Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. It is a pleasure to be back with you once again, particularly for these important hearings on procurement.
Before I begin, I would like to introduce to you the people who are with me. I am accompanied by Mr. Terry Williston and Ms. Johanne Provencher from Public Works and Government Services, by Colonel François Riffou, my Director Land Requirement and my Chief Warrant Officer Lacroix, the Regimental Sergeant Major for the Land Staff.
The army's requirements are evolving as a result of the changing threat and the environment in which our soldiers operate. Much of the equipment we field today was acquired just following the Cold War or in the 1990s. Today we face asymmetric threats and an enemy that uses different weapons and tactics. There are other differences as well: during the many years when our major focus was on central Europe and later, our service in Bosnia, we were not required to operate in desert conditions.
Army requirements are driven by two major pillars. The first pillar is the combat development process. This process has led to the development of the document Land Ops 20-21, which is our future force employment concept. It looks out 15 years and tells us what kind of army will be required and how we should be prepared to fight in two to three decades. That is the more theoretical side and is prepared by some of the most forward-looking thinkers in the army, officers who study the evolution of land combat, likely technological advances and other questions of that nature. We are putting the final touches to that document and it should be published in the near future.
On the more practical side, and this is the second pillar, army requirements are driven by government policy and funding. At the moment, Mr. Chairman, the primary equipment related focus for the army are unforecasted operational requirements for the Afghanistan theatre.
And on the positive side, Mr. Chairman, the system has been very responsive to our requirements in that theatre. Whether it was the M777, UAVs or the Nyala fleet, the system has clearly demonstrated that it can be flexible and responsive to the needs of our soldiers in theatre. What is new is the ability of the system to respond more quickly to requirements that involve major expenditures; equipment we will bring home and maintain in the army for years to come, such as the M777 artillery pieces.
This is not the way we want to procure equipment on a regular basis—clearly, we prefer to take more time and think carefully about what will serve us best in different theatres for years to come. But the fact that the system has demonstrated the responsiveness that it has to our most pressing needs in Afghanistan is a most welcome development. On behalf of our soldiers, we are grateful.
Mr. Chairman, the length and intensity of our engagement in Afghanistan will no doubt have a significant impact on some of our major capital fleets. And we are using them at a faster rate than we initially thought would be necessary; we are driving them hard and wearing them out. As an example, the army is initiating a study, to be completed by July that will tell us the exact state of our lav fleet. The fleet was expected to run about 4,000 km a year—and not necessarily in desert conditions. We are now running 14-hour crew days and we are loading them up past what we expected with additional armour, ammunition and other things soldiers need when they go to war. We are running them in desert conditions for much of the year. We may therefore be forced to schedule life extension or replacement programs earlier than planned.
Mr. Chairman, your committee has heard from Mr. Dan Ross. He referred to a new way of doing business, so-called performance-based requirements. The army agrees in principle with this approach: the tell us what you want this piece of equipment to do approach, and we look forward to guidance and direction that will facilitate the change in our culture and methods from the more prescriptive approach that we currently use.
I should update the committee on a couple of more immediate projects, Mr. Chairman—we expect to go to the contract phase of our heavy-armoured truck acquisition by the end of March and our medium-weight truck project is on schedule to go to contract by Christmas. In both cases, we have received a good deal of interest from industry.
Mr. Chairman, the Canadian Army operates in a world where we face asymmetric threats, enemies have shown themselves to be highly adaptable, where technologies change very rapidly and where the age-old competition between offensive and defensive systems has accelerated.
As commander, I simply want to get the best possible equipment to my soldiers as quickly and in the most efficient way possible. Anything this committee does to streamline the system and help us to attain that goal will be greatly appreciated by Canadian soldiers.
In closing, sir, the process is going very well. When I first went to Kabul with 2,500 of your soldiers, in very short order we were provided with unattended aerial vehicles, night vision goggles, new radars, and up-armour kits for some of our vehicles. A whole bunch of people around town—Treasury Board, PWGSC, Foreign Affairs, PCO, ADM (Mat), and the entities within National Defence Headquarters—have done a great job, and that process is accelerating even faster, for which the soldiers of the army are extraordinarily grateful.
Quite frankly, sir, you and your committee should be very proud of all the work that you've done as a team to try to expedite the acquisition process to better protect our soldiers.
Gentlemen, I am now prepared to answer your questions.