Creating specific TAOR's?

[Argyll]

Would it be a good thing to have regular Army units adopt the same TAOR's as Special forces Groups?

I'm think along the lines of the Middle East,where regular Infantry units could learn basic Arabic,and more education as to cultural differences?

Working on say a 5-6 year roulement deployments with 5-6 other Infantry Groups?

[marktigger]

in the British army??

they've tried the desert, jungle and mountain specialists in the lt role bns but to how much success.
The concept is fine just the UK military is to small to do that anymore. Allowing more access to courses like languages might be useful and developing a desert training package further would be a good idea.
Talking to some older soldiers who had a few desert deployments under their belts they felt alot of corporate knowledge had been lost. But that this was more due to the MOD policy of the only war we'll fight being on the North German plain. So nothing changes there then.

[Argyll]

Sorry Mark,I meant for the US Army,as it has the Manpower to do this,we unfortunately don't!

[marktigger]

yep unfortunatley.

But i stand by what i said we need to broaden the training enviroments of our soldiers.

Jungle in Belize/Brunei is good
mountain arctic in scotland/norway has scaled down
desert in Oman
savanah in Kenya

we need troops to go on foreign exercises more often including reserves and things like languages training to be more formalised and possibly developed as distance learning.

Even operating different types of units in thease enviroments like Mech or Armoured inf in Kenya or Norway maybe even Belize cause god only knows where Tone will send us next.

warriors doing MOUT in Belfast would be fun ;)

[Argyll]

I agree 100% Mark

Sending UK troops to work with other nations troops in specific areas,for more than a 3 week exercise as well,send them for 3-4 months.

I doubt Jungle Warfare will ever happen again,to the extent it did in the 60's,with the advent of things like MOAB's and daisy cutters,there would not be much Jungle left,however it is handy for anti terror/insurgent Ops

[Ballistic]

Where I work (computer store) we have a fairly regular customer base of military personell, whether it be for entertainment or education software, alot of the guys tend to pick up the language software we have and teach themselves at home. Apparently they are good for a quick and easy basic look into the languages you want (and ofcourse a more involved look if you want)....it comes as no suprise that the biggest seller among them has been Arabic lately.

[marktigger]

unfortunatley you get into alot of G1 issues then. Agreed that 3-4 months would be a great Idea. It would eliminate Non mobilised reserves which is a shame as they will get pulled in as soon as we have to gear up for war.
The UK Army is to small and with the idea of dropping an armoured bde it will be harder on the warrior bns. We need to round up the army to 3 of each type of bde.

[Royal]

It makes sense, but as has already been said, UK PLC is too small now.

On the language front - it depends on the level required. As an example, it takes between 9 and 24 months solid study to produce an interpretter (depending on the language). The usual 3 month 'colloqial' course is bugger all use for anything other than ordering coffee.