Vanguard Magazine

www.vanguardcanada.com APRIL/MAY 2021 15 Visit serco.com/na/canada to learn more. Thank you for the new vote of confidence, Canada. Serco Canada is proud to continue delivering critical site services at Canadian Forces Base, 5 Wing Goose Bay. For another 10-20 years, Serco will provide the Royal Canadian Air Force with support to NORAD operations and military training through aviation services, logistics and facilities management. We will ensure the base is operational 24/7, 365 days a year. We will support end-to-end service delivery and operational readiness thanks to our employees, communities and Indigenous partnerships. INTERVIEW Canada is a world-leader in space-based synthetic aperture radar earth observa- tion. This capability currently found in Radarsat2 and RCM, coupled with the Automatic Identification System (AIS), provides valuable and critical maritime domain awareness for Canada and our al- lies. DESSP is intended to further include Common Maritime Transmission func- tionality which will better enable users to locate, identify, and classify vessels at sea – highlighting potential threats, or assisting to locate those in distress. Q What are some of the capabilities that the RCAF is looking to industry to supply in the next few years and what are some of the capabilities that Canada is willing to outsource? This is a tough question to answer. The CAF has typically focused on specific op- erational capabilities when it comes to space. At the moment, we have projects on the books for SATCOM, Surveillance from Space, and Space situational aware- ness. These are systems that will deliver, enhance or supplement important opera- tional effects in support of Canadian and Allied operations worldwide. For other capabilities, such as GPS, we will contin- ue to partner with the US and like-mind- ed nations to achieve common operating systems and procedures, and economy of effort. Beyond that – it is extremely hard to forecast. The aforementioned rate of tech- nological change means that there will be solutions in the future that we can't be- gin to imagine today. Advances in AI and quantum computing will undoubtedly change how we collect, analyze, and dis- seminate data. And increased expansion of commercial interests will continue to re-frame how the CAF looks at capability delivery. Whether that results in an 'out- sourcing' model or practice is presently a novel concept, and remains to be seen. Q In closing, what are some of the programmes that the RCAF Space is coop- erating with the US Space Force and do we have Canadian officers serving with them? Canada cooperates with the US across the whole gamut of space operations in national security – whether that is through our longstanding partnership in NORAD, or through other alliance bodies that seek to leverage partner-na- tion strengths and capabilities. We work closely with the US Space Force in the Combined Space Operations initiative (CSpO), a 7-nation alliance that supports varied national operational requirements through shared intelligence, analysis, and space support requests (SSR). We will also be working with the US and other allies to help establish a new Space orga- nizational structure within NATO. We have Canadians working at all lev- els as part of these endeavours, and most recently we established a new Canadian General Officer billet working with USSF in Colorado Springs – currently filled by my predecessor, BGen Kevin Whale.

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