Vanguard Magazine

18 AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2024 www.vanguardcanada.com capabilities and different experiments tied to PAN Domain Command and Control and other things. Q What does the Joint Warfare Centre do today? Our core mission is to enable decision su- periority for the Canadian Forces over its adversaries now and into the future. Ev- erything we're focused on is taking the decision-making space for senior leaders of the Canadian Forces at that operational level and finding ways that we can improve it and make it more efficient. I'm careful to not say AI-enabled decision making be- cause I don't want to get into that space too much. But the idea is that we are enabling decision makers to make key strategic-level and high-operational decisions in the most efficient manner possible. The questions we ask ourselves: Are we developing doc- trine for the future, and are we doing it fast enough? Are we looking at things from our joint research and analysis lens and applying different decision-making processes? Ultimately, I can put the work we're do- ing into sort of six groups. To start, we're employing the Joint Operations Fusion Lab, and I will talk more about what it is and what it does. We are working at the I N T E R V I E W technical level and the international part- nership level to enhance the future in- teroperability of the CAF with its partners and allies. We're working hard to evolve the conceptual component of the Canadi- an Forces. It's expensive to fly fighter jets and to repair ships, so we work in the space of what more we can do in a synthetic en- vironment, using computer-based train- ing and actual simulators, to prepare the joint force for the future without having to make those major capital expenditures involving refits or fuel. So, we're enabling and ensuring access to that experimental or synthetic environ- ment. I'm pushing the team hard to find ways for us to do doctrine development better in terms of how we can use to- day's technology to help us write doctrine aligned with partners and allies as opposed to how we've done it in the past. And then fundamentally, the last element is the key role we have in educating the joint force and what that really means from a training aspect. Q How do these six groups work together? They're not mutually exclusive, but they are exclusive in their focus. What we're try- ing to get is continuous digital improve- ment and enhanced capabilities. I want us to be more innovative and for CAF op- erations to have day zero interoperability with our partners and allies and achieve a dynamically integrated future. That's what we're trying to achieve as we put all those things together. Between our groups there's some overlap and some collabora- tion in this effort. Q You mentioned the Joint Operations Fusion Lab. What is the Fusion lab and what does it do? Explaining what the lab does - even when I describe it internally - is a complicated thing. Really, the Fusion Lab is meant to be - and I'll use this term - a firing range to test ideas and data and system integration at the operational level for strategic deci- sion making. We are trying to find ways to create a sandbox or an ecosystem for com- manders, operators, developers, and sub- ject matter experts to try things out. Try the unimaginable. Achieve the unimagina- ble That is what we are, that's the tagline. We do things that you can't do on live systems, on operational networks or in a war-fighting environment. This way we can be more horizontally aligned with our digital innovation efforts across the opera- tional, command and control, and intelli- gence spaces of the Canadian Forces. My key outcomes with the lab are to do things like accelerate our digital literacy or digital development, and the support structures The Joint Operations Fusion Lab (JOFL) at the ready within the Canadian Joint Warfare Centre in Ottawa, Ontario. Photo: DND The Canadian Joint Warfare Centre (CJWC). Photo: DND The Fusion Lab is meant to be - and I'll use this term - a firing range to test ideas and data and system integration at the operational level for strategic decision making.

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