The Canadian Airborne Regiment

Canadian Airborne Regiment
Cap badge of The Canadian Airborne Regiment
Active	8 April 1968 – 1 September 1995
Country	Canada
Branch	Army
Type	Special Operations
Role	Direct Action Reconnaissance Search and Rescue as part of Canada's Major Air Disaster (MAJAID) response plan.
Size	Approx. 600 members
Part of	Royal Canadian Infantry Corps
Garrison/HQ	CFB Petawawa
Motto(s)	Ex coelis (From the Clouds)
March	The Longest Day
Commanders
Colonel in Chief	HRH The Duke of York

Direct Action

Reconnaissance

The Canadian Airborne Regiment (French: Régiment aéroporté canadien) was a Canadian Forces formation created on April 8, 1968. It was not an administrative regiment in the commonly accepted British Commonwealth sense, but rather a tactical formation manned from other regiments and branches. It was disbanded in 1995 after the Somalia Affair.

The main proponent of the Airborne was General Jean Victor Allard who, as commander of the Army (i.e. Mobile Command) and then Chief of Defence Staff, created it between 1965 and 1968 as a large rapid-reaction, light mobile force, suitable for overseas brigade-size missions. It was designed as a flexible short-term immediate response available to the government when it accepted an overseas reinforcement or intervention mission within NATO, or elsewhere. It would be replaced in a brigade's proposed mission area, after no more than a few weeks, once the main body of a heavier brigade was mobilized and transported with its fighting vehicles and support to the area. (See Gen. Allard's memoirs, Chap. 12.)

Over time, and a succession of chiefs of defence, the Airborne remained an object of conflicting concepts of operations, military structure and linguistic identity. Originally designed as a quick-reaction immediate-response force that could, if absolutely necessary, use parachutes, it was quickly transformed into a highly specialized parachute force, to be used for special parachute missions in the regular order of battle. (See Allard's memoirs.) This, in turn, created controversy since there was no accepted requirement for such a Canadian Forces capability in operational plans, other than the rather pedestrian task of jumping into remote locations in the Canadian Arctic.

The original concept of the Airborne envisaged a rotation of young infantry soldiers and officers through its units, serving a maximum of two years. It was to be an essential and exciting posting for all young infantry leaders prior to their promotion to sergeant or captain in their own regiment. Allard wrote: "this regiment would not reflect the identity of a Victorian-era regiment because its members would serve in it for only a short period (Chap 12)." However, under Allard's successors, the Airborne became instead another separate regiment, specializing in parachuting, and keeping its members for as long as possible. It adopted all the symbols of a line regiment, including badges, colours, and history (creating a historical link with Canadian war-time parachute battalions). In particular, it sought to replace the identity of its members from Canada's line regiments with that of the Airborne. This aborted the original operational purpose of the Airborne and, significantly, planted the seeds of an ongoing conflict of identity and loyalty within the Canadian infantry family. Allard wrote that "those who took this route showed an absolute ignorance of the requirement for quick-reaction in today's world."