The only conflating being done is by you.
you said
"In coping with it, it would be like any other short term detachment for operational duty, or someone going on leave"
You meant
"I mean 'detachment to go and do jobs elsewhere, be it course, augmentation for an exercise, detachment to go and work in another organisation for 6 weeks, or all manner of other operational duties that Soldiers can and do engage in"
Operations are operations, exercises are exercises, soldiers only engage on operational duties on operations and whatever way you dress it up there are not enough to go round no matter who gets half the week off.