Vanguard Magazine

18 JUNE/JULY 2024 www.vanguardcanada.com I N T E R V I E W Q The RCAF Modernization has jumped into the deep end of the digital age with investments in data-intensive platforms. How is the RCAF preparing for the delivery of these various platforms? That's a good question, because at the end of the day, the platforms we are buying are just big hoovers of data. Think about your home computer. It has a hard drive that's not connected to anything, and you are the only person who can access it. If we have the capabilities but can't get information to the decision makers then it's just an iso- lated hard drive that cannot contribute to the overall fight. We're responsible to get the data from our platforms back to an Air Force link. And what really counts is the ability to get it across our departments to our allies and partners. It's not just an Air Force requirement, it is a department requirement. When it comes to the Department of National De- fence, we just stood up a digital services group. We took the Chief Information Of- ficer Group and Digital Transformation Office, and we collapsed them into one. Today they're the Digital Services Group, which is responsible for creating that back- bone. This allows data to move across sys- tems, whether it's through AI or the cloud, to all the decision makers so they can make the most effective decisions in a timely fashion. That group is also responsible for a lot of our DevSecOps, as we call it, and devel- opment of apps and applications that will allow us to be more efficient and effective in our information flows. One example is a cloud-based product we've created that will allow our flight crews to plan all the in- formation they need to be able to do their mobility operations worldwide. They used to carry a briefcase full of documents. Now it's all on one digital platform that's acces- sible on their phones. We have an AI strategy. We've released licenses for AI applications that we are experimenting with to see how we can best leverage them. So, there's experi- mentation going on. They're really fo- cused on providing the governance, the framework, the standards and some of the bigger departmental IT and IM backbone pieces and then allowing us to be part of that, making sure that we follow that alignment but at the same time not tak- ing away from much of the work we've already done. Fortunately, this started be- fore I came into the seat, and we've been able to get after many things on the digi- tal development side. We recognize that the Air Force has taken a lead and that's because of some of the new things we're bringing into place. Q The RCAF Roadmap puts empha- sis on cross-cutting enablers such as Pan-Domain C2, Integration and In- teroperability and capitalizes on digital designs connected to C4ISR architecture for information dominance and decision superiority. What steps are currently underway to facilitate this transition? I'll give you one example. We just intro- duced cloud-based command and control, called CBC2. It is a cloud-based applica- tion that takes more than 700 feeds from different sensors around North America. Then it feeds into a classified cloud with filters that uses AI and machine learning. This provides a common operational pic- ture that is used by NORAD. It tells us exactly what's going on in the air, space, land and maritime domains, while work- ing on the cyber components as well. It also provides information to air battle managers, the people who are responsible for managing our airspace or launching our fighter and tanker assets. If there's a threat to North America, it points out the potential threats using algorithms. That means I no longer need to stare at the screen to see if there's a new dot that I didn't see a second ago. It's highlighted to me. Then more importantly, it gives manag- ers courses of action knowing what assets are available to them. If they select option one, it sends that information - and this part is still under development - directly to the fighter or tanker telling them what actions they need to take. And then once that's done, it tells them the next action to take. So, imagine a potential cruise missile attack in North America and you have limited assets to be able to do something with it. How do you prioritize that? How do you see it in the first place? How do you make sure that everybody monitor- ing it sees the same thing? And then what do you do about it? This does that for you through AI and machine learning. There's still a person in the loop that makes a deci- sion on this information, so there's a trust that must be built in the system and how it develops. The security situation has never been as dire now as it has been in my entire career. Unless we really get aer modernization in a concrete and urgent way, then we are at risk of falling behind and ultimately not being able to deter those who we wish to deter. Corporal Cristina Seffini is a traffic technician at 8 Wing Trenton. Photo: RCAF

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