can get next week off work or not. For an example of how it doesn't work, you only have to look at the Cavalry. The Cavalry is (or at least should be) a permanent combined arms team, where the recon scouts are fundamental to the capability. However, at the moment the ARA can't fit scouts within the manning cap, so the ARES have to provide scouts instead. While the scouts the ARES provide are generally okay skills wise, they are simply not there often enough or reliably enough to sustain a useful capability. My experience is that you put in more effort trying to get scouts, equip them, train them up, and integrate them into the troops than you actually get out of them in terms of capability. In other words, they are a net drain on capability. I only kept taking them on exercises to avoid rupturing the relationship with the ARES RAAC units.
Of course, as I've mentioned before, the biggest obstacle to any meaningful reform of the Reserve is their own leadership. Who wants to be a CO if all you do is give individual soldiers over to someone else to take to war?
