Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/235053
Force Development F Q Let me switch gears to your space hat. The services all have various SATCOM requirements. Given the joint need, how are you ensuring alignment? a path that is more linear, with only minor degrees of change. Of all the hats I wear, that is the most important. Q That rigour of analysis: have you had to create new systems, process and people to meet it? We have a still evolving but pretty sophisticated process. In macro terms, we start with defining that future security environment, and then we look at those six missions and the scope of conflict. We then design scenarios for the different parts of that conflict spectrum, informed by our operating environment, and assess what capabilities we need to be effective. We have developed both a staff process and a sophisticated software process that scores all of that. It deals with both force structures and with people. We have completed one cycle and produced a view of what the future capability requirements are going to be. It was done as a proof of concept, accelerated over two years. So, starting now, we're going forward on a continuous three-year loop. We've adopted the lessons learned from the first cycle and are now institutionalizing them. But you are right, it is a different skill set, it's not a crusty general like me saying, bring back the horses and bayonets. We've moved away from personality-inflicted platforms and requirements to a systemically developed, measured, and quantified process that is transparent and traceable, repeatable and defendable. Q Are you also able to ensure that rigour through the challenge function? Every time a service – army, navy, air force, special forces – says, we want to do X, that comes right here. We check it against the roadmap and say, you're good (or not). We do that through the Defence Capability Board – you cannot get anything approved before you go through DCB. And you have to come through a number of different times, from the concept phase to options analysis and the business case before you are even allowed to spend money. People get onto the DCB schedule, they produce their business case or options analysis, and then my team does a very thorough review of that piece – I actually run a pre-DCB to decide whether it is going to get there. The Vice Chief runs the actually DCB, and it is my aim never to waste the Vice's time. So the challenge function is very robust. It's not quite the Board of Inquisition, but when they come to my board, there needs to be logic, adherence to the strategic roadmap, and they need to have answered all the questions. They want that review, because it means they are defendable. They don't develop any SATCOM, they developed the requirements. Much like nobody is conceiving, designing and building the maritime piece but the navy, nobody is doing the space program but CFD. We've moved it into the centre so you have a single, coherent path in which everybody's needs are considered and included, but you don't have three orphan children. One of the big lessons over the last 20-30 years is that it takes a long time for services to think of themselves as a single entity. A number of our allied nations do not enjoy that because there is no central joint piece. So when they talk about ISR, it's navy ISR or army ISR, when they talk about joint enablers, they are talking about their service enablers. That doesn't happen in the CAF – we just cannot afford not to. The reality is no modern military can think about stovepipes in the joint domain anymore. From time to time we will have a service environment champion a joint capability if the preponderance of that capability is provided to them – counter IED with the army, for instance. And there are some legacy things, C4ISR is a good example, where we have some shared space with ADM IM. If it is working and delivering and it is well down the pipe, we don't mess with it. If we think it would benefit from a more joint view, we repatriate it or create a joint space. Q Are there SATCOM priorities given the government's emphasis on the Arctic? People don't realize how large a space nation Canada is. We are a world industry leader. I look at Sapphire, for example, which is about space domain awareness. People may ask why we are looking at space junk, but if you can play in the space game and you are contributing, you get data back tenfold. The RADARSAT Constellation, which we think is for the 201718 timeframe, is a huge priority because of what it will be able to do in terms of domain awareness and communications. We also continue to look at the development of the SARSAT (search and rescue satellite) piece. Like your car, our current low earth orbit satellite has a finite life. None of these are specific defence pieces, they cross a number of departmental boundaries. We have also had the successful launch of Mercury Global, which has been tremendously effective in terms of providing massive predictable, accessible pipelines of information. These are all great examples of where we are going to go. And that gets back to the future security environment: are we going to be operating using space as a non-weaponized domain? Absolutely. Q Lastly, what's your role in a refresh of the CFDS? It is often seen as a policy document but when you read through it, it is also a capability document. When you translate it into platforms, that is hard capability. So as we walk through the development of that, and I'm not sure what the exact government timelines are going to be at this stage, we are going to be fully engaged with ADM Policy, which handles the departmental big policy pieces. It will be a completely integrated team. www.vanguardcanada.com DECEMBER 2013/JANUARY 2014 15