Thanks for the question.
I would say that overall, it's pretty clear that we're considerably more ready now than we would have been a decade ago, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which has been the investment in our capacity to deploy. The C-17s have made a marked difference in our perceived and actual state of readiness, because you can be very ready, but it doesn't really count if you can't get there in the first place. So there's a readiness continuum allowing you to actually land on the ground and do something. Again, you can stay academic for only so long; eventually you have to do something.
At the same time, I would say that we have an experiential pillar now that didn't exist 10 years ago. We've been in Afghanistan for 10 years. We understand the nature of war from the perspective of how we function among allies, what we need to bring to the table, what we need to receive from allies to be able to function effectively. As I alluded to in a example before, you can be extremely ready with a cavalry force, but if it's a machine gun war, it doesn't really matter.
We've had 10 years of intellectual growth and experience with our allies, using cutting-edge capacity technologies, with everything from our ability to use intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance assets through to biometrics and everything else. We have a much better understanding, and now some experience in delivering, maintaining, and leading forces into combat. That crucible has increased our overall appreciation of what we need to be ready for. Until you go through those experiences, there are some things that you might miss.
Ten years ago, I dare say, our understanding of what it meant to be ready for casualties, family care, long-term care of wounded.... While these are things that were once perhaps extremely well-known in this country, some things do lapse. Now we have a tremendous understanding of it. So given our experience, investment, and continued education as a result of our work with allies, I'd say that we're in a far better position than we were 10 years ago.
There are many things one can and must do, if one wants to maintain a state of readiness, because there are components to it. High readiness is often identified with those things that are quick off the mark. Major confrontations don't generally happen quickly or off the mark. Usually for things that are going to happen very quickly, we have something in the shop window ready to go. For something like the situation in Haiti, an earthquake, or a disaster somewhere, we have the forces that can contribute to that. Having something that's a bit more substantial for a situation like that in Afghanistan takes a bit more time to evolve—and if we don't have it, we've demonstrated, I think, that we can build it.
When we started in Afghanistan, we didn't have tanks. We needed tanks. We got tanks. We didn't have the operational mentor and liaison teams. We built those. Warfare is its own generator of new thinking and demands for readiness.
I know I'm being a little bit long-winded here, but I just want to put a little bit of a plug in for the concept of whole of government. Before Afghanistan, the Canadian Forces largely, but not exclusively, functioned pretty much in a silo. “Go do your military task” was more or less how UN missions were set up.
Counter insurgencies and the nature of conflict in Afghanistan--and, we believe, the nature of conflict in the future--demand that you have an element of readiness if you will and, certainly, an element of relationship building within government that will allow for a joined-up response from the whole of government. We have developed that in spades over the past 10 years, in that there's a deep appreciation among Foreign Affairs, CIDA, the Department of National Defence, CSE, and everybody else that contributes of what they bring to the table. I think there have been some really good lessons learned about how we would do that again.