Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/111458
L Land Force our allies, to be linked in with the other warfare centres. You're right, they are the folks that own this, that think about how we are going to link the positioning to the aligning to the transforming. I think what I've learned most over the past decade or so is the importance of the nonlethal side of operations. And that is of particular importance in how you shape the battle space, how you shape populations, how you shape the thinking of the enemy and the willingness of a coalition. And that is another aspect that I challenged the warfare centre to be able to advise on. Q Given the importance of the Reserves in Afghanistan, are you cataloguing their civilian skills in a way that would allow you to "plug and play" them in that nonlethal side of operations? That's a key point. The army and the CF own the responsibility to train and challenge leaders so that they become thinking, adaptive leaders that are prepared to innovate, use their imagination and take risk. Those are still challenges inside our military. But I'm confident that we can overcome those. There is more emphasis being placed on collective training. I can teach a young commander things in a class room, but he needs to experience it. So we need to be able to provide him the challenge to experiment, to try, to innovate, to fail – and to succeed. Some of those things are not part of our culture. Failing is not part of our culture. But the best lessons come from trying something that didn't work. I'm confident that we are moving down that road. As we move from "position" for 2013 to "align" in 2016 and "transform" in 2021, we'll have leaders that are able to make tough calls based on good experience and on a level of innovation and trust. Q Are you able to developed that kind of thinking through exercises like JOINTEX, not just for your leaders but also your young soldiers who will have a strategic role in dispersed operations? They will get that opportunity. I think JOINTEX is very important for the army and the CF. There is a whole generation of soldiers that are really good at counterinsurgency. They need to be broadened to understand the other elements of fighting a nearpeer enemy while they remain alert to the challenges of counterinsurgency, of organized crime, of the benefit of working with the UN and nongovernmental organizations. We won't go anywhere unless we are part of a coalition, so they need an awareness of the capabilities a multinational group brings to the battle space. It's venues like JOINTEX that allow the soldier to play and experiment with those other parts of our force. Q You have recently amalgamated the various pieces of the Canadian Army Land Warfare Centre into one organization. The centre has been the architect of some of the thinking around ADO and Force 2021. What are you asking of the warfare centre as you move forward? I've challenged them to look to tomorrow, to be alert to advances in technologies, in approaches to warfare, to be linked in with 14 FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013 www.vanguardcanada.com The short answer is yes, particularly in what we call the Influence Activities Task Force. Professional civilian skills, coupled with their military experiences, provide such a rich opportunity for us. I think there are some capabilities that can be resident inside the Reserve force. The Arctic Response Company Groups and Territorial Battalion Groups are part of the Reserve force and give a strong operational focus to the Reserves to maintain operations at the battalion group level as well as in the winter in the Arctic at the company group level. Q You have significantly increased the number of Arctic exercises in the past few years. How does Arctic training align with what you are trying to establish with Force 2021? Right now, it's about a renewed confidence to operate in the Arctic. We have a generation that feels really confident in arid cadpat and are a-ok in woodland cadpat, but less so when we put on the whites. So the emphasis is on building understanding of our equipment and how we operate in the North. We are also making progress in our relationships with northern communities through the Rangers. The next step is the military's role within Canada's future strategy for the Arctic: what infrastructure needs are necessary? How strong are the linkages with the communities in the North? We are about to open the Arctic training centre in Resolute Bay, a cooperative venture with Natural Resources Canada, essentially a company-plus base from which you can preposition equipment and operate. It is also key to managing costs, which is another issue. It costs five times more to train in the Arctic as it does in southern Canada. Q Are you going to have difficulty doing all of this varied training while dealing with budget cuts – about 22 percent at this point? There is a fair bit of ambition here. The ambition is aligned with the expectation over the budget. We have to do our share. The army is delivering the exact amount of readiness that the government and the CF have asked for in the Canada First Defence Strategy. We balance our level of ambition to train in the south and to exercise in the North with our partners. Also, adaptive dispersed operations is over years, so it is that budget over years that we pay attention to.