November 16, 2017 | International, Aerospace, Land
Gen. Jonathan Vance said that despite speculation, there was never a plan in the works to deploy troops on a single UN operation.
OTTAWA—Training foreign troops will be the “flagship” of Canada's newly announced peace operations strategy, says the country's top soldier, who concedes that elements of the plan still require months more work.
Prime Minster Justin Trudeau on Wednesday took the wraps off his government's long-awaited effort to reengage with United Nations peace missions.
Elements of the strategy include $15 million in funding to boost participation by women soldiers in UN operations; an initiative to end the recruitment of child soldiers; and the promise of Canadian personnel to assist with training.
It also pledges up to six helicopters, two transport aircraft and a quick reaction force of up to 200 personnel to support UN missions.
But apart from Trudeau's promise of a single transport aircraft for UN operations based in Uganda, the plan offered no details on possible deployments.
Gen. Jonathan Vance, the chief of defence staff, said it would be “inappropriate” to say when those might start.
“I'm not even going to hazard a guess on that one right now. Step number one is now to get into detailed planning with the UN and find out . . . the what, the where and the when,” he said in an interview.
This week's announcement was months in the making. The Liberals pledged in the 2015 election to “recommit” to UN peace operations, in part by providing specialized capabilities such as medical teams and engineering support. That promise was followed in August, 2016 by a commitment to deploy up to 600 troops and 150 police officers on UN operations.
Canada's contributions to UN peace missions are at their lowest levels in years with just 23 military personnel currently assigned to such operations.
That's not likely to change soon. In the wake of Wednesday's commitments, Vance made clear that it will take many months yet of planning and discussions with the United Nations to determine how Canada's offers of personnel and equipment can best fit with ongoing missions.
“Some of the ‘when' on smart pledges is years away. Some of the ‘when' on other potential operations is sooner than that,” he said.
Some observers criticized the Liberal government for not committing personnel to a single mission, choosing instead to disperse personnel among many possible locations.
But Vance said that despite speculation, there was never a plan in the works to deploy troops on a single UN operation, saying, “I've never received guidance that said do a mission with 600 (troops).”
Suggestions that troops were headed to Mali, for example, or that the announcement had been delayed “didn't match the reality of the work we were doing,” Vance said.
“There were a lot of assumptions made about, ‘hey, we're going to Africa',” Vance said
Instead, he said that Canada was working with the United Nations “to figure out a new way of doing business.” And he said repeated fact-finding trips by bureaucrats and politicians, including visits to African countries, were not about scouting any one particular mission.
“That's us doing research . . . that allowed us to arrive at an approach that government could consider,' he said.
“We've been working for over a year to determine what are the various options available to government in terms of how to improve UN performance overall with Canadian troops,” Vance said.
Yet given that Africa is the location of many UN missions so “it's very likely a place where we would offer contributions,” Vance said.
The peace support strategy calls for a new training and advisory team to work with a nation before and during a deployment to improve their own ability to conduct peace operations. It also says that Canada will contribute to training centres and schools.
Vance said such activities will be the “flagship” of the plan.
“We're going to try and leverage the Canadian expertise, one of the best trained militaries in the world and best equipped, . . . so that UN mission performance can improve,” Vance said.
Defence analyst Dave Perry said elements of the peacekeeping strategy make sense. The problem, he said, is that the government itself had raised expectations with its drawn-out decision-making and rhetoric about its intentions.
“It wasn't just what the government was saying publicly. I think there were also a number of commitments that were strongly intimated to some of Canada's key allies,” Perry said in an interview.
“My sense is that the different options that were put forward by the department of national defence for whatever reasons weren't palatable to the government,” said Perry, a senior analyst with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.
While he said the contributions to UN operations were “modest,” Perry said Canada is better off providing military support to other missions, such as coalition efforts to combat Daesh, or NATO roles.
“Bluntly, there are better ways of achieving Canadian national objectives in the world that through UN missions,” Perry said.
July 25, 2022 | International, Aerospace
An official from defense contractor Boeing said the company will talk with the U.S. Air Force to get the E-7 Wedgetail ready faster.
