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The second and equally important part of this, is that we are doing a wholesale review of the structure of the Canadian Army. This is something that has been tried at various times over the past couple of decades, but frankly, for a lot of reasons we haven't been able to carry through with the changes that need to be made. That's everything from the Army head- quarters level, the division level, the for- mation level, right down to the units. MGen SMYTH: Much like General Wright mentioned, there's a massive amount of change com- ing to the RCAF. As I'm sure you're all aware, the last three successive defense policies, have outlined $155 billion- worth of investment into the RCAF over the next decade. That means about 360 of our approximately 430 aircraft will ei- ther be replaced or significantly upgraded in the coming years. In terms of satellite communications, many Canadians under- stand very well the challenges we have in communicating across vast distances. That means remote sensing – our ability to de- tect what's out there. And frankly, we have poor domain awareness of what's going on up in the Arctic, whether it's below not that far off from the time when just about any major platform will not be able to hide. We're seeing a little bit of this in Ukraine. It doesn't matter if you're in a tank or in an aircraft or a ship, with maybe the exception of submarines. From space, air land, surface and subsurface sensors, we are getting to the point where we won't be able to hide out there. The flip side of that is we need to have the same capabilities to be able to determine where our adversaries are operating from. And what that allows us is the ability to come back to war fighting advantage, decision advantage, that ability to sense and act before our adversaries can. So, there's a lot of effort that we're starting to look at in the future. How do we stitch all this together in a way that brings us that war fighting advantage? We have to get out of the mindset of, 'my jet is old, I need a new jet'. MGen YARKER: In terms of modernization, the last time I stood on the stage, the organization I rep- resent today didn't exist. So why was cyber command stood up? The key problem we were trying to solve was a strategic and op- www.vanguardcanada.com APRIL/MAY 2025 19 S E R V I C E C H I E F S H I E F S Major-General Jeff Smyth RCAF Chief Fighter and NORAD Capability Commodore Jason Armstrong Director General Naval Force Development "In terms of satellite communications, many Canadians understand very well the challenges we have in communicating across vast distances. That means remote sensing – our ability to detect what's out there. And frankly, we have poor domain awareness of what's going on up in the Arctic, whether it's below the surface or all the way to space." — Major-General Jeff Smyth the surface or all the way to space. But the investment in the RCAF is the biggest investment we've seen in Canada since World War Two, and that requires a com- plete shift in mindset. We know realistically the Russians are not going to drive tanks over the North Pole. The real kinetic threat to Canada is missiles coming over the horizon some- where. Our ability to detect and then do something about that, whether it's shoot- ing them down, defeating them electroni- cally, or other things, is really focused on integrated air and missile defense. A final thing I'll leave you with is we're erational command and control problem. Cyber command's responsible for four key war fighting capabilities: offensive cy- ber operations, defensive cyber operations, signals intelligence and joint electronic warfare. I'll add signals intelligence and joint electronic warfare as well, because sometimes they get glossed over when people think of cyber command. Cy- ber command is responsible for all those things. It's not just the elements of signals intelligence that support the conduct of cyber operations. Cyber command is the signals intelligence arm of the Canadian Armed Forces. So those four things came

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