Vanguard Magazine

28 APRIL/MAY 2026 www.vanguardcanada.com WHERE GOOD IDEAS GO TO WAIT THREE CAF OFFICERS ON CLOSING THE GAP BETWEEN PROTOTYPE AND FIELDED CAPABILITY B O T T O M U P PA N E L Colonel Jason (Jay) Estrela Director of Digital and Army Combat Systems Integration Lieutenant-Colonel Nicolas Verreault Head of the Joint UxS Office Lieutenant-Colonel Amanda Whalen Director RCAF Digital Hub C 4ISR sits at the heart of how modern militaries fight. It is what allows commanders to see the battlefield, share infor- mation, and act faster than the adversary. Canada has been investing in it for years, and with defence budgets now growing, the pressure to turn that invest- ment into real operational advantage has never been greater. But money and intent do not automatically produce capability. The harder question is how the CAF actu- ally gets there. That question was put to three officers who live with it every day at the 12th An- nual C4ISR and Beyond Conference in Ottawa this past January. Not the senior leaders setting the vision. Not the compa- nies selling the solutions. The Bottom Up Panel put the microphone in front of the people closest to the work: Colonel Jason (Jay) Estrela, Director of Digital and Army Combat Systems Integration; Lieutenant- Colonel Amanda Whalen, Director of the RCAF Digital Hub; and Lieutenant-Col- onel Nicolas Verreault, Head of the Joint UxS Office, Chief of Combat Systems Inte- gration. Moderated by Colonel Derek Lay, Commanding Officer of the Canadian Joint Warfare Centre, the panel covered what is working, what isn't, and what the gap be- tween prototype and fielded capability actu- ally looks like from where they sit. An industry partner at a Canadian Army exercise developed a prototype antenna system in response to a challenge impeding the rapid deployment of dispersed com- mand post communication systems. The engineers produced an innovative antenna solution extending cleanly off the side of the armoured vehicle. It demonstrated promising results in the lab and in a controlled environment but had not yet been tested in field conditions. A troop warrant officer with fifteen years of field experience walked over, examined it, and quickly identified a key design flaw: the inability to adjust the alignment of the ve- hicle-mounted antenna on uneven terrain. The observation highlighted a gap be- tween assumptions made by civilian engi- neers and the realities of military environ- ments. The company went back, added a gimbal, and fixed it. The entire exchange took minutes but yielded significant gains in developing a product that meets sol- diers' needs. Had it gone the other way, the CAF might have procured antennas that fail un- der real conditions, or the company could have spent considerable resources develop- ing a product that did not meet the CA's requirements. Colonel Jay Estrela shared that story to make a point about feedback loops—fast ones. The kind where the per- Operation UNIFIER. Photo: DND

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