Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/407740
C COveR www.vanguardcanada.com octoBer/noVeMBer 2014 31 contained in shoes, underwear, carcasses, pots, pipes, post boxes, buildings, ships, planes, trains, and automobiles, or even im- planted beneath the skin. Their destructive use against civilian and military targets is only lim- ited by imagination. Out of necessity, the CAF de- veloped an ad hoc, albeit world class, CET capability. Beginning in April 2006, after the CAF de- ployed back to Kandahar and four soldiers were killed in a light un- armoured vehicle, Canada experienced an increasing improvised explosive threat at a level never before witnessed. At least 17 soldiers were killed in suicide blasts or by roadside bombs that year, and as a result of the carnage, in 2007 the CAF created the C-IED TF with a mandate to "take a holistic approach…to raise our standard of preparedness to better battle IEDs and… defeat the IED network by synchronizing and integrating capabilities from the tactical to the strategic level." The C-IED TF – now the JCET TF – served as a focal point for this capability; by the end of the confl ict it was recognized as a global leader in the C-IED fi eld. The ef- fort likely saved many lives, but by the end of the war, 70 percent of CAF casualties – and 83 percent of combat casualties – were still caused by IEDs. Nonetheless, with the end of CAF com- bat operations in 2011 and the training mission in 2014, the effort to institution- alize knowledge, experience and capability built over 10 years of combat is at risk from those who do not appreciate the enduring and growing nature of the threat. The IED is seen by many to be intrinsically tied to our experience in Afghanistan – there is IED fatigue, or amnesia. After Afghanistan there is also a percep- tion that having left the region, there is no requirement to train for operations in a high improvised explosive threat environment. This demonstrates a lack of understanding of the likely future operating environment, which will invariably include bombs. Yet the capability is fragile. Former Army Com- mander, Lieutenant-General Peter Devlin, recognizing its importance, said that it, amongst other capabilities, was now "on life support" and required continued funding. In this climate, however, there are some in the CAF who question the requirement to even maintain the capability, and others who "want to get back to the basics" in individual and collective training with little to no regard for the explosive threat or a contemporary operating environment that has evolved since the pre-Iraq and Afghan- istan era. Preparing for the "last war" is not being espoused here, but since the CAF fi rst deployed to Afghanistan in 2001, the threat landscape looks vastly different and we ought to prepare for this contempo- rary environment, one where the explosive threat is omnipresent. Strategic context The CAF experience with IEDs is principally but not entirely limited to Afghanistan. The deduction from this should not be that our experience there was a one-off event. Due to recent confl ict, there is a proliferation of improvised explosive expertise. Homemade bomb components – including explosive material – are cheap and can be purchased locally. They are lethal and extremely effec- tive, and can be constructed by following recipes on the Internet. Moreover, the ef- fects of their tactical use can be strategic and disproportional, creating perceptions of in- security, and weakening national resolve. To put this in perspective, the 1995 saran gas attack on the Tokyo subway cost millions of dollars and killed only 12; the attack on the Madrid commuter system cost a few thou- sands dollars and killed 191, and contrib- uted to a change in the Spanish government and a pullout of Spanish Forces from Iraq. Domestically, Canada is not immune to the improvised explosive threat. In 2013 there were at least 144 improvised ex- plosive incidents in Canada, including 17 bombings and the recovery of 26 IEDs or potential IEDs. Today, much different from pre-Iraq confl icts where artillery and direct fi re caused the majority of casualties, impro- vised explosives are often the greatest cause of casualties – military and civilian – in regions of persistent confl ict. This will not likely change in the foreseeable future. These devices are clearly a mainstay of con- fl ict; they are the asymmetric weapon of choice by a spectrum of non-state actors. They offer adversaries – whether tactically defeated, or just smaller, and more poorly supporting them; the role of the new CAF Joint Counter Explosive Threat Task Force (JCET TF) (formally known as the CIED TF); and what needs to be done to ensure future strategic military response options are unconstrained by the improvised ex- plosive threat, our own forces are protect- ed, and their tactical freedom of action and movement are preserved. Without an operational imperative and growing fi scal constraint, maintaining the capability will be thorny, however, unless there is a paradigm shift in current think- ing and recognition that the improvised explosives and networks that employ them are mainstays of modern confl ict. Afghanistan and IeD fatigue Improvised explosives are homemade bombs. They can be small or big, crude or sophisticated, "dirty" (chemical, biologi- cal, radioactive, or nuclear) or "clean" (just explosives and shrapnel). A new trend is "massive" vehicle borne IEDs – any bomb over 30,000 pounds. IEDs can contain military, commercial, or homemade ex- plosives, and can be detonated by victims, manually, by remote control, automati- cally with timers, or by suicide bombers. They can be surgical or indiscriminate,