January 31, 2019 | International, Naval
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy is looking to get a lot of underway time out of its new frigate and is eyeing a crewing model that swaps out teams of sailors to maximize the operational time for each hull. The so-called blue-gold crewing model effectively creates two crews for each ship of the class. The blue crew and gold crew switch out to keep the ships at sea for as long as possible without breaking the sailors and their families. It's the model the Navy has used for years on the ballistic missile submarines and is employing on the littoral combat ships, but now the model is likely to extend to the LCS successor, said Rear Adm. Ron Boxall, the Chief of Naval Operations' surface warfare director. “We're looking at the blue-gold construct on FFG(X). We're planning on it, which gives us a larger operational availability – it should double it,” Boxall told Defense News in an interview late last year. The use of blue-gold crewing hints at how the Navy is viewing its new frigate: as a ship that can carry out a a broad range of tasks that have consumed the operational time of larger combatants. That includes exercises with allies and freedom of navigation operations to counter-piracy and routine presence missions that don't require an Arleigh Burke destroyer to be successful but are time-intensive. The Navy has bemoaned the lack of a small surface combatant that can hold down low-end missions but still contribute in a high-end fight, which has been the impetus behind the whole FFG(X) program. Even though the crews will catch a break in the blue-gold construct, off-hull crews won't be kicking back during their shore rotation, Boxall said. The surface force has been investing in higher-end training facilities in fleet concentration areas in an effort to increase the proficiency of its watch teams. Crews on shore will be going through those trainers, he said. “So, these ships are going to be out there half the time while the [off-hull] crews are back training in higher-fidelity training environments,” Boxall explained. “And what [commanding officers] will tell you is that as we get to higher and higher fidelity training, time to train becomes equally as valuable. “So, in an increasingly complex environment, it's just intuitive that that you have to have time to train. We think Blue-Gold makes sense for those reasons on the frigate.” Lessons from LCS Getting more simulator time for surface sailors has been an initiative championed by the Navy's top surface warfare officer Vice Adm. Rich Brown. It's an off-shoot from lessons-learned from FFG(X)'s predecessor, the LCS, which has extremely high-fidelity simulator trainers for its crews before they take over their assigned hulls. One thing the surface force has been intrigued to see has been the high quality of the officers that come up through the LCS program, something the Navy in part attributes to the trainers, Boxall said, and the SWOs want to replicate that for the FFG(X). “One really interesting side-note with LCS has been the quality of the training,” Boxall said. “As we went back and looked at the lessons learned from McCain and Fitzgerald, we're trying to apply some of the good things about LCS to that. “Those officers, because they are smaller ships they get a lot more water under the keel. And they're faster ships so they are getting that water under the keel in a faster-moving environment. So we're creating a generation of officers who are getting tougher navigation environments thrown at them more quickly, and we're also getting the quality and fidelity of their trainers.” This has meant that LCS officers more-than stack up to their peers from larger, more advanced ships, he added. “What we're seeing is they are doing very, very well against their contemporaries coming off the bigger ships,” Boxall said. “Why is that happening? It's fairly logical: More stick time, better fidelity trainers and more time in the trainers.” Ownership The littoral combat ship adopted the Blue-Gold crewing model after a series of high-profile breakdowns, some caused by crew errors. The original model was to have three crews for two hulls, a rotational model that the Navy worried was taking away from the sense of ownership for a single, specific hull that permanently attached crews might have to a greater degree. The program was reorganized to a Blue-Gold model, which required hundreds of new billets for the LCS program, under then-head of Naval Surface Forces Pacific, Rear Adm. Thomas Rowden. Expanding Blue-Gold to the FFG(X) would further spread the model inside the surface warfare community. Both minesweepers and patrol craft, two other workhorse platforms in the surface community, operate under a Blue-Gold crewing model as well. However, it may not be a model that the Navy will pursue on the large surface combatant now in development. That ship may be better with a lower operational tempo, Boxall said. “We'll look and see if that makes sense on the large surface combatant or not,” he said. “Maybe those are better ships to keep as a surge force, maybe they're fine operating on a lower rotational model.” https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2019/01/30/the-us-navy-is-planning-for-its-new-frigate-to-be-a-workhorse/
July 3, 2019 | International, Aerospace
Author: Mike Rees General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) has unveiled its new Integrated Intelligence Center (I2C), which presents innovative ways to improve the user experience for operators of Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) using automation and user experience-based design (UX). “I2C will rapidly transform data into actionable intelligence,” said David R. Alexander, president, GA-ASI. “We see benefits to the warfighter on many fronts, including the reduction of operational cost – whether it's Ground Ops, Air Ops, or Intel Ops. By combining XC2, Automatic Takeoff and Landing, MMC and our single-seat Certifiable Ground Control Station, we will reduce manning by 50 percent.” GA-ASI's modular and open software architecture designs promote horizontal integration of third party software and rapid integration of new capabilities, making the following developments the ideal set of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) tools for streamlined and improved collaboration: eXpeditionary Command & Control (XC2): XC2 laptop leverages GA-ASI's Advanced Cockpit development by porting select capabilities to a ruggedized laptop. A forward-deployed maintainer can use the laptop to employ automated pre-flight and post-flight checklists that reduce setup times by up to 50 percent, and reduces the airlift requirements by eliminating the need for a forward-deployed Ground Control Station (GCS). Certifiable Ground Control Station (CGCS): The CGCS enables single-seat operations to reduce manpower requirements. Its tactical situation display unifies ISR and C4ISR data, as well as mission planning into a single Common Operating Picture (COP). The integrated Collins Pro Line Fusion enables CGCS certifiability for operation in national airspace. Multi-Mission Controller (MMC): The MMC enables a single user to safely control multiple aircraft and perform transit and routine ISR missions using a hand controller. When an aircraft is tasked with performing more dynamic ISR or a strike mission, MMC allows a rapid handoff of the aircraft to a dedicated GCS, where a mission crew can take control. Metis – Automated intelligence Collection Management: Metis is a map-based interface that enables a pre-approved Metis user to request ISR products from the RPA, similar to ordering a car from Uber. Once the Metis user sends a task, it's transmitted to MMC in real time. The MMC user selects the task and an integrated third party auto-router automatically generates a safe route to the requested target. STARE Imagery: The System for Tactical Archival, Retrieval, and Exploitation's (STARE) Common Operation Picture shows aircraft locations, where the operator can look and what they are looking at. The Multi-INT exploitation tool ingests, archives, disseminates and makes ISR data discoverable for imagery analysts to utilize. STARE reduces data exploitation tasks from hours to minutes. Automation of Intel Ops: I2C integrates third party capabilities and software services to make Intel analysts more effective. Automated Activity Alerts – based on Multi-INT data correlation – reduces the need for eyes-on RPA sensor data to pick out significant activity. GA-ASI is partnering with best-of-breed companies specializing in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning with proven AI-based systems deployed across multiple commercial sectors. GA-ASI works with these businesses to train their AI capability with MQ-9, MQ-1C and Predator ISR data. These tools and capabilities are either operationally deployed, undergoing customer operational assessment or are actively flying aircraft. https://www.unmannedsystemstechnology.com/2019/06/ga-asi-announces-streamlined-isr-tools-for-uas/