Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/274231
tional capability. If we are lulled into thinking that having world- class equipment translates into operational capability when it is needed, we are much mistaken. Collective training, science and technology, operational research, doctrine, logistics: they are all vital parts of the mix. We disregard them at our peril. I think the second dimension of risk going forward is institu- tional. Institutional risk is complex and encompasses such seem- ingly "soft" elements on the moral plane of war as culture, and ethos, and it culminates in institutional credibility. After the So- malia mission we learned that they are anything but "soft" and, in fact, they are core elements, more important in many respects than our equipment. Fortunately, through the visionary leader- ship of General Mike Jeffery and General Rick Hillier, the Army in particular was able to reshape its culture, re-affi rm its ethos and re-establish its institutional credibility. The crucible of organizational culture in the Armed Forces is training, both individual and collective. While individual training generates individuals with the skills, knowledge and attributes to perform their operational roles, collective training is where those individual capabilities are tested and welded together to form oper- ationally capable teams. Soldiers, sailors and airmen all know when they are part of an operationally capable team and when they are just making a good show of it. Without the crucible of structured, sustained, graduated and realistic collective training they loose con- fi dence in their abilities to perform, the ability of their leaders to lead them and the institution's ability and will to support them. When it all goes wrong on the day because of it, the CF loses in- D DEFENCE www.vanguardcanada.com FEBRUARY/MARCH 2014 13 stitutional credibility – its center of gravity. No one wants to go back to the decade of darkness, but the risk that we will increases in direct proportion to the reduction in collective training. Q Just as we are integrating old technology with new technol- ogy, we are also integrating legacy decisions with new decisions about capability. CFD has a pretty robust process for challeng- ing that today, but are there steps to mitigate some of the risk around legacy decisions about capability. The short answer is, yes, there are ways to reduce that risk, but they are diffi cult to get at in many cases. Let's fi rst of all be clear about what the risk really is. The risk in this case is in not having the operational capabilities we need when we need them because we either couldn't afford them or we simply got the strategic cal- culation wrong. In a post-Afghanistan environment characterized by diminishing defence resources but a global strategic context with an increasing threat spectrum, I can imagine Chief of Force Development (CFD) has more than a few sleepless nights over this question. As with all complex problems, a simple answer is usually not available. Broadly speaking, however, some simple guiding prin- ciples apply. The fi rst is agility. Our tactical forces have shown remarkable agility, adapting to asymmetric warfare in all of the three services without missing a step. During the Afghan cam- paign the doctrine, training, operational research, lessons learned and, to a large extent, the procurement system more or less kept pace. But that was because we could invoke the Immediate Op- erational Requirement (IOR) protocols that removed most of the impediments. Now we can no longer invoke IOR and it has be- come fashionable to gut doctrine, training, operational research, lessons learned and any other force component labeled "tail" in favour of preserving the "teeth" – the complex system-of-systems that is force development is slowly grinding to a halt. Since we can't afford capabilities across the entire threat spectrum we have to choose those that will maintain the most relevant foundation from which to adapt. But this presupposes that we maintain the capacity to adapt, and that capacity is the very thing we seem to be shedding as we adjust the tooth-to-tail ratio. The risk, therefore, is that by sacrifi cing tail for tooth we will lose the very strategic agility we base our defence posture on. There is some mitigation available from technology, however. Lew Platt, the former CEO of Hewlett Packard, once quipped, "If only HP knew what HP knows we would be three times more productive." What he was referring to is the perennial curse of the posting cycle in which, try as we might through hand over notes, etc, corporate knowledge seems to have a two-year life span in the CAF. This of course is not intentional; it is just a fact the CAF and the department have not yet fully overcome. This has the effect of retarding progress on any fi le when the desk offi cer is posted. Given the complexity and highly interdependent nature of force development fi les, it can take months for suffi cient situ- ational awareness to be acquired by the new incumbent for the inertia to be overcome and momentum restored. To mitigate this CFD could initiate a Force Development dependency model that would depict the connections and dependencies for each project from doctrine development through to capability integration into Photo: MCpl Patrick Blanchard Photo: Cpl Don Kirkwood Photo: LS Dan Barda