Vanguard Magazine

Since its inception in 2017, The Joint Op- erations Symposium (JOS) has sought to lead important conversations on the major challenges facing the CAF and Defence. Vanguard Editor-in-Chief Terri Pavelic recently sat down with VAdm Bob Auchter- lonie, a key architect of the symposium, to delve into its origins, evolution, and its profound relevance in the contemporary landscape of global security. The conversa- tion also covered the lessons we've learned – and are continuing to learn - from the war in Ukraine. Q Thank you so much, Admiral, for taking the time to speak with me. I'd like to start by looking at where the sympo- sium has been and where it's going. How did it start, and what does the future look like? I've been involved with the symposium since the beginning. Back in 2017, when I was deputy commander, we started the Joint Operations Symposium as part of the broader JOINTEX series of operations. We were doing the large JOINTEX series of ex- ercises, and JOS was a professional military education component of that. Over the years, it's really grown and morphed. Today JOS is separated from JOINTEX. It's really for strategic leaders, a forum for us to talk about the national and international challenges we're seeing in the defence realm. Over the years, we've looked at our rela- tionship with NATO, and then to the num- ber of things that were happening through- out the pandemic. And then we started to look post pandemic at Canada's position, our national defence and how we're go- ing to adapt to great power competition. Last year, we brought that forward into how we're going to conduct continental defence. And this year we're looking at the operational challenges facing the CAF. So, we try to keep it fresh and relevant and bring senior leaders and security lead- ers, practitioners and other experts togeth- er to address the major challenges facing the broader defence team. This year was unique. We not only had the armed forces and several of our allies and partners there, but for the first time we brought the defence industry in, and we'll probably get to that more when we talk about lessons learned from Ukraine. So, as we develop the Symposium we ask ourselves "What are we talking about, and what do we need to be talking about?" And it's worked out. We're trying to keep current and bring in senior leaders to talk about things that are relevant today and that can be relevant for tomorrow. Q You mentioned that this year's Symposium was focusing on the Ukraine conflict, and you said that there were lessons learned from that. Can you share what those lessons are? We're seeing poly-crises across the globe. We have hot wars in Europe. We have hot wars in the Middle East. I don't need to go through that with you. You're tracking all these. This year's focus was broadly on the key lessons for allies and partners in the ongoing Ukraine conflict. There's a lot of things we can learn from this conflict. We're talking technology, sensors and autonomous platforms. We're seeing AI being used in space and cyber, and you're seeing all this evolve very rapid- ly on the battle space. It's showing us that digital transformation is crucial. I know this is an oversimplification, but we should take three points out of this. One is from keynote speaker Michael Kofman, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. One of the comments he made was to be careful to jump too early to conclusions. We don't want to draw the wrong lessons for the Western forces out of the Ukraine conflict because the two armies are different from ours. The second critical thing for me is the importance of bringing the defence-indus- trial complex into these discussions. It's necessary because armament and stock- piles are vital to any conflict moving for- ward. I think the third is making sure the indus- trial industry is tied in with our planning. The next six months will be crucial for the support of Ukraine. We're seeing Russia ramp up their production. Poland is rearm- ing. Germany is now having those discus- sions. A lot of our other allies in Europe are also having these discussions to ramp up production to make sure they're ready for any future conflict. So really, it's three key lessons, and making sure we're drawing the right lessons out of the conflict. www.vanguardcanada.com APRIL/MAY 2024 17 I N T E R V I E W

• Cover