Vanguard Magazine

www.vanguardcanada.com APRIL/MAY 2026 29 B O T T O M U P PA N E L Ukrainian drone teams hit roughly 30 percent of their targets. Weather, electronic warfare, and training account for the rest, and teams adapt constantly. son who will actually use the equipment can speak directly to the engineer before the procurement cycle locks anything in. What the Air Force built Whalen's origin story is worth telling. Six years ago she was a dispatch officer at 8 Wing Trenton, running air mobility logis- tics on a legacy Access database. Missions changed constantly. Air crew went out the door carrying stacks of paper, sometimes a hu ndred pages, that were obsolete before the aircraft left the ramp. She partnered with an innovation team, brought in four University of Waterloo co-ops, and they built something in three weeks. It was rough. The lead developer told her that was the point: they built it fast, she told them everything wrong with it, and two days later they fixed it. That's agile software development. That was her introduction to it. Today she runs a team with three port- folios: a software factory, a data platform, and information management. The soft- ware factory pushes code twice a day. The data platform runs the RCAF's dashboards and is beginning to incorporate AI for de- cision support. The team shares data with CJOC and other parts of the organization that need it. What makes it work: top cover from RCAF leadership, a safe space to experi- ment, and the freedom to learn from fail- ure. What she wants to expand: breaking down silos and building governance struc- tures that support agile delivery alongside more traditional programs. The Army's orchestration challenge Estrela's challenge is running digital trans- formation across an institution with mul- tiple brigades, each working hard on their own priorities and their own solutions to shared problems. The risk is duplication. Two formations solving the same prob- lem independently can end up with two incompatible systems. He runs three products: the Army App for institutional use cases, CloudTAK as the Army's futures network for operational experimentation and prototype develop- ment, and a data team keeping everything synchronized. His proposed solution is orchestrated innovation: rather than having every for- mation pursue its own digital priorities independently, assign specific capability domains to specific units. They develop focused expertise, share what works, and the Army builds toward coherent and in- teroperable outputs. It's an approach still taking shape, but the underlying principle is sound. Ukraine as a reference point Verreault brought the most pointed ex- ternal reference to the panel. He recent- ly traveled to Kyiv and spent time with Ukrainian soldiers and industry partners to understand what a high-intensity op- erational environment actually demands. Ukraine produced three million drones last year. The front line runs 1,400 kilo- metres, served by small drone teams of five or six people, each supported by an engi- neer and technician one position behind the line who can design, repair, and mod- ify systems in real time. Ukrainian drone teams hit roughly 30 percent of their targets. Weather, electronic warfare, and training account for the rest, and teams adapt constantly. Verreault is not suggesting Canada rep- licate a wartime model. He is drawing out the principle: put industry partners in close proximity to end users during real exercis- es, give them the ability to iterate rapidly, and build interoperability standards that allow components to be swapped with- out replacing entire systems. The Modu- lar Open System Approach, which the US Army has adopted, treats a platform like Lego: standardize the interfaces, innovate the components. His immediate mandate is counter-un- crewed systems. The government commit- ted to addressing the drone threat in 2025 and Verreault's office is at the centre of the CAF's response. Closing the gap All three officers converged on the same structural opportunity: building a stronger bridge between a successful proof of con- cept and a fielded capability. In defence de- velopment terms, that's the stretch between Operation REASSURANCE. Photo: DND

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