The Canadian Special Operations Regiment

A post at Castle Argghhh! linked to this National Post article on the new Canadian Special Operations Regiment:

Canada's newest special forces unit began training its first soldiers this week, gearing up at a breakneck pace to prepare for a first mission that could come as early as August and send the Canadian Special Operations Regiment to a hot spot anywhere in the world with only a few hours' notice.

The National Post was given an exclusive look at the first soldiers of this elite unit, the first new regiment formed by the Canadian army since the ill-fated Airborne Regiment was created in the 1960s.

But Lieutenant-Colonel Jamie Hammond, the regiment's first commander and a former Airborne officer himself, says the new unit will not be anything like the Airborne Regiment, which was disbanded in 1995 in the wake of the Somalia scandal.

"We don't want Rambos here," he says during a break in the demanding training regimen this week. "In fact, we're looking to weed out the Rambos. We want quiet professionals."

Lt.-Col. Hammond insists that his new unit is much more than just a battalion of paratroopers. The regiment will all be trained to parachute into action, but he says with a shrug: "That's just another way to get to work."

John, the Castellan of Argghhh!, points out the potential for problems if the regiment's missions are not clearly defined and carefully planned:

There's a reason we keep the Rangers and the SOF as separate elements, aside from the obvious reality of we can afford to. One would hope, however, if they are going to train them up as thoroughly and expensively as SOF personnel, they don't get used a lot as conventional high quality infantry — not just a less-than-optimum use of resources (if you need the infantry, you probably also need the SOF) but if you get 'em killed doing grunt work, they aren't there to do SOF work.

Of course, most Canadians are still in that little dream world where soldiers are only there for peacekeeping and never actually fire their weapons or are in the firing line when others are firing. The idea of the JTF2 and the new CSOR getting involved in combat operations is still an unwelcome, foreign notion. Canadian public opinion took a nice long vacation from diplomatic and military reality between 1991 and 2005.