Vanguard Magazine

20 AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2024 www.vanguardcanada.com Q Are there any other initiatives that you would like to share with our reader- ship? The part we play in some ongoing experi- mentation exercise pieces with our major international partnership alliances is im- portant. We at the Warfare Centre are the national lead and coordinator for a few things. One is an event called Bold Quest. A U.S. joint staff has led this effort that has been around for quite some time and re- ally started with how to get information from sensors to the people that shoot things, so they are able to hit targets as quickly as possible. It's all about modern- ization for the army, the sensor-to-shoot- er link, how we share data across key Five Eyes partners to get our different intel- ligence, surveillance, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) sensors to feed computers to go to our different networks across different coun- tries to then feed into standard artillery, HIMARS or other weapon systems. How do we deliver facts effectively? That's what we started with. And so, we're integrated into that because our experimental net- works are connected to that experimental community. Our Canadian Special Operations Forc- es Command has folks doing activities as part of their force development in that we've got parts of the Air Force, parts of the armies, and the Joint Fires Mod- ernization Project connected to it. It's an exceptional opportunity alongside key partners and allies to do data integration. And then from there, how do we feed that back into a higher headquarters. They all have tactical-level objectives they wish to achieve. And the question for us is, can we send this type of data from this platform and have it go across multiple gateways from Canada to the United Kingdom or the U.S. so they can see it and they can task one of their as- sets or their secret network to be able to deliver effects? It is very complicated and we're playing a part in being that orches- trator of technical things in the middle. It helps us understand how to be better partners and allies. That's one initiative. On the NATO side is the Coalition Warrior Interoper- ability Exercise (CWIX). We're the na- tional lead for that. CWIX is an annual NATO Military Committee-approved event designed to bring about continu- ous improvement in interoperability. We've got 32 NATO nations plus a host of partners and partner nations partici- pating in 16 different focus areas and different domains doing data transfer data, interconnectivity between national systems and NATO systems. And again, how does NATO get ready to be multi- domain operations-capable and achieve its digital transformation goals by 2030? We're part of that. Q Do you have any final remarks you'd like to share with our readers? I'm blessed to be surrounded by a team of incredibly smart human beings. Whether that's my scientist from Defence Research & Development Canada, my CAF mem- bers who have the entire range of opera- tional and professional experience, or the defence team members from the public service side or my folks that are here un- der different contracts as industry experts or subject matter experts. It's that fusion of talented people bringing together that wide swath of expertise that allows us to be successful. it was being figured out. I was there with it, and so there's that comfort with it. I look at my 19-year-old son who doesn't know a world without smartphones. And when I think about that and that fundamental shift in technology, I know that should he choose to join the Canadian Forces today he would be terribly upset with where we were at in some of our technology. In his world, there's probably an app that fixes all issues. Then I think of the people who didn't have cell phones when they joined the Canadian Forces. A lot of those people are today in very senior leadership posi- tions. Part of what we must do is make commanders comfortable with the rapid change of technology and give them a sense of trust that all the crazy things we're building in the lab aren't going to turn into Skynet from The Terminator movies, and that AI is not going to make all the deci- sions for them. I can understand the fear, but I also know that in 10 years we will need to have adapt- ed completely different processes and tech- nological integration capabilities or we will not have decision superiority over our ad- versaries. I'm not trying to break the rules and we're not trying to break the Internet and we're not trying to do those things, but the adversaries are the adversaries. I N T E R V I E W Coalition Warrior Interoperability Exercise (CWIX). Photo: NATO

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