National Defence Committee on Oct. 21st, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Peter Kent]

The time is up, Mr. Harris.

Mr. Bezan, please.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, General Hood and Admiral Couturier, for being with us today.

It is good to be able to hear of all the things that the Canadian Forces are doing as part of a NATO mission.

Following up on some of the comments that my colleagues have made, this does play into the greater context of the interoperability and readiness of the Canadian Forces with our NATO allies. All the training opportunities that we have right now, the number of service men and women able to go over there along with the air force, along with our sailors, have provided an amazing chance to work alongside NATO and to always be at the highest level of readiness.

Can you speak to the overall context of lessons learned from Operation Reassurance so far? You've mentioned Romania as an example of a country not having that previous experience. I understand there was an opportunity in Exercise Sea Breeze when were in the Black Sea to participate with other countries that are in the region but not necessarily NATO allies. How did that all play out? How did you feel about the overall exercise?

[MGen Michael Hood]

From a macro sense, I would certainly mirror a lot of the comments you made, in saying that we've seen this to be very worthwhile as a military capability piece, a very worthwhile experience in working with some allies with whom we don't spend a lot of time.

With respect to lessons learned, right now I'd say there are lessons observed. We capture them and once we've taken them back and considered how we would improve subsequent deployments, then we would call them lessons learned. We're in that loop right now, and I'm not really tracking—other than the very high strategic ones—a lot of the tactical lessons learned. But we have a pretty good system where we would roll those back into our training plans to get ready for the next evolution.

[RAdm Gilles Couturier]

Each service has a warfare centre and each unit that is being deployed is sending their information, their lessons learned, back there. We roll that back up so the next unit deploying has an opportunity to get some of those lessons and some recommendations on how to fix some of those issues that we observed.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

One thing that I'm interested in—because NATO Operation Reassurance is about showing Russia that we aren't going to stand in face of their aggression—is the following.

Have there also been opportunities for the Ukrainian military to participate in some of these training missions? When you look at Ukraine especially right now, with the fighting that's been taking place, the aggression they are experiencing in the east, the occupation and the illegal annexation of Crimea, there is a standing up of a whole new army that has taken place in Ukraine. So a lot of people are not necessarily experienced or exposed to military doctrine. Have there been some opportunities for them?

Ted and I were just speaking at the Canadian Forces College. There was a Ukranian colonel who was part of the delegation in town today. He was over here to upgrade his skills and abilities and to take that back and spread that knowledge within Ukraine.

What other opportunities exist through Operation Reassurance?

[MGen Michael Hood]

The only interaction with Ukraine in the operations that we're talking about was in Operation Sea Breeze, where there was a Ukrainian naval vessel—although we've had a longstanding training program.

Perhaps I had best turn to my colleague on that. It's run out of policy. We have a longer term relationship with Ukraine that we have provided training to.

If you want to comment....

[RAdm Gilles Couturier]

The military training and cooperation program has been running since 1993, and we have about 1,100 Ukranian officers go through our system. A lot of it is associated with language training. You understand that is certainly an important part, but we do have some courses we run with the Canadian academy, giving us an opportunity to train at a little bit higher level than that aspect.

There's also an element that we've been training for over the last few years. As they were getting their peacekeeping battalion ready to go out, we conducted some training with them and continue to do some of that work.

[The Chair, Conservative, Peter Kent]

You have 30 seconds for a short question.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Okay, a short question.

The final comment I have is about the issue of interoperability and technology.

He was talking about Romanians, for example, flying in these old MiGs, and then you go into a country like Lithuania and the other Baltic nations, such as Latvia, that don't have any air force capability at all. Is their technology able to communicate with the Canadian hardware that we've taken over there?

[MGen Michael Hood]

Amongst NATO allies there is sufficient interoperability, and certainly amongst the higher-tier NATO nations. There is a lot more commonality and interoperability from a technical sense, if I understood your question.

For instance, when we were flying with the Romanians and there was a NATO AWACS there, all of that operation is in effect seamless. The technology for speaking with one another isn't necessarily always there; it depends on each nation's sovereign decision with respect to equipment. But the tactics, techniques, and procedures to operate within that alliance are pretty solid.

[The Chair, Conservative, Peter Kent]

Thank you, Mr. Bezan.

Monsieur Brahmi, s'il vous plaît.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm always pleased to be back in committee.

Major-General Hood, you talked about the opportunity to work with what you referred to as non-traditional allies or countries that we do not usually work with in NATO. It is really an opportunity to get to know other alliance partners.

I see three aspects: information sharing, interoperability and smart defence, which we have been discussing at great length in this committee for a number of years. We are talking about the possibility of providing each country with a specialty based on its resources.

Let's start with the first aspect, information sharing. You have just mentioned the airborne warning and control system, AWACS. I will take advantage of the fact that you are a pilot and ask you this question. Under Operation Reassurance specifically, have you noticed any negative consequences because Canada withdrew from AWACS, or at least from funding the system, in 2012?

[MGen Michael Hood]

I have not noticed any negative consequences. We continue to work with AWACS. In NATO missions, staff members use the system jointly with the United States. Our routine operations include aircraft capabilities. There are no negative consequences because Canada withdrew from the system.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Are you telling me that Canada was paying $90 million for nothing?

[MGen Michael Hood]

No. I think NATO has found other member states to replace Canada.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Okay.

In terms of interoperability, do you think some countries might be facing insurmountable technical difficulties, which cannot be overcome anyway?

[MGen Michael Hood]

The difficulties are not insurmountable.

Romania has the MiG-21s. The country has made investments over the past 10 years and it now has more modern aircraft. These planes are not at the same level as our F-18s yet, but they are sufficient to meet a minimal level of interoperability. I don't know what the naval situation is, but I can ask my colleague.

[RAdm Gilles Couturier]

The opportunity is there. The NATO standard is well recognized by countries in the region. That gives us a basis for communication. It might not be at the same classification level as when there is only one NATO group, but we have the opportunity to exchange information with those other countries.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Okay.

I will now go to the third aspect, smart defence. The concept of smart defence relies on the idea that each partner has an expertise and better skills in a specific area. Do new or non-traditional partners make it harder to determine the areas in which some countries might have special skills to complement those of Canada?

[RAdm Gilles Couturier]

One of the basic principles of smart defence is that the integration level of participating countries is quite high. Sometimes, new countries working with us or joining our operations do not have the same level of expertise. Therefore, we have not been able to really test the concept of smart defence with those countries.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Major-General Hood, since you are the air force expert, is that true for both the air force and the navy?

[MGen Michael Hood]

When we talk about smart defence in the air force, we talk about the countries' potential investments rather than about buying a fighter, for instance.

Smart defence applies to all NATO affairs, and countries make sovereign choices. The goal is not for everyone to have the same level of naval, air and military expertise. Smart defence is about determining how we can have a system that capitalizes on countries' investments.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Peter Kent]

Thank you, Mr. Brahmi.

Mr. Opitz, please.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chair, and through you to our witnesses. Gentlemen, thank you very much for appearing.

I want to explore interoperability a little bit, because sometimes one thinks that it's just simply a platform and that they all work together very nicely. A MiG-21 is sort of the Starfighter of its day. It's a 50-year-old aircraft and very fast, but don't try to turn too much.

How do you take some of those capabilities and work it in with CF-18s and other platforms we use? How do you assess the capabilities of some of those aircraft?