The Canadian Forces and re-inventing the wheel.

Three stories focused on the Canadian Forces in the past couple of days left me scratching my noggin for a while. First, this. (All emphasis mine)

The Canadian military may soon begin accepting recruits who bring along a note from their doctor saying they're fit for military service, says the officer in charge of recruiting for the Canadian Forces.

Well, actually, Colonel, that's what used to happen back in the day and it was stopped because, gee whiz, one doctor views medical fitness for military or naval service as something different from another doctor.

In any case, way back when, I had to bring a summary of my medical history from my doctor before any personnel selection process was started. I know it was the RCN but that's a minor point.

Medical checks for new recruits currently are slowed by the forces' shortage of physicians, but Col. Kevin Cotten said yesterday that turning to recruits' own doctors may be the solution.

Two things here. The CF Medical Services have perhaps the best trained Physician Assistants in the world. A shortage of physicians could easily be made up by employing those PAs, advancing a few more of them to training and creating positions beyond the independent-duty PA in ships. Just a thought.

The other issue is that a civilian doctor is going to charge a recruit a fee for service to complete a questionnaire and write a letter. It's not covered under provincial medical plans. Is the CF recruiting system going to pay for this?

"Let's say we made a requirement to walk in with a questionnaire and a signed letter from a doctor," Cotten said in a telephone interview from CFB Borden. "We would take that at face value as our initial medical assessment."

Nope. The prospective recruit pays. This raises other issues. Commercial air pilots and merchant mariners are required to have regular medicals and they can't get them done by their family physicians. Those government licenced occupations must attend a Transport Canada approved physician to complete the required medicals.

There is definitely a problem. When I joined I walked into a recruiting office on day one. On day twelve I was on my way to New Entry Training. The current recruiting system can take up to a year.

Another issue is security clearances. And, here's the solution.

Security checks could be done soon after new recruits were enrolled; candidates could be subsequently ditched if a problem were found.

"Maybe we take some risk on the front end," Cotten said. "With a little bit of process, a good interview ... some verifiable background checks and you get a pretty good sense of who you are dealing with."

If anyone thinks that is an innovative approach they're dead wrong. That is what used to happen. In past years a recruit normally received a reliability check while undergoing recruit training. There is little in the way of sensitive information made available until the individual moves into basic occupation training and even then, it is a few selected occupations which require any more than a basic reliability check to complete the first trade course. In the past most people were into the first trades training course of their career before a security check was completed.

Re-invention of the wheel.

Next on the menu is this.

Proposals to boost flagging recruitment levels mean soldiers may no longer have to be Canadian citizens before they enlist in the Forces, military officials revealed this week.

So, I rooted through all the documents I kept throughout my career, including the ones I requested after leaving the service. On the application for entry into the service I could have checked-off, Canadian Citizen, Commonwealth Citizen, British Subject, Landed Immigrant. All were eligible to join any of the three services at the time. (I know... the Earth was a little flatter then, but it was still Canada.)

Why did they change to this?

Cheap and easy, that's why.

Aside from the fact that we could, perhaps, employ a battalion of these guys, this is actually a return to a prior standard. It's not new.

The last item of interest was this one.

Recent military operations in the Arctic have exposed weaknesses in how the navy, army and air force work together and suggest the military is still only equipped to fight a Cold War that ended years ago, top officers acknowledge.

A problem-plagued landing of soldiers on a remote northern coastline from a navy frigate showed that the goal of the three services being able to operate seamlessly is still a ways off.

It pisses me off when I read stuff like that because it's just a replay of past events.

In 1967 a company of Queen's Own Rifles (when they were a regular force regiment) were to make a landing on Brooks Peninsula, Vancouver Island from the frigate HMCS Beacon Hill. The ensuing pandemonium was worth the price of admission. Violently seasick riflemen attempting to board wooden boats in rough weather to make a landing through the surf on a rocky shore. The after-action report detailed that the RCN did not have an amphibious capability, did not possess the proper landing vessels and the soldiers had been ill-prepared for the exercise.

It happened again in 1974 when an army combat leader course was being landed in Toquart Bay, Vancouver Island from the destroyer escort HMCS Gatineau. The ship left the Strait of Juan de Fuca and encountered storm-force winds. Aside from storm damage to the ship, the soldiers were violently ill and although the debarkation eventually took place in calm water the men had not recovered properly. Getting into the boats they dropped gear over the side including seven rifles.

The navy has long known the problem with attempting amphibious landing from destroyers and frigates. In 1987 the Kernel Potlatch exercises again demonstrated the difficulty of such operations.

And there have been plenty more.

"This is a new sort of operation for the navy," said Col. Chris Whitecross, commander of the military in the Arctic. "We donÂ’t necessarily do it all that often in terms of taking folks off the ship and inserting them onto the land."

No, Colonel, it's new to you. The results have always been the same.

This from Commander Paul Dempsey, captain of HMCS Montreal:

HMCS Montreal has proven highly effective at stopping and searching ships in the Persian Gulf. But the navy was built for "blue-water" operations in the deep seas, Dempsey said, not necessarily to operate around coastlines.

As security threats to Canada shift from submarine and nuclear attacks to terrorism on the ground, the navy will have to shift as well, Dempsey said.

And that would involve a new type of ship. Perhaps a combat support ship and the appropriate landing vessels. Not armed icebreakers.

But then, that's been known for a long time too.

It's easy to see what's causing this re-invention of the wheel in the CF: lack of corporate knowledge.

It's what happens when an established group is constantly being resized and reorganized. The corporate knowledge evaporates and the organization loses its memory.