The services of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) may have their distinctive colours and historic insignia, but increasingly their data is the colour purple. Each service has specific systems requirements, but the standards for the data that moves across an emerging joint network must be universal to all.
The challenge of ensuring that common protocols are part of the future force falls to the Chief of Force Development, Major-General Mike Day. He spoke with editor Chris Thatcher about consumable data and predictability in force development for the future security environment.
Although Afghanistan is just one type of contingency the CAF might have to tackle in the future, you were involved in the mission from its earliest days with Special Operations Forces through to the final Canadian phase of the NATO training mission. How has that campaign shaped your thinking about future force development?
That really goes to the nub of the challenge of being within CFD. I wear many hats in this job – the space/cyber hat, the challenge function hat, and the future hat – and Afghanistan was one of those real-time experiences that cannot but help shape what you found to be important, unimportant, useful or not very useful, often contrary to what you thought going into a theatre. You carry baggage from previous theatres, but you find that what was true in one is not necessarily true in another. That is very much a microcosm of the challenge Afghanistan provides with regard to the future, of getting caught in the trap of superimposing the lessons of Afghanistan on the next 30 years.
I have a challenge function for Horizon 1, the next one to five years, on behalf of the Vice Chief, for ensuring that projects that are delivered remain aligned to the roadmap that we have laid out. But I am responsible for Horizons 2 and 3, the period beyond five years that looks ahead to the future. We do a lot of work on defining what that future operating environment might be, and there are certainly elements of Afghanistan that have allowed us to better understand what we mean by “asymmetric,” “low intensity,” and “counterinsurgency.” We now have living, breathing examples we can use as a metric.
But that is only one of the defence tasks. If you look at the three roles and six missions of the Canada First Defence Strategy, recognizing we are going to refresh that, Afghanistan is just one of them and only one interpretation of the expeditionary role. When we look at the future, we need to look at the full spectrum of conflict.
Our challenge with Afghanistan is not to lose context – it has been incredibly useful and informative – but it is completely different than what we did in Haiti, in Bosnia or Lebanon. It is a great example of one possible future employment.
For the army, one of the challenges has been to preserve the enablers and skill sets it acquired. From a joint perspective, are there similar skills you need to preserve or enhance?
Key for us was the development of our people to use new technologies. The amount of data, the amount of information that they have to consume is fundamentally different, as is the speed at which they must consume it. The provision, therefore, of that data so that it is consumable, sharable and predictable is vital. And that all speaks to what you are getting at, the joint domain. We’ve learned there is no such thing as a physical environment when it comes to this; it doesn’t matter if it is Air, Land or Sea or Special Forces, the ability to share information in a practical, consumable way is absolutely necessary. So one of our focuses is on the Joint C4ISR (command, control, computers, communications, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) environment.
Our challenge is that although we have this new generation of incredibly tech-savvy operators and we are making a technological leap forward, we’ve also got legacy systems that we can’t afford to throw out – they are tremendously powerful and useful. We can’t start from scratch. So how do you over time converge the development paths of these systems so they create a joint environment, not just within the Canadian Armed Forces, but also for the CAF within a government of Canada construct and within an allied construct. You have to meld those Venn diagrams into one.
We now talk about data packages, about standardization, as opposed to proprietary software and systems. It shouldn’t matter what software you use if you’ve got standardization of data: how you file it, how you label it, how you characterize – for data mining, for target analysis, or trend analysis – it doesn’t matter. The challenge is to evolve our legacy systems, because they are the ones we have spent money on, along a coherent path that drives to that joined up picture.
Is your primary role then less the network itself and more about ensuring understanding and adherence to evolving standards?
This is one of those funny spaces where I have multiple responsibilities. As Chief of Force Development looking at Horizon 2 and out, I’m responsible for providing the CAF with a vision of what capabilities we are going to need. I don’t talk about platforms, I talk about the ability to do certain things. You are describing one of those things. However, because of the way we are structured, I also own two major portfolios, space and cyber, and within those I have buried in a variety of other joint enablers – CBRN, operational support and Joint C4ISR – so I work closely with ADM Information Management, Joint Operations Command and the services to do exactly that, standardize information.
ISR is a great example. We often hold ISR as separate and distinct. We have this physical image of something flying around providing data, but that is not ISR. That is a means of providing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, but it is only a platform. Writ large, every soldier, sailor and airman or air woman is an ISR platform. You can’t focus on the standardization of things that fly, you have to standardize how you label, catalogue, and communicate things – common protocols. You can have all the information, but if you can’t access it or you don’t have a protocol that lets you know when something new is there, it’s not very useful. We need to move our conversation away from platforms to provision of information.
