First delivery of RCAF CC-295 could be delayed

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  June 13, 2019 | Local, Security, Other Defence

  Canada should think again about having the ability to use offensive cyber weapons: Expert

  Howard Solomon Canada's electronic spy agency will soon get new authority to launch cyber attacks if the government approves legislation that is in the final stages of being debated. There's a good chance it will be proclaimed before the October federal election. But a discussion paper issued Wednesday by the Canadian Global Affairs Institute says Canadians need to debate the pros and cons of using this new power. “This direction not only opens up new possibilities for Canadian defence, it could also represent significant new risks,” says the report. “Without good answers to the difficult questions this new direction could raise, the country could be headed down a very precarious path.” Among the possible problems: Cyber retaliation. Another: While Canada might try to target a cyber attack, the impact might be bigger than expected — in fact, it might boomerang and smack us back. Third is the lack of international agreement on the use of cyber weapons (although this is a double-edged sword: Without an agreement there are no formal limits on what any country is forbidden from doing in cyberspace). “To move forward at this point to implement or even formally endorse a strategy of cyber attack would be risky and premature,” concludes the report's author, computer science professor Ken Barker, who also heads the University of Calgary's Institute for Security, Privacy and Information Assurance. “There are challenging technical controls that must be put in place as well as a critical international discussion on how cyber weaponry fits within the rules of war.” Barker's paper is in response to the 2017 strategy setting out Defence Department goals, where the possibility of Canada having a cyber attack capability first raised. It wasn't written with Bill C-59 in mind — now in its final stage before Parliament — which actually gives Canada's electronic spy agency, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), the power to use what's called “active” as well as defensive cyber operations. In an interview Tuesday, Barker said “in the desire to push this thing they need to have more carefully thought about the questions I raise in this paper.” “Maybe it's late, but at least it's available.” He dismisses the argument that by announcing it has an offensive cyber capability Canada will cause other countries to think twice about attacking us with cyber weapons. “They would attempt to find out what Canada is doing to create cyber attack capabilities,” he argued. “One of the risks once we do endorse this,” he added, “is we open ourselves up to other countries to using Canada as a launching pad for cyber attacks to cover up their involvement, and [then] say ‘That was done by Canada.'” Nation states are already active in cyberspace. Ottawa has blamed China for the 2014 hack of the National Research Council, Washington suspects China was behind the massive hack of employee files at the Office of Personnel Management, and there is strong evidence that Russia mounted a sophisticated social media attack against the U.S. during the 2016 federal election. According to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, The U.S. the U.K. and Australia say they have used offensive cyber operations against the Islamic State. The U.S.-based Council on Foreign Relations notes that Germany increased its offensive cyber capability after a 2016 attack on the country's legislature blamed on Russia. Last year the New York Times reported the U.S. Cyber Command has been empowered to be more offensive. Meanwhile in April the CSE warned it's “very likely” there will be some form of foreign cyber interference during the run-up to October's federal election here, The most commonly-cited interference in a country were two cyber attacks that knocked out electrical power in Ukraine — in December 2015 and again in December 2016 — largely believed to have been launched from Russia. All this is why some experts say Canada has to have an offensive cyber capability to at least keep up. In January, Ray Boisvert, former assistant director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), told a parliamentary committee that “the best defence always begins with a good offense ... “When more than five dozen countries are rumoured to be developing active cyber capabilities, in my view that means we must develop capabilities to respond and in some cases that includes outside our borders.” Background In 2017 the Trudeau government announced a new defence strategy that included the promise of “conducting active cyber operations against potential adversaries in the context of government-authorized military missions.” The same year the government introduced Bill C-59, which in part would give the CSE, which is responsible for securing government networks, the ability to take action online to defend Canadian networks and proactively stop cyber threats before they reach systems here. This would be done as part of new legislation governing the CSE called the Communications Security Act. That act would give CSE the ability to conduct defensive and “active” cyber operations. Active operations are defined as anything that could “degrade, disrupt, influence, respond to or interfere with the capabilities, intentions or activities of a foreign individual, state, organization or terrorist group as they relate to international affairs, defence or security.” Both defensive and active cyber operations can't be used against any portion of the global information infrastructure within this country. And they have to be approved by the Minister of Defence. C-59 has been passed by the House of Commons and slightly amended by the Senate. It was scheduled back in the House last night to debate the Senate amendments. Despite all the cyber incidents blamed on nation states, Barker is reluctant to say we're in an era of low-level cyber war right now. Many incidents can be characterized as cyber espionage and not trying cause harm to another state, he argues. https://www.itworldcanada.com/article/canada-should-think-again-about-having-the-ability-to-use-offensive-cyber-weapons-expert/418912

