National Defence Committee on Nov. 17th, 2011

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

I call this meeting to order. We're a couple of minutes behind.

We're going to continue with our study on readiness. Joining us today as a witness is Major-General Mark McQuillan, who is the commander of Canadian Operational Support.

General, if you could bring your opening comments, we'd appreciate it.

[Major-General Mark McQuillan, Commander, Canadian Operational Support Command, Department of National Defence]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to provide you with a briefing on the Canadian Operational Support Command, in particular on the role pertaining to force readiness.

I'm Major-General Mark McQuillan, commander of Canadian Operational Support Command, or CANOSCOM.

CANOSCOM was first created and stood up in early 2006 as part of the first round of CF transformation. It has matured and, from my perspective, has provided outstanding support to Canadian Forces operations, domestic and international, over that timeframe.

What I would like to do is walk through a very short deck of slides, to provide some context of how CANOSCOM, and, more importantly, its superb professionals, enable operations.

What I hope to underscore are the force generation and force employment responsibilities executed by the command and speak to its overall readiness, flexibility and capabilities.

My first slide provides an overview of where CANOSCOM fits within our operational focus. Clearly it has both strategic influence and tactical effect. The CANOSCOM mission is to provide effective and efficient operational support to CF operations, be they domestic, continental, or expeditionary.

Operational support is the delivery of a specialized support function that is not unique to the special air, maritime, or land component commands but rather would be seen as providing joint or cross-service capabilities that have an enabling impact on CF operations. In many respects we act as a coordinating body, linking functional support policy and authorities at the national level to the provision of operational capability reaching down to the task force support organizations.

Our primary roles are to coordinate the generation of task-tailored operational support organizations for employment in theatre opening and activation, mission sustainment, and finally close-out. We support the operational commanders--Expeditionary Force Command, Canada Command, and Special Operations Forces Command--in the planning and preparation of operations, and we provide reach-back and coordinate the provision of national and strategic support as appropriate.

The second slide depicts one of the great advantages of CANOSCOM, which is that it groups a range of support activities under one commander. I'm responsible to force-generate specialists from across a variety of support disciplines. These include logistics--which encompasses materiel management--as well as movements, finance, and food services. Additionally, CANOSCOM provides a range of personal services such as those used in the capabilities and third-line decompression for troops returning from Afghanistan.

Military engineers are essential for the tasks assigned, and we have professional engineering advice and capability to coordinate force bed-down during theatre activation. We also have strategic and operational level communications and information services, which, among other things, establish communications and provide information technology in theatre while providing essential rear links to Canada.

We also coordinate and deliver health services in conjunction with the health services group.

Lastly, CANOSCOM provides military policing and close protection in conjunction with the Canadian Forces provost marshal. In short, we're a one-stop shop for the coordination and provision of general support for operations.

CANOSCOM has both force generation and force employment responsibilities. This third slide depicts some of the tasks associated with an international deployment.

In general terms, once a new mission or operation is being considered, CANOSCOM's role is to assist the supported command, normally Canada Command or Canadian Expeditionary Force Command to develop the overall mission support plan. We will assist with the planning for the activation of camps, coordinate and commence the movement of materiel into the theatre of operations. Additionally, in developing the overall support plan, we will participate in the creation of support arrangements which ultimately will be managed by the deployed force.

CANOSCOM will establish what we call the strategic lines of communication and take responsibility for the tasks associated with its execution. CANOSCOM will assist in the projection of the force into a theatre normally defined as a joint operating area and through coordination of the strategic lift, both air and surface, and assist in sustaining the force by ensuring the provision of an efficient operational supply chain.

CANOSCOM's readiness framework has been driven by the Canada First defence strategy and six core missions that fall out from that. CANOSCOM drives tasks and maintains a level of readiness and capability to support both planned events, such as the Canadian Forces support we provided to the winter Olympics, and unplanned events, such as our disaster response provided as a result of the earthquake that devastated Haiti in 2010.

The backbone of our material and distribution network is provided by the Canadian materiel support group, which manages the six ammunition and material depots across Canada. The deployable capabilities within CANOSCOM consist of the Joint Support Group that has expertise in movements, supply, and postal services; and the joint signals regiment, with deployable strategic and operational communications packages. As indicated earlier, CANOSCOM has engineering and security services that maintain a level of readiness to support CF operations.

It's also important to note the operational support provided by the Royal Canadian Navy, the Canadian Army, and the Royal Canadian Air Force and their organizational departments. For those general support capabilities required from the services, I'm responsible for helping define the training and equipment requirements and maintaining a level of readiness. To meet these requirements, the environmental chiefs' support is vital.

The next slide speaks to the command's capability development. The Canada First defence strategy states the intention of the Government of Canada to strengthen CF readiness to deploy and sustain operations once deployed.

CANOSCOM actively participates in our force development process by identifying requirements for operational support, both current and future. This process looks at future capability requirements influenced by operational lessons learned from CANOSCOM's extensive support of CF operations at home and around the globe since its inception.

We have established a program office that is mandated to address a number of operational support requirements. This slide portrays one specific operation support capability requirement where our analysis has resulted in identification for improved operational-level fuel handling capability. This issue is currently undergoing options analysis, including a benchmarking of the best fuel handling practices of close allies and NATO. This will result in the development of options and recommendations for future investment in leading-edge deployable fuel-handling equipment processes, including specific attention to be paid to the challenges associated with deploying and handling fuels in the Canadian Arctic.

