Vanguard Magazine

A Transfer of Command Authority parade between outgoing enhanced Forward Presence (eFP) Battle Group (BG) Latvia, Lieutenant-Colonel (LCol) Trevor Norton and LCol Enno Kerckhoff takes place at Camp Adazi training area in Latvia on January 22, 2021. At the same time, our land forces, the NATO Enhanced Forward Presence in Latvia, they have integrated platforms as well and are operating with our allies. So, we're delivering this today, we have great interoperability and joint ISR with all our allies. 20 DECEMBER 2021/JANUARY 2022 www.vanguardcanada.com INTERVIEW command and have situational awareness here in Ottawa while other things are go- ing on, not only domestically, but around the world as we well. Q Where are you and our Forces in operations succeeding as well as challenged in interoperability -- Five Eyes, NATO, Tri-Command internationally/ continentally: and with OGDs and partners in public safety at home? VAdm Auchterlonie: We've talked about data because everything we're talking about is data, but in today's battle space data is the key enabler. And this is an area really for the Canadian Armed Forces and our al- lies to improve if we're going to succeed in operations and working together. You just mentioned interoperability with our Five Eyes, our NATO partners, with Tri-Com- mand, with the NORAD as well as OGDs and partners. The key issue is how do we share that data amongst all of us? We're a data driven society, and military operations are no different. We're in the process of upgrading our Aurora Fleet; it's going to deliver real time data to operation- al commanders to support decisions. The same time the Armed Forces are bringing on MAISR (Manned Airborne Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance) and oth- ers C4ISR assets. But we're all required to really continue to improve and support this improvement in technology. And we must improve the backend as well, making sure that our processes and our analysis back home are actually able to support things moving forward. Q Talking about data, one of the questions that always comes up is: What's our current capability to truly leverage the data we have? VAdm Auchterlonie: No one is good at that. This is something I think the globe has to work on. Moving forward, we have to leverage machine learning and AI to support us in that. Because there's so much data now available to us as commanders in every domain, not just in the military, this is across society, across all industry. There's so much data available to folks, no one can really harness that individually. You need to harness machine learning and AI to help you capture what that data means. Most people are saying, how much data do you actually use? It's usually 1 to 2 percent of all the data that's available. So how do you improve the amount of data you can ac- tually process and present to commanders or industry or anyone in a logical model where you can actually then derive some- thing from the data, as opposed to just having this massive amount of data that you cannot actually access or collate? We're working with our partners, ob- viously with the US, with our Five Eyes Partners and NATO to make sure we can work across the data domain, so making sure that data is relevant, is secure and is timely, and manageable. This is something we're looking closely at with our partners being led by the VCDS Group right now, which makes, perfect sense. So, it's being led within the, the Vice's office to make sure that the data strategy for the CAF moving forward is where we need to be. We have a DND/CAF Data Strategy, and that's really key; data needs to be a shared asset, it needs to be accessible, it needs to be secure, it needs to be trusted, and we need to manage that data ethically. We have a strategy and we've always made data driven decisions. What's changing is the manner and how fast we process it and what we do with it. This is a real challenge industry is trying to tackle for everyone, how do you manage all the information available to give decision makers, key in- formation that they need to make a deci- sion? You can have a mountain of data, but if you can't organize it and you can't syn- thesize it, then what can you do with it? That's the question. It's tough. It's tough across industry, across the military. The ad- vancement in technology is so rapid that to be able to coalesce all this is really key. Q There's quite a learning curve in trying to understand how we move forward in this, and nobody is an island. It certainly seems that partnerships are a very important thing. Do you see that as part of overcoming today's challenges and setting up for tomorrow's need to move forward? And how is that represented in new programs and projects like the NORAD modernization, and pan-domain C2? VAdm Auchterlonie: So you just hit on two things that are key to us moving for- ward. NORAD modernization obviously very topical right now being discussed by governments, pan-domain command and control, our major drivers for the Canada Armed Forces needs to be in the future. As,

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