Yes, sir. I'd be delighted to talk about military requirements, which are our job to define.
We start with a strategic assessment of the operational environment we work in now and believe we will work in for the immediate future—what kind of missions we will have in the Canadian Forces, what we expect the Government of Canada to ask us to do, where they will expect us to do it, and under what kind of environmental conditions—and therefore, what kind of capabilities we would need to be successful in it.
That's top-down, at the strategic level. We also then work bottom-up—from the people who do the missions in the field right now, based on lessons learned in places such as Afghanistan, in Alert in Canada, on the east coast, of course, with the air, land, and sea forces—and incorporate the lessons learned on a daily basis about what best provides them the capability to do their job.
We combine those things and bring the result through a rigid process in the Canadian Forces, with the Department of National Defence as a full piece of it, obviously. We walk it through bear-pit sessions, analysis of the requirement—a stringent requirement to follow the line of logic: this kind of mission would demand this kind of capability, and therefore, here is what we would need to ask for in high-level specifications.
That process takes a long time. It changes en route. I would love to direct everything myself, but I have an entire structure that holds me accountable, and I hold them accountable for walking through this in a thorough way, from all 360 degrees, in providing the best military advice I can give to the Government of Canada on what we would need. We do that constantly.