Vanguard Magazine

22 APRIL/MAY 2023 www.vanguardcanada.com Q In the era of pan domain operations where position, navigation and time assuredness connects the movement of data and weapons through the domain, how do you foresee improving the CAF's Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) systems employed in the land domain? I think the key point is ramping up our ca- pacity on the cyber mission assurance side in parallel to building up our capacity on the digitalization side. And we're careful to call it "cyber mission assurance" because it's more than just cybersecurity. It's look- ing at the entire parameters of the mission, all the threat vectors that could come in and to make sure that things aren't being tampered with, and we can trust the data that we're using to make decisions. If I back up a little bit from this, I think the most important sentence in the entire digital transformation strategy talks about how winning in the battle space is actually winning in the decision space. And when you look at the history of warfare, it's full of examples of smaller, less powerful forces that had a decision advantage that were able to achieve surprise or react more quickly. This helped them prevail over larger forces. And I think Ukraine is a per- fect example. Ukraine right now benefits from a decision advantage because of the help of industry, because of the help of the West, because of the speed at which they could onboard new decision support tools. This is what's making the big difference. Yes, there's the will of the people and that they're defending their homeland, but the decision advantage is the huge one. And so, it's clear that technology must play an everincreasing role in producing the deci- sion advantage necessary to win. We have to learn how to use technol- ogy to go beyond human ability to make quick decisions. This isn't to say that hu- mans will cease making the decisions, but that the decisions will be better informed thanks to an investment in the technol- ogy and the training. Q What will success look like in 2023 and 2024? I'd say we already attained initial success with the publication of the digitalization strategy and by agreeing to set up the DDACSI as the driver of change and by as- signing projects into the DDACSI sphere In a year from now, success will be people are leaning towards the available digital decision-informing tools, seeing the value they bring and experiencing it firsthand. But this will be incremental. And we don't need to wait for it to be perfect. We just need to build it up little by little and let the momentum carry this forward. This process has been intentionally set up to achieve quick success or fast failure. The "aha" moment will be during Army Coun- cil where someone with authority was en- abled by data and digitalization efforts, to achieve proper decisions — when they see the benefits. Once that happens, we'll start to move faster and faster and faster. The bottom line is that we need to put more effort into digitalization because the speed of our decision making has to improve, as do the data points we use to make those decisions. And if we have the technology to gather, manage and pack- age the data we use to inform our actions, we can focus more on the actions them- selves. That's what matters. On the technology aspect of it, absolutely. But I wouldn't call them lessons learned right now because to learn, we'd need to go through the process and actually look what we saw, evaluate it, and then feed it back through so it becomes integrated as part of doctrine or equipment. That's when it's a lesson learned. I'd say now that it's more active observation. We have troops and officers watching closely and applying what they see to the way we do business. But like the Nagorno- Karabakh war in Azerbaijan and Armenia in 2020, I think the current Ukraine situation clearly shows that a military with a modi- cum of digitalization has a huge advantage over a military that is not leveraging digita- lization as much. The digitization mission we're beginning now, and the commitment we're making to industry to invite them to join us as partners in our mission, will move us in the direction we want to go. The bottom line is that we need to put more effort into digitalization because the speed of our decision making has to improve, as do the data points we use to make those decisions. I N T E R V I E W MCpl Patrick Murphy, 2 R22eR reconnaissance platoon, sends data to the command post using a computer and a 117F radio. Photo: DND, Corporal Julie Turcotte

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