The recent announcement that Canada would establish and lead a
rotational multinational NATO battlegroup, one of four to be provided as a reassurance measure
to smaller countries, more recent NATO members who feel threatened by a
perceived Russian military buildup, raises a number of questions
A
battlegroup in modern military
theory is the basic building block of an army's fighting force. A battlegroup
is formed around an infantry battalion or armoured regiment, which is usually
commanded by a lieutenant colonel. The
battalion also provides the command and staff element of a battlegroup, which
is complemented with an appropriate mix of armour, infantry and support
personnel and weaponry, relevant to the task it is expected to perform.
According
to Wikipedia a Commonwealth
battle group is usually named after its major constituent; for example, the
Canadian Army's "1st Battalion, The Royal Canadian Regiment Battle
Group" (shortened to "1 RCR Battle Group") on an operational
tour of duty in Afghanistan in 2007–08.
It
would require the army to rotate one of its infantry battalions and a
headquarters into the position once every six months, dependents would not be stationed “in country” as
was the case in the past with our decade’s long deployment of Fourth Brigade to
Germany.
The Canadian Army
currently uses a 36 month training cycle in which one of three brigades is at
full strength and completely available for one year while the other two are in
earlier stages of training. It is not clear if the battle group for NATO would
come from the ‘duty’ brigade, thereby lessening its ability to “generate, employ and sustain
combat ready combined arms forces to conduct operations at home and abroad” or
if it would come from a unit at a different stage of readiness.
It would also be easy
to get caught up in the question of just what equipment our troops would be
equipped with. One assumes that it would be a LAV equipped infantry battalion,
perhaps with a squadron of TAPV’s for reconnaissance.
An interested
onlooker would not find it difficult to think about just what else such a force
would need to have to be militarily viable. Items such as increase anti-tank
defences, TOW under armour
for example, fire support in the form of 81mm mortars carried in LAVs or TAPVs,
short range anti-aircraft weapons similarly mounted and some kind of short to
medium range reconnaissance drone such Scan Eagle are obvious choices.
The same onlooker
might also wonder if our procurement system is agile enough acquire any of
those items not now in the system in a reasonable length of time.
Questions about
rotation schedules and equipment, however, miss a far more important issue.
What is the
military rational of this force, particularly the Canadian contingent?
It
has been pointed out that the
deployment goes contrary to the NATO-Russia Founding Act signed in
1997 where the military alliance explicitly agreed not to station troops along
the Russian border in former satellite states.
Neither
Russia nor NATO has officially withdrawn from the treaty, which commits both
sides to “build together a lasting and inclusive peace in the Euro-Atlantic
area on the principles of democracy and cooperative security.”
But
NATO officials now argue Russia effectively tore up the treaty with the
annexation of Crimea and that it has a duty to defend new members, including
the Baltic states, Poland and Romania.
If the plan is to
signal Moscow, in a way that does not threaten them, that we will support our
new NATO military allies and that an attack on them is an attack on the
alliance at large, then how do we make that message credible.
If our forces are
not there simply to act as ‘speed bumps” for passing Russian armoured forces
then there must be a plan to reinforce or extract them in the event deterrence
fails and major hostilities occur. They must be equipped with the systems
necessary to provide, at the very least, for their own survival until such
actions can be taken.
Canada
assumes leading role for NATO's enhanced presence in Eastern and Central Europe
Battlegroup (army)
1 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group
Background –CF LAV
TUA (TOW - Under - Armour) Project
Canada’s
Baltic conundrum – Part 2