Which leads to your larger challenge, analysis of that information?
Back to “consumable,” right. When I compare the amount of data I experienced as a young platoon commander with what my boy will see when he becomes one in a year and a half or so, how do you do the analysis? We are now past the point where it is reasonable to expect the human to individually read and consider every piece of information and intelligence that comes their way. You need these systems like CCIRs, commanders critical information requirements, that use protocols to provide the information you want, to automatically narrowed down those terabits of data. We then need systems to prioritize that: there is no point wasting your time looking at the 14th piece of information if time only allows you to look at five.
We have come light years, but there is no end-state where we can say we have arrived – the technology keeps evolving at such a pace; if we can keep pace with technology we’re doing well. So my end-state is to have a system that constantly evolves, learns, adapts, and converges to allow commanders to have consumable, prioritized, shareable information and intelligence.
Presumably you are able to test some of this in exercises like JOINTEX? Are there lessons about capability gaps emerging as you look to Horizon 2 and beyond?
JOINTEX is led by CJOC, so my play in that is mostly centred around the Canadian Force Warfare Centre, which provides some of the simulation support to JOINTEX and does some experimentation on our behalf. I’m not sure it is fair to say that JOINTEX has informed us about long-term horizons. It has certainly informed about gaps and needs that might inform future capability requirements. I think for the most part it lets us know where the gaps currently are and where the opportunities are. It allows us to express the capabilities more accurately. As with Afghanistan, though, we have to be careful that we don’t project out 30 years with today’s experimentation and simulation. I always counsel myself and others to say, if you think you’ll need a physical thing in 30 years’ time, you’re missing the point – you’re really into a capability statement. And how we answer that capability is a different issue.
What then is shaping the 20-year picture? Is the Future Security Analysis document of 2009 being refreshed?
We have done a couple of things based on some lessons learned. We are now working on a future security environment document. Previously, we did one in each of the environments. We learned that can lead to some divergence through drift – no malice, no different agendas, just different interpretation. So we now have a central document; all the voices are involved and represented, but as we continue to evolve our view of the future, it will be a singular view. The second thing is that we are much better at seeing it as a living, breathing document as opposed to something that gets fixed in time.
How well did we predict the future? I have read the previous ones – Army 2040, Air Force 2035, Leadmark – and there is some divergence, but I don’t think we’ll know for at least 10 years. Our job is not to be accurate about what it will specifically look like, it’s to be accurate about what capabilities we’ll need to be able to answer that. Maybe what is surprising is that all of the security threats are still in play – none have been disproved to date. In 20 years, we’ll have five or six of these documents and if you could look vertically through them, I would expect the commonality would be exceptionally high and the disparity, though low, would be in areas that we cannot yet anticipate.
What’s the role of the warfare centre in that context?
They bring a whole bunch of tools that are adaptable to a variety of different circumstances. And they also play a pretty central role in terms of a community of warfare centres. Every year the centres sit down on a very deliberate schedule for 3-4 days and work through the deliverables of CFD to make sure everybody is aligned. Much like joint enablers in an operational theatre, the warfare centre is the joint enabler in the warfare centre theatre, because it glues them all together to make sure they are not off doing work in a stovepipe. It is now a community of practice that harvests that. It allows us to avoid duplication and see opportunities that we might not have noticed before.
As you look beyond the next five years, to that Horizon 2 timeframe, what is your top priority?
When I look at priorities, I don’t think about a specific capability, platform or concept. For CFD to be successful, and where I focus a lot of my attention, is to have a development system that has three characteristics: it’s got to be transparent and traceable, you’ve got to be able to see every individual step; it’s got to be repeatable – if I walk through my system 10 times I had better be able to produce the same result; and it’s got to be defendable – I’ve got to have a rigour of analysis behind it to allow me to explain why something is.
Why is that my top priority? The worst thing that can be inflicted on a military, or it can inflict on itself, is uncertainty and unpredictability. If you think of our capital programs and how long they can take to produce, you want whatever comes out of the end of the sausage machine to be exactly what you need. So my top priority is to ensure that no matter what gets fed in, we’ve got a consistency of approach. If you assume the future security environment is an evolving one, then you can assume that the output of a capability-based planning process is also an evolutionary one. As an institution, we can withstand a one-degree change every year, what we can’t do is that Crazy Ivan piece of wild course corrections. My job is to try to put some constraints on this, discipline the system, by the challenge function if I can, but more important try to give them a path that is more linear, with only minor degrees of change. Of all the hats I wear, that is the most important.
