More than 100 Canadian Army Reservists recently gathered
at 4th Canadian Division Training Centre
near Meaford, Ontario for exercise Highland Bomber II.
Today we're joined by the unit Operations Officer
and key planner of this joint exercise,
Captain Rhys Stevenson
of the Royal Highland Fusiliers of Canada, to tell us more.
Thanks for joining us today, Captain Stevenson.
I want to start out by asking
what did this training focus on and what made it stand out
from regular reservist training events?
Well this particular exercise is actually a series of exercises
whereby we synchronize our collective training schedules
between combat units, combat support units,
and combat service support units.
As you can imagine this required
a whole lot of planning an effort
and involved a lot more moving parts
than what would normally be expected from a Reserve exercise
from just one single unit.
On this exercise we actually had 5 Reserve units from 31 Brigade.
They were all working together
to achieve their annual training objectives,
but also collectively working together to achieve
a much higher level
than what was expected from our commanders.
What are some of the benefits
of having these different units working together
for combined training like this?
The benefits from conducting training like this stem
from trying to tackle the problems associated
with P Res training.
One of the problems we have is not having the right people
on the right exercises and what we've done
in synchronizing our training
is trying to enable these people to be on collective exercises
and having engaging training for those individuals.
At the same time, having enough people available
to do the background, catch-up training such that,
at the end of our collective training
all units are able to participate
because enough people have attended collective exercises
and achieved their threshold training.
What's the likelihood of these units training
and working together again in the future?
It's very probable, in that we're currently planning
with the same units and possibly some other units
in our operational plan for next year.
In that, we hope to garner a lot of the efficiencies
and continue this momentum that we have
as well as trying to fix some of the problems we've addressed
through our after-action reviews.
Anything you'd like to add?
Yes, I'd like to thank the Grey & Simcoe Foresters,
11 Field Artillery, 31 Service Battalion,
and 23 Field Ambulance for their participation
on all of these exercises.
We would not have been able to do it
without their participation and support.
Thank you very much to them.
Thanks for joining us today, Captain Stevenson.
Thanks very much for having me.
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