Vanguard Magazine

C4isr Unfortunately, the exact nature, timing and amplitude of future operations are not known with certainty. Threats and hazards that may distress DES assets are also dif- ficult to anticipate. Moreover, as for any enterprise, available resources are never sufficient to develop flawless DESs that can always avoid or resist to malevolent attacks, accidental or natural perils, breakdowns, or Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, and Ecological (PESTLE) unrests. The fact that imperfect DESs must deal with all sorts of unfore-seen events is the source of mission failure risks. Developing a DES for mission assurance (MA) requires the addition of capabilities to minimize mis- sion failure risks. When DESs are designed and developed to cope solely with expected events or requirements, as they often are, they are bound to stumble, and they can- not achieve excellence (i.e. sustained value delivery), as demanded in the defence pol- icy. In what follows, we briefly show how analytics can be leveraged to help develop robust value-creating DESs. Mission failure risk sources Some types of risks are very familiar to all of us, but others are more insidious. For example, aerospace engineers have been managing equipment failure risks for de- cades, and the CAF are structured to do this efficiently. Accidents are also a familiar type of risk event. Although they are often covered by insurances, they can induce se- rious operational perturbations. The fire at the Gatineau Louis St. Laurent building in April 2016, which forced the move of 1,700 DND/CF employees, is a good example. Natural hazards such as wildfires, floods, ice storms and epidemics can also disturb the CAF work. This last case is more intricate because the CAF are both an instrument and a target. When confronted with a natural hazard harming Canadians, it is the responsibility of governments to warn, protect, rescue, help and inform Canadian victims. Such events are disastrous for Canadian citizens. When CAF support is requested, however, they lead to disaster relief operations that add value by providing safety and sup- port to victims. On the other hand, if the DESs involved are themselves affected by the natural hazard, or if other disruptions (e.g. a communication breakdown) prevent helping victims adequately, this results in a benefit shortfall. In fact, most of the operations performed by the CAF have this characteristic. The CAF typically act in response to predica- ments that could be directly or indirectly harmful to Canadians. It's their mission. In contrast to to some government units that provide constant services to the popula- tion, CAF only intervene in case of crises or conflicts. Since future crisis/conflicts are not completely predictable, the demand for CAF services is essentially random, which is a significant risk. Planning capacity under uncertainty is a difficult task. One does its best to anticipate needs, but it is obvious that at various points in time operational surges that exceed planned capacity will occur. Adjustments must then be made by adding ad-hoc resources and/or limiting services, which impairs value delivery. DES assets nowadays are also exposed to physical and/or cyber attacks from nu- merous threat agents, including terrorists, hacktivists, cybercriminals and malicious foreign nations, but also privileged insiders. Among those, advanced persistent threats are particularly difficult to detect and stop. These targeted cyber attacks are performed by sophisticated adversaries with significant resources who engage in espionage to dis- www.vanguardcanada.com FEBRUARY/MARCH 2018 13

• Cover