That rigour of analysis: have you had to create new systems, process and people to meet it?
We have a still evolving but pretty sophisticated process. In macro terms, we start with defining that future security environment, and then we look at those six missions and the scope of conflict. We then design scenarios for the different parts of that conflict spectrum, informed by our operating environment, and assess what capabilities we need to be effective. We have developed both a staff process and a sophisticated software process that scores all of that. It deals with both force structures and with people. We have completed one cycle and produced a view of what the future capability requirements are going to be. It was done as a proof of concept, accelerated over two years. So, starting now, we’re going forward on a continuous three-year loop. We’ve adopted the lessons learned from the first cycle and are now institutionalizing them.
But you are right, it is a different skill set, it’s not a crusty general like me saying, bring back the horses and bayonets. We’ve moved away from personality-inflicted platforms and requirements to a systemically developed, measured, and quantified process that is transparent and traceable, repeatable and defendable.
Are you also able to ensure that rigour through the challenge function?
Every time a service – army, navy, air force, special forces – says, we want to do X, that comes right here. We check it against the roadmap and say, you’re good (or not). We do that through the Defence Capability Board – you cannot get anything approved before you go through DCB. And you have to come through a number of different times, from the concept phase to options analysis and the business case before you are even allowed to spend money. People get onto the DCB schedule, they produce their business case or options analysis, and then my team does a very thorough review of that piece – I actually run a pre-DCB to decide whether it is going to get there. The Vice Chief runs the actually DCB, and it is my aim never to waste the Vice’s time. So the challenge function is very robust. It’s not quite the Board of Inquisition, but when they come to my board, there needs to be logic, adherence to the strategic roadmap, and they need to have answered all the questions. They want that review, because it means they are defendable.
Let me switch gears to your space hat. The services all have various SATCOM requirements. Given the joint need, how are you ensuring alignment?
They don’t develop any SATCOM, they developed the requirements. Much like nobody is conceiving, designing and building the maritime piece but the navy, nobody is doing the space program but CFD. We’ve moved it into the centre so you have a single, coherent path in which everybody’s needs are considered and included, but you don’t have three orphan children.
One of the big lessons over the last 20-30 years is that it takes a long time for services to think of themselves as a single entity. A number of our allied nations do not enjoy that because there is no central joint piece. So when they talk about ISR, it’s navy ISR or army ISR, when they talk about joint enablers, they are talking about their service enablers. That doesn’t happen in the CAF – we just cannot afford not to. The reality is no modern military can think about stovepipes in the joint domain any more. From time to time we will have a service environment champion a joint capability if the preponderance of that capability is provided to them – counter IED with the army, for instance. And there are some legacy things, C4ISR is a good example, where we have some shared space with ADM IM. If it is working and delivering and it is well down the pipe, we don’t mess with it. If we think it would benefit from a more joint view, we repatriate it or create a joint space.
Are there SATCOM priorities given the government’s emphasis on the Arctic?
People don’t realize how large a space nation Canada is. We are a world industry leader. I look at Sapphire, for example, which is about space domain awareness. People may ask why we are looking at space junk, but if you can play in the space game and you are contributing, you get data back tenfold.
The RADARSAT Constellation, which we think is for the 2017-18 timeframe, is a huge priority because of what it will be able to do in terms of domain awareness and communications. We also continue to look at the development of the SARSAT (search and rescue satellite) piece. Like your car, our current low earth orbit satellite has a finite life. None of these are specific defence pieces, they cross a number of departmental boundaries. We have also had the successful launch of Mercury Global, which has been tremendously effective in terms of providing massive predictable, accessible pipelines of information. These are all great examples of where we are going to go. And that gets back to the future security environment: are we going to be operating using space as a non-weaponized domain? Absolutely.
Lastly, what’s your role in a refresh of the CFDS?
It is often seen as a policy document but when you read through it, it is also a capability document. When you translate it into platforms, that is hard capability. So as we walk through the development of that, and I’m not sure what the exact government timelines are going to be at this stage, we are going to be fully engaged with ADM Policy, which handles the departmental big policy pieces. It will be a completely integrated team.