Vanguard Magazine

20 APRIL/MAY 2022 www.vanguardcanada.com INTERVIEW DIGITALIZED BY TERRI PAVELIC THE WAY OF THE FUTURE AN INTERVIEW WITH BGEN CHRIS C. AYOTTE, CHIEF OF STAFF ARMY, STRATEGY, CANADIAN ARMY C ontinuing from the Q&A session featured in the June/ July 2021 issue, BGen Chris C. Ayotte, Army Chief of Staff for Strategy and Senior Force Development Army Leader, spoke with the Vanguard team regarding updates on the Canadian Army Modernization Strategy (CAMS). CAMS outlines the numerous evolving challenges in defence, and empha- sizes the multi-horizontal initiatives that must take place to modernize the Canadian Army in the context of these challenges. The strategy is built on Canada's defence policy: Strong, Secure, Engaged. An instrumental figure to the concep- tualization of CAMS, BGen Ayotte is set to retire in July 2022. In the following interview, he delves into topics such as the Army's digitalization efforts made thus far, required levels of readiness and various training supports implemented to embrace a digital future. C4 and Joint Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance frameworks, and this initiative will ensure close support interoperability is factored at the onset of the Canadian Army capi- tal programme. Please describe the army's progress on Command Support Integration. The Army has been working closely with the overall CAF efforts to ensure strategy alignment. The relatively new CAF Chief of Combat Systems Integration (CCSI) organization has a mandate to develop the CAF Digital Campaign Plan and ensure, through oversight and coordination, that future capabilities delivered by various proj- ects are digitally interoperable at the joint level. The team building the Army Digital Strategy, as well as the Project Directors of our Land Integrated Command and Control System (previously C4ISR) family of projects, have been working closely with the CCSI team to ensure that our initiatives in the digital space, including these major capital projects, consider joint interoper- ability up front as detailed requirements are being developed. Q The CAMS and participants in C4ISR and Beyond working groups have spoken of government-industry partner- ships, and allied militaries have benefited from such relationships. What assistance could industry provide to the Canadian Army to encourage and enable digital innovation? Digital Transformation Q Provide a progress update on the Canadian Army digitalization road map. There's no doubt I would like to be further ahead in our digital journey, but the last 18 months have challenged our efforts with a variety of other priorities. Regardless of these challenges, we wanted to start our digital transformation well which drove us to invest a considerable amount of time in trying to understand how ready the Army was for this transformation. We discovered that our first step needed to focus on rais- ing the level of understanding as to why digital is critical to Army modernization. Our soon to be released Canadian Army Digital Strategy is an important compo- nent of our effort to raise the understand- ing of the force as to why digital is the vital ground of our modernization efforts. The recent presentation of the strategy to Army leadership at Army Council was met with overwhelming support which establishes a common understanding and approach for the entire Army. With Army Council's full endorsement, and once this strategy is published, we'll focus on building the road map to drive tangible, funded actions to move us towards the Digital Army. Q We understand that the Command Support Integration initiative will develop an overarching strategy to achieve long-term Canadian Army C4ISR vision, nested within the CAF

• Cover