As Chief of Transformation in 2005-2006, Walt Natynczyk led the stand up of four new operational commands. As Chief of the Defence Staff, one of his final acts may be to initiate the organizational restructuring of the so-called “dot com” headquarters into a single operational command and control structure.
Beginning this fall, the Canadian Forces will consolidate the functions of Canada Command, Canadian Expeditionary Force Command (CEFCOM), and Canadian Operational Support Command (CANOSCOM) into Canadian Joint Operations Command (CJOC), a new headquarters responsible for conducting all domestic and expeditionary operations. The fourth command, Canadian Special Operations Forces Command, will continue to function as a separate force generation, employment and support command, reporting directly to the CDS.
The CJOC will be commanded by LGen Stu Beare, the current commander of CEFCOM.
The current command structure was stood up in February 2006 as part of a transformation exercise that recognized the sizeable operational workload on the Forces’ horizon: a more intensive mission in Afghanistan with the move from Kabul to Kandahar and the 2010 Olympics. That the structure simultaneously managed Haiti, Libya and numerous domestic incidents in a testament to its success, General Natynczyk recently told Vanguard.
However, after they were stood up, he noted that while the commands would become a “one stop shop” for their respective mandates, allowing the CF to progress from ad hoc to planned responses, the new system would need to be monitored and adjusted.
According to VAdm Bruce Donaldson, Vice Chief of the Defence Staff who served as commander of Canada Com during the Olympics and G8/G20 summits in 2010, while the operational headquarters were separate, the commanders and their advisory staff were required “to get together fairly regularly to figure out how we were going to do all of this and be successful.”
It was then, he said, “it became clear that there were certain areas where, if you combined the advice to commanders, you could actually do it better in some cases, and you could certainly do it with fewer people.”
Donaldson said the change would consolidate various advisory, intelligence, financial and administration functions, but would leave intact “the core advice that the deputy commander in charge of domestic or continental operations will need. We have managed to compress this into a staff structure that supports that operational chain of command, and in doing so reduce by about 25% the number of folks it takes to run force employment in that headquarters.”
The changes are based in part on the recommendations of now retired LGen Andrew Leslie, who headed up an internal team in 2010 to explore ways of improving efficiency and effectiveness, and drive organizational change. His report, delivered to the CDS in July 2011, recommended that some of those efficiencies could be found through a reduction in headquarters and staffs by “grouping like functions or accepting risk in the entire elimination of certain organizations.”
Specific to the operational commands, he suggested that “a smaller number of personnel working within an efficient organizational model could leverage the many lessons learned since 2005 to build a more effective Force Employment environment.” In fact, though consolidation would sacrifice some of the brand identity of each command, his team believed integration “could offer enhanced organizational flexibility and agility, enabling more seamless and integrated oversight of all operations without the barriers created by a domestic /international division.”
LGen Beare agrees. In a recent interview, he said the restructuring would not take away from the strengths the commands have established in support of operations. “Not only is it going to preserve this, it will ideally allow [it] to become more coherent.”
He said the integration would eliminate “three ways of [doing] command and control, intelligence, ISR, and sustainment.” Rather, it would ensure an operational level C2 framework, intelligence architecture, ISR capability and sustainment approach that would be complementary to the tactical C2, intel, ISR and sustainment package that is sent “down range.”
As commander of CEFCOM, Beare has been championing a concept of “preparedness” for international events through greater understanding and engagement. The convergence of commands would “afford the idea of preparedness [to] become baseline.” he explained. “It is there now on the domestic side.”
To that end, he will oversee the creation of operational support hubs – bases and wings in Canada, partnerships internationally – that can be established or activated as required. “CANOSCOM has done a brilliant job of planning the operational support hubs globally. They are looking at positioning them in those geographic regions which best represent the possibility of CF engagement, operations, crisis or humanitarian disaster response.”
Gen Natynczyk once noted that “transformation is evolutionary.” Many will be watching to see what this next phase brings.