Vanguard Magazine

Each use case spoke to a major area of warfare capability: anti-air warfare, anti-surface warfare, underwater warfare, communications and information systems, cyber, and overall systems integration. This approach was a deliberate one, as the RCN's ultimate goal is to ensure that the ship that is proposed to be built will provide the Navy with the capabilities it needs to succeed in future missions on behalf of Canadians. DELIVERING ON THE REQUIREMENT Once agreed at the government level, the next step is getting the approved require- ments from the RCN into the hands of industry. To do this, a procurement strat- egy is developed and a formal competitive process is run to ensure a fair, open, and transparent competition for all interested industry players. At the heart of the strat- egy is what is formally known as a Request for Proposals (RFP), which is the package that provides all necessary information to industry so it understands what is being requested, explaining how bid submis- sions will be evaluated and detailing how bid performance will be verified. The RFP makes it very clear how a bid will be evalu- ated and scored, and what other steps may have to be taken before it is selected as the "winning" bid. As a key component of this overall evaluation effort, the RCN used a series of six supporting use cases for the future Canadian Surface Combatant. Each use case spoke to a major area of warfare capability: anti-air warfare, anti- surface warfare, underwater warfare, com- munications and information systems, cyber, and overall systems integration. This approach was a deliberate one, as the RCN's ultimate goal is to ensure that the ship that is proposed to be built will pro- vide the Navy with the capabilities it needs to succeed in future missions on behalf of Canadians. Each use case described a va- riety of scenarios that the ship will be ex- pected to successfully face, so as to achieve its mission. For example, the anti-air war- fare use case includes a number of scenari- os where the ship would need to survive a series of missile attacks against it. In general terms, the use case is the means whereby, without specifying a so- lution to industry, the Navy tells industry what operational performance outcomes it is looking for. As the ship is designed, these use cases will continue to help guide model-based systems engineering analy- sis work, while also supporting advanced high-fidelity modelling and simulation. The use cases not only provide a level of transparency to industry about what is ultimately required but also a greater as- surance for the Navy that the ship, once delivered, will perform as expected. CONCLUSION For the RCN, the inclusion of use cases in the Canadian Surface Combatant proj- ect represents a modern and innovative approach to striking the balance between defining everything the Navy needs to an excruciating level of detail and allow- ing industry the freedom to develop and propose their own unique solutions to the challenges highlighted in the use cases. This balance is far from a perfect science and there are indeed shades of gray but peering decades into the future is also an art – and solutions are never black and white. In the end, by adopting a use case approach to the defence procurement pro- cess, the RCN is ensuring a higher level of flexibility to permit world-class indus- try players to pull together and to propose leading-edge, innovative, and achievable solutions, so that tomorrow's sailors will have the equipment they need to get the mission done. This article was provided by the Royal Canadian Navy. 30 FEBRUARY/MARCH 2021 www.vanguardcanada.com NAVAL Photo: Lockheed Martin Canada

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