Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/111458
Science & Technology S Emergency responders gearing up for an exercise scenario involving a radiological release. Photo: Janice Lang A catamaran unmanned surface vehicle (USV) uses sonar to survey the Gascoyne Inlet area near Devon Island, Nunavut. The USV is operated from a control station on board DRDC's research ship, the CFAV Quest. Photo: Janice Lang, DRDC our role in 2013. We are S&T advisors. Given that there has been a significant increase in capacity outside the walls of DND and DRDC, how do we become a knowledge integrator, tapping into the knowledge providers all around us. How do we increase the resilience of our Canadian S&T ecosystem? Our role is not to do all the science that DND requires; our role is to be a provider of knowledge and to focus our S&T efforts in areas that are strategic, sensitive, classified, where there is no other provider because the market is too small or there is no Canadian capacity. That exercise of reviewing our portfolio was helpful. We are also looking at how we operate. Can we be more efficient in how we conduct our business and make sure we invest all we can in our core mission? The DRAP exercise has forced us to think about who and where our partners are. We are having fantastic discussions with our Five Eyes partners – U.K., U.S., Australia and New Zealand – which are all facing similar challenges. And we're having very constructive discussions on mutual reliance to be smarter as a group of organizations – perhaps the Australians are better at something than we are, so we will work with them and not replicate their efforts and vise versa. Domestically, we're developing new tools to work with universities and industry to make it easier to mitigate some of the barriers that we have had in the past. S&T knowledge is inherently a very networked kind of business. Given the complexity of the challenges and the complexity of the S&T content of today's platforms, we need to be better at creating and operating in those networks of S&T knowledge than ever before. Q New partnerships were emphasized in DRDC's 2006 S&T strategy. Has DRAP and fiscal restraint forced you to place a greater priority on them? DRAP is certainly an incentive, but it is not an incentive that is exclusive to defence. The entire federal S&T system is wrestling with ways of being more nimble, more agile, working with partners outside the federal family. I am co-chair of the federal S&T integration board, which brings together 13 different departments and agencies that have S&T as one of their core mandates, and we are collectively looking at ways of addressing those barriers. For example, DRDC has broken new ground with CIHR (Canadian Institute for Health Research), which has a long track record of working with universities. So instead of creating new instruments and mechanisms, we've simply partnered with CIHR to have access to academic expertise in areas that are priorities for Defence. Q Does the convergence of technology – biotech, robotics, nanotech, etc – drive you to look across whatever barriers might exist between sectors and begin to pool resources and expertise? That's the beauty of DRDC. We are the integrator for DND/ CF. We collect the knowledge that is sitting outside and translate it or integrate it in a way that it makes sense. We're working with Public Safety Canada, which also requires S&T advise, and sometimes there is a fair amount of overlap or convergence in terms of problems. A nuclear incident in Kandahar is a CF problem, a nuclear incident in Calgary is a Public Safety issue, yet they rely on the same experts and knowledge pool. We need protection against pathogens in foreign operations, we need protection against influenza in Canada, so the technologies again are overlapping. Q At a recent conference you mentioned the need to look for "new knowledge." Where are you finding it? We have no choice but to look for new knowledge to be at the cutting edge. We continue to send our scientists to work with allies or to attend scientific conferences where the latest developments are discussed. That is our DNA, so to speak. And that is the value we bring to DND. We are the "no surprise" insurance policy for DND to understand how new threats are developing or how new www.vanguardcanada.com FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013 25