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  December 7, 2018 | Local, Aerospace, C4ISR

  Ottawa earmarks $20M to rejoin NATO airborne surveillance program

  Murray Brewster · CBC News The Liberal government has budgeted up to $20 million in this fiscal year to rejoin NATO's Airborne Early Warning and Control System (AWACS) program, reversing a Conservative-era budget cut in the name of alliance utility and solidarity. Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan and other senior officials recently appeared before a House of Commons committee to talk about the country's return to the long-standing alliance programme, which sees more than a dozen nations cost-share the operation of E3-A surveillance planes. New documents, released to CBC News under access to information law, show Canada has agreed to a partial return to the program through operations and support. It's a compromise decision that leaves the country's aerospace companies partly out in the cold — and one expert is questioning whether the reasons which led the former government to drop out of the program still exist. One of the major complaints voiced about the program behind closed doors in Stephen Harper's government had to do with NATO's reluctance to deploy the sophisticated surveillance aircraft on missions to Afghanistan and Iraq. The aircraft eventually were used for those missions, but not without considerable debate and what some Canadian officials saw as foot-dragging on NATO's part. 'A tough sell' Defence expert Dave Perry said that, going forward, the Liberals will have to justify this particular reinvestment more carefully. "If they don't actually use them in an operational context when it matters, then it's going to be a tough sell," he told CBC News. National Defence defends the decision to jump back into the program, saying in an email that "several things have changed, causing Canada to re-evaluate the relevancy" of its participation. A major factor is the introduction of the Liberal government's new defence policy, which emphasizes the need for better surveillance and reconnaissance. Canada had been part of the AWACS program for decades. When the Conservatives pulled the plug they cast the decision in economic terms, saying it had "little direct benefit." The planes were deployed in Europe and occasionally on other operations. The debate within the Harper government was over the logic of paying for a defence system that doesn't contribute directly to the defence of North America. "Accordingly, it is debatable whether it is appropriate for Canada to carry nearly 10 per cent of the programme, given that it is one of the two NATO members on the North American side of the Atlantic Ocean, and, as such, would benefit considerably less from AWACS than the 26 members on the European side," reads a March 22, 2016 internal government briefing note. NATO AWACS aircraft currently fly surveillance missions in support of reassurance measures in eastern Europe ordered after Russia's annexation of Crimea. The program is also providing "tailored assurance measures" for Turkey because of the crisis in Syria and is watching out for terrorist movement in the Mediterranean Sea. "I think time will tell, and it will depend on whether these aircraft are actually used," said Perry, an analyst at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. "If they're not used, then it will be a struggle to justify Canadian participation, however good it is for wider burden-sharing within the alliance and support to allies." Business opportunities The internal briefing note shows the decision to quit in 2011 cost Canadian defence contractors the right to bid on hundreds of millions of dollars in work related to the modernization of observation planes, known for their distinctive radar domes. Rejoining the plan will allow Canadian companies a finite set of bidding opportunities, a National Defence spokeswoman said. "Canada did not regain access to AWACS-related industrial benefits for modernization and upgrade when it re-engaged with the program," said Jessica Lamirande in an email. "However, Canadian industry has regained eligibility to compete for contracts related to the operations and maintenance of the AWACS." The briefing shows Canada is, in some respects, being treated like a new member of the plan, which means Ottawa pays for operations and support of the aircraft "while the fleet modernization will continue to be the responsibility of the programme's current 16 members, who will retain all of the industrial benefits associated with the programme." Prior to the Liberal government's decision to return to the program, officials held out the hope that rejoining might "restore Canada's ability to bid on such contracts." Conservative defence critic James Bezan described the government's approach as a "half-measure" and said rejoining AWACS became necessary after the Ukrainian crisis. "They're not spending as much as we were and we're not getting the full benefits of industrial contracts," he said, noting the Commons defence committee pointed out that Canada was not getting everything it could out of NATO contract opportunities. "The Liberals are always late to the table and that's what we're seeing here." https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/awac-nato-surveillance-ukraine-1.4931098

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  November 30, 2018 | Local, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  Why can't Ottawa get military procurement right?

