Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I am MGen Mike Ward, Chief of Force Development. My role, on behalf of the Deputy Minister and the Chief of the Defence Staff, is to harmonize, synchronize and integrate the Force Development activities of the Navy, the Army and the Air Force, as well as the duties carried out by DND's Assistant Deputy Ministers.
Force development is that function that continuously conceives and redesigns the military so that it is better geared to fight the next war than the last one. It includes analysis of government policy on defence and the security environment, as well as we can predict it, out into the future. It uses that analysis to identify possible future scenarios within which we would apply military force or use military skills in things like humanitarian interventions. In those scenarios, we test our forces and our equipment to determine what changes might need to be made as we replace or modernize them at key stages in their lives.
Ultimately we combine the results to create a long-term plan that sets priorities for development over time. This defines the equipment requirements that guide what we procure, and we work closely with other government departments and our allies to share knowledge and experience so that we have confidence in our results and the recommendations that we forward.
In conjunction with each of the services and the associated deputy ministers, I focus on the developmental capabilities. Those capabilities will permit the Canadian Forces to provide Canada with effective and relevant military power. These include command and control systems and special operations forces at the national level, as well as major core capabilities such as ships, fighting vehicles, and aircraft in each of the services.
When we conduct force development, we speak in terms of capabilities. While our purpose today is to help educate about defence procurement, it's important to see the output of the procurement process as enabling an element of the force to be capable of doing a job or completing a mission.
The capability must be balanced, and therefore capabilities are made up of a combination of highly skilled and well-trained personnel, modern equipment, and the readiness to complete a mission, as you've seen recently during your visit to the task force in Afghanistan.
To further explain, a main battle tank is not, in and of itself, a capability. Only when it's married up with a trained crew and is prepared for a mission does it become part of our arsenal. A patrol frigate tied up to a dock is also not, in itself, a capability. Her Majesty's Canadian Ship Ottawa, however, now completing a six-month tour of operations in the Arabian Gulf with her full crew and six months of training and preparation, constitutes a complete military capability that's ready to complete a variety of missions.
The key to success as regards force development is the establishment of a long-term plan that considers the following: the security context Canada is dealing with and in which we need to develop our forces; the methods we use to employ our forces where they are needed to counter threats to Canada, either at home or overseas; the main requirements, with respect to our forces and materiel, that must be met to ensure that they are relevant and decisive; and, the financial circumstances under which the plan becomes cost-effective, justifiable and achievable.
Success in force development and strategic planning enables clarification of development options and capability acquisition.
I'm specifically responsible to work very closely with the associate deputy minister for policy and provide him with the military advice he requires in order to create the long-term defence capability plan that lays out how we will manage our military over a 20-year timeframe. Managing means how we invest in, modernize, recapitalize, or ultimately replace in service those capabilities, ships, aircraft, and fighting systems that serve or no longer serve our needs.
The plan is key to ensuring that we maintain a high level of operational effectiveness while at the same time efficiently managing our people and our fleets of equipment. I work hand in glove with the chief of programs to ensure that the defence plan can be resourced and afforded, and with the assistant deputy minister for materiel to make sure those capability requirements can be acquired in a timeframe that ensures a high level of operational effectiveness for our forces.
I welcome any questions you may have about the force development process.
Merci beaucoup.