Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/235053
lt. DND Force Development F it doesn't matter if it is Air, Land or Sea or Special Forces, the ability to share information in a practical, consumable way is absolutely necessary. So one of our focuses is on the Joint C4ISR (command, control, computers, communications, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) environment. Our challenge is that although we have this new generation of incredibly tech-savvy operators and we are making a technological leap forward, we've also got legacy systems that we can't afford to throw out – they are tremendously powerful and useful. We can't start from scratch. So how do you over time converge the development paths of these systems so they create a joint environment, not just within the Canadian Armed Forces, but also for the CAF within a government of Canada construct and within an allied construct. You have to meld those Venn diagrams into one. We now talk about data packages, about standardization, as opposed to proprietary software and systems. It shouldn't matter what software you use if you've got standardization of data: how you file it, how you label it, how you characterize – for data mining, for target analysis, or trend analysis – it doesn't matter. The challenge is to evolve our legacy systems, because they are the ones we have spent money on, along a coherent path that drives to that joined up picture. Q Is your primary role then less the network itself and more about ensuring understanding and adherence to evolving standards? are delivered remain aligned to the roadmap that we have laid out. But I am responsible for Horizons 2 and 3, the period beyond five years that looks ahead to the future. We do a lot of work on defining what that future operating environment might be, and there are certainly elements of Afghanistan that have allowed us to better understand what we mean by "asymmetric," "low intensity," and "counterinsurgency." We now have living, breathing examples we can use as a metric. But that is only one of the defence tasks. If you look at the three roles and six missions of the Canada First Defence Strategy, recognizing we are going to refresh that, Afghanistan is just one of them and only one interpretation of the expeditionary role. When we look at the future, we need to look at the full spectrum of conflict. Our challenge with Afghanistan is not to lose context – it has been incredibly useful and informative – but it is completely different than what we did in Haiti, in Bosnia or Lebanon. It is a great example of one possible future employment. Q For the army, one of the challenges has been to preserve the enablers and skill sets it acquired. From a joint perspective, are there similar skills you need to preserve or enhance? Key for us was the development of our people to use new technologies. The amount of data, the amount of information that they have to consume is fundamentally different, as is the speed at which they must consume it. The provision, therefore, of that data so that it is consumable, sharable and predictable is vital. And that all speaks to what you are getting at, the joint domain. We've learned there is no such thing as a physical environment when it comes to this; This is one of those funny spaces where I have multiple responsibilities. As Chief of Force Development looking at Horizon 2 and out, I'm responsible for providing the CAF with a vision of what capabilities we are going to need. I don't talk about platforms, I talk about the ability to do certain things. You are describing one of those things. However, because of the way we are structured, I also own two major portfolios, space and cyber, and within those I have buried in a variety of other joint enablers – CBRN, operational support and Joint C4ISR – so I work closely with ADM Information Management, Joint Operations Command and the services to do exactly that, standardize information. ISR is a great example. We often hold ISR as separate and distinct. We have this physical image of something flying around providing data, but that is not ISR. That is a means of providing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, but it is only a platform. Writ large, every soldier, sailor and airman or air woman is an ISR platform. You can't focus on the standardization of things that fly, you have to standardize how you label, catalogue, and communicate things – common protocols. You can have all the information, but if you can't access it or you don't have a protocol that lets you know when something new is there, it's not very useful. We need to move our conversation away from platforms to provision of information. Q Which leads to your larger challenge, analysis of that information? www.vanguardcanada.com DECEMBER 2013/JANUARY 2014 13