  Murray Brewster · CBC News The last couple of weeks may go down in the Trudeau government's public record as the point when the desires of deliverology met the drawbacks of defence procurement. Remember 'deliverology'? That lofty concept — measuring a government's progress in delivering on its promises — was the vogue in policy circles at the beginning of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's administration. While it's sometimes derided as an empty concept, deliverology must have seemed tailor-made for a new government inheriting a troubled defence procurement system. The Canadian International Trade Tribunal's decision Tuesday to step into the brawl over which multinational consortium will design and support the construction of the navy's new frigates is another lesson in how (apologies to Robert Burns) the best laid plans of mice and men go awry. The tribunal's decision to order Ottawa to put the frigate project on hold pending the completion of their probe into a complaint by a failed bidder comes at a politically awkward time for the Liberals. One week ago, Auditor General Michael Ferguson delivered an ugly report on the Liberals' handling of fighter jet procurement — specifically, the plan to buy interim warplanes to cover the gap until the current CF-18 fleet can be replaced with new aircraft. Self-inflicted wounds A cynic's reflex (given the checkered history of defence purchasing over the last decade) might be to consider these two events as just another day at the office for the troubled government procurement system. That might not be entirely fair. Still, experts were saying Wednesday that the government is suffering from numerous self-inflicted political and administrative wounds on this file. With a federal election on the horizon, and in a climate of growing geopolitical instability, the question of what the government has actually managed to deliver on military procurement is an important one to ask, said Rob Huebert, an analyst in strategic studies at the University of Calgary. While the system, as the Trudeau Liberals and previous governments have constructed it, seems to be the perfect model of the "evidence based" policy making promised by the champions of deliverology, it's also not built for speed. Some would suggest the deliverology model was followed to the letter in the design competition now tied up before the trade tribunal and in Federal Court. What seemed like endless consultations with the bidders took two years. The government made up to 88 amendments to the tender. And in the end, the preferred bid was challenged by a competitor that claims not all of the navy's criteria were met. Alion Science and Technology Corp. and its subsidiary, Alion Canada, argue the warship Lockheed Martin Canada and BAE System Inc. want to sell to Ottawa cannot meet the speed requirements set by the tender without a substantial overhaul. It does not, the company claims, meet the government's demand for a proven, largely off-the-shelf design. Michael Armstrong, who teaches at Brock University and holds a doctorate in management science, said the government could have avoided the challenges and accompanying slowdowns had it been more precise in its language. "They could have been more clear and firm when they use the words 'proven design'," he said. "Did they literally mean we won't buy ships unless they're floating in the water? Or did they mean that British one that doesn't quite exist yet is close enough? "If they would have been more firm and said, 'We want a ship that actually exists,' that might have simplified things at this stage." Huebert described the auditor general's report on the purchase of interim fighters as an all-out assault on evidence-based policy making. "It is just so damning," he said. A break with reality The Conservatives have accused the Liberals of avoiding the purchase of the F-35 stealth jet through manufacturing a crisis by claiming the air force doesn't have enough fighters to meet its international commitments. The auditor found that the military could not meet the government's new policy commitment and even ignored advice that one of its proposed solutions — buying brand-new Super Hornets to fill the capability gap —would actually make their problems worse, not better. That statement, said Huebert, suggested a jaw-dropping break with reality on the government's part. "They [the Liberals] were just making things up," he said. It might have been too optimistic to expect the Liberals to fix the system, said Armstrong, given the short four years between elections. But Huebert said Ottawa can't carry on with business as usual — that the government now must deliver on procurement, instead of doubling down on rhetoric. The problem, he said, is that governments haven't really paid a price in the past for botched military procurement projects. There was "no political pain for the agony of the Sea King replacement, as an example," he said, referring to the two-decade long process to retire the air force's maritime helicopters. "The thing that makes me so concerned, even outraged, is that we are heading into a so much more dangerous international environment," said Huebert, citing last weekend's clash between Russia and Ukraine over the Kerch Strait and ongoing tension with Beijing in the South China Sea. "When things get nasty, we have to be ready." https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/why-can-t-ottawa-get-military-procurement-right-1.4924800