Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/235053
Land Force L Q Given your career experience, how do you view Army 2021? Photo: Pte Nathan Moulton. DND I look at Army 2021 as a spectrum. At one end you have the current task of three roles and six missions that the Canada First Defence Strategy provides, and at the other you have Army 2021, which is informed by what we think the future security environment will be and by what we think the force employment model should be. Once we understand this, then we can start building a structure that will bring us to Army 2021. It's not a destination, it's a point on a journey. It's a planning tool that will help guide our effort. I am not trying to reinvent the wheel, I want to make sure that we are well aligned. So my first priority is to get that alignment, in terms of CFDS, that we all have the same understanding of the future security environment, and we agree that adaptive dispersed operations still works, and where we are in terms of the capacity build to get there. My predecessor [LGen Pete Devlin] organized it in three phases: 2013, 2016 and 2021. I am comfortable with this. What does 2013 provide me? Intellectually, the challenge was to capture what we learned from both our pre-Afghanistan conventional war training and then the lessons of Afghanistan. And I feel that we have done so. 2016 involves ensuring we have placed those new skills and capabilities we acquired from our Afghanistan experience at the right level: should they be at the battle group or the brigade level, for instance? 2021 is: how do you transform this from 2016 to 2021? You need to align yourself, and we are doing this. We have to ensure we understand the security environment and that we have the right structure, which speaks to another priority of mine. I am a symmetric guy, not asymmetric. With the size of our army, I don't see the need to be too specialized with various units. I am a big proponent of having similar organizations that can be versatile. So if I have to produce battle group after battle group or brigade headquarters after brigade HQ, we don't have to retrain, it is already a package that exists that is common to all. Geography and budget will play a role in terms of the sustainability of this, but I believe that structure will help make sure we are transiting successfully to 2021. Q How do you retain the enablers and skill sets you have acquired when you don't have the challenge of a large-scale mission? At a certain point, training is just training for your young leaders. It is always easier to retain those capabilities when you have a focused operation. As you rightly point out, we do not have that. But we will always have those little operations that remind us why we need those enablers. Take the recent deployment of the DART [Disaster Assistance Response Team]. One of the key enablers we have evolved in the last couple years is government engagement, influence activities. Engagement is key to the DART. We still need to work at it, but we now have a division [1st Canadian Division] that is well suited and really the leader in that joint, interagency and multinational piece. When you look at our response to the Philippines, we could not have done it that quickly if we did not have an organization like 1st Cdn Div that maintained that engagement and influence activities through exercises. I do plan on a yearly basis when we do our road to high readiness to invite the other agencies to join us. And the joint piece will also be there. We will continue to practice those engagement capabilities that now need to be integrated into the way we do business, the same way the artillery or armour are integrated. Q We have talked about this challenge before. How hard is it now to get other departments involved in exercises without the immediate demands of a mission, given their own time and budget constraints? It is harder, but since we talked in 2009, things have evolved. Then, they were really conceptual. Now we actually have some nascent organizations in every army division and we need to keep building on them. I am confident that we will be able to maintain that expertise, especially for the division that will be on the road to high readiness. For me, that speaks to maintaining army capabilities and these are capabilities we cannot afford to lose. Q You are also introducing new assets such as Chinook helicopters and vehicle fleets. How are they built into the Army 2021 game plan and do you have resources at the moment to manage them? It is built into the game plan. It is all part of alignment, which is why alignment is a first priority. What I want to understand for that family of land combat vehicles, for example, is where are they going to be fielded, how are they going to be filled to have a symmetric army that is polyvalent and versatile. I have been through that process. It is a key part in the future structure. I'm not claiming we have it 100 percent www.vanguardcanada.com DECEMBER 2013/JANUARY 2014 27