Vanguard Magazine

www.vanguardcanada.com OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016 13 IntervIew I icy decisions, political policy decisions that will underpin defence, how much money we are going to spend, how much bigger we are going to be, all those big macros, yet to be decided. I think the government are committed to a pure process; one that is based on what is it we want to achieve out there, what outcomes we want. So I'm delighted at the prospect…though it's go- ing to be a lot of hard work… Q: It is very quick… Oh, yes! The battle rhythm is intense. The public consultation is ongoing right now, I think we're being loyal to that, allowing the consultation to occur and I'm looking forward to when we start to get to the an- chor points in a policy that will ultimately provide the shape and form of where we are going to go in the future. What I think we are all interested in is making sure that we don't have a policy that far outstrips out ability to achieve it. And so I think it's a very healthy time for us. And I pinch my- self a little bit to say hey I'm going to be a part of this…! Q: If you had to say what is our biggest priority, our biggest need at this moment for the Canadian Forces? I think it's our ability to be able to run op- erations globally in a much more contested dangerous space. It's command & control, force protection, the ability to deliver in a globally dispersed and much more danger- ous space. So I've said that we need to be able to deploy with the C2, with bandwidth that will be allow us to communicate, the intelligence, a sure force protection, to have a globally dispersed, adapted dispersed kind of laydown. If you look at Army doctrine about Adapted Dispersed Operations, and I have discussed this with [Lgen] Marquis Hainse [Commander Canadian Army]. I feel like we are on the verge of Adapted Dis- persed Operation on a global scale, not just on a theater scale. You can identify all the tenets of sharing information, making sure that we are agile, making sure that we can account for threats that go up and threats that go down, including here at home. And we've got to be able to command of con- trol that because these things just don't run on auto-pilot anymore. They need constant feeding of intelligence for force protection, for decision-making. To me that reinforces the importance of connectivity, intel, the ability to see, the ability to report, the abil- ity to share information; to put together the information necessary for that targeting cycle. Decide, detect, act, all to happen very very fast so that we are successful. Q: So we are really looking to continue our success in operations… Exactly; we'll see this play out in Iraq; we are not there with the kind of combat power that will allow us to assume bat- tlespace control. We are truly advising someone else; our fate is their fate…and their fate is our fate, to a certain degree. We just simply don't have the capacity to manage that battlespace on our own, like we did in Afghanistan. At that time if we got in trouble we could move the battle- group in, then take over the problem; we can't do that now. It's okay, that's how it works, that's how the Allies have oper- ated for a long time so we can do it too, UAVs Sensors So ware Support www.gapwireless.com/UAV Defence and we can protect ourselves, individually, to get the mission done. So, imagine the kind of C2 that we need to have: a pipe- line of information, sharing information, and understanding if what is happening in that theater affects Canada. Are there any threats to Canada from there and any- where else? So: hyper-connected, and then to be able to make sense of it and issue the correct orders; that to me is essential.

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