The sixth slide highlights the fact that when deployed, specifically internationally, we normally do so in a coalition environment. As such we need to be mindful of other nations' capabilities and work together, where practical, to create a support solution that works effectively for those involved. Ultimately we're always striving to provide the best support at the least cost, in terms of both dollars and deployed personnel. We work with our allies in a number of fora to ensure that we have the best practices in place based on shared lessons learned in the conduct of operations.

We also leverage existing agreements specifically with NATO nations, and in particular with the U.S., where we can take advantage of their capabilities to provide a range of support on a cost-recovery basis. For example, we have entered into an acquisition cross-servicing arrangement with the U.S. in order to provide real-life support for the training mission in Afghanistan.

In addition to CF support capabilities and coalition support arrangements, we have had a degree of success in the past with the Canadian Forces contractor augmentation program, or CANCAP capability. These are DND contracts that were competed through PWGSC to provide augmentation to deployed logistical services, such as construction engineering, materiel management, and distribution. CANCAP services were extensively used in Afghanistan to help reduce the stress placed on various support trades. Between 2007 and 2011, for example, upwards of 300 civilians at any given time were working at the Kandahar airfield.

In short, when we design or improve a support concept we try to use a range of tools to ensure that the commander on the ground has an effective and flexible range of support capabilities to complete the scope of missions that he or she will be assigned.

Lastly, I'd like to speak briefly to a concept you're probably already aware of, and that is the operational support hub initiative. This hub concept speaks to the need for rapid-force projection and sustainment of a force, usually in a time-constrained environment. We have modelled deployment scenarios and mapped what we consider to be an effective concept that relies on the movement of CF capability by strategic air and sea lift, and then potentially transship to more tactical means of transport for onward movement to a specific mission or joint operating area.

The hub concept requires agreements with friendly governments that would agree to support temporary positioning and movement of CF personnel and equipment through the country. It is worthy of note that these nodes, when established on the strategic lines of communication, should not be seen as CF bases. They are hubs, to be activated when and if required, providing logistic support for transitioning elements.

The hub concept has a number of advantages in that it is flexible, responsive, and cost-effective when conducting sustained operations over a lengthy timeline.

The hub concept would also allow us to potentially embrace more fully the whole-of-government approach and enhance key relationships in a region.

Ladies and gentlemen, in summation, the Canadian Operational Support Command is an effective enabler for the conduct of CF operations. It has great people, military and civilian, with a demanding mission, but one I believe they have done exceptionally well.

Mr. Chair, I would be happy to respond to any questions at this time.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you, General, and thank you for your opening comments.

I noticed that when you mentioned on slide 2 that military engineers are essential to the tasks assigned in your department, Mr. Chisu puffed up a bit and grew about two or three inches.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

There'll be no living with him.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

With that, we'll go to our seven-minute round.

Mr. Christopherson, can you lead off?

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

I would just advise my colleague not to worry. There's lots of competition for ego in this room, and I speak of myself to start with.

General, thank you very much for your presentation. Although I've been on Parliament Hill for a number of years now, I'm the newbie on this committee, so when you say things like, “You are likely already aware of...”, you're speaking to the majority of the committee but not to me. So it's very much one on one for me.

I'm very much interested in the operational support hub initiative that you mentioned in the latter part of your presentation. Particularly, you noted that if it's part of the strategic line of communication, it's not a base. Could you help me with a little more understanding on the strategic line of communication and exactly what that is? And again, provide a little further embellishment of the hub and how that differs from a base, since you made the point that we need to know that it's not one.

[MGen Mark McQuillan]

Sir, thank you for the question.

The amplification of the strategic line of communication, in simplistic terms, is essentially the sustainment route that we use to maintain and support a force. So it is primarily based on materiel movement, equipment movement, and personnel movement.

Of course, there are some enabling pieces on that strategic line of communication in addition to the sustainment piece, and I can come back to that.

Specifically with respect to what a hub is, it's probably best to use an example. For instance, when this concept was put forward I was given the authority to trial the hub. The reality of doing operations essentially necessitated that we do that. So I have what I call a hub in Spangdahlem, Germany. We have good cooperation with the Americans. We're on an American air force base but very much hosted by the German government. We had an agreement in principle to operate sustainment from that base.

As an example, while the Afghan mission was running, we're all aware we had a capability in Camp Mirage, but in addition a lot of our materiel sustainment came through this hub. The importance of the hub is that while we are doing sustainment operations, it is there. Today it is about four people, and it does transshipment--relatively small, very agile, but it saves money.

The simple principle is, depending on the priority of demand--i.e., how time-sensitive things need to get to the operational area--if I can use a ship, that's cheaper. And if I can use the ship, cross-load it, and move it across to an air head and then fly it in for that last leg, that is the more effective way. So that is an example of how an existing hub is being used, as we speak.

You can also add other activities to a hub. So when you are doing a relief in place, a rotation of troops every number of months, you will end up putting a team in place to provide augmentation to that capability. And then based on the levels of activity, you will ramp up to provide additional capability or capacity. When you have a battle group rotating through for about a six-week time period, it is a pretty intensive timeline to do that.

One other aspect of the strategic line of communication is that we will also put other activities on that strategic line of communication. I mentioned rotation of troops. For instance, I mentioned the term, “third location decompression”. In the troop rotation piece we see a need to ensure that we have an opportunity for troops rotating from a high-combat, high-stress environment coming back to the normalcy of a Canadian domestic environment to have a period of days to transition and decompress. But it's really seen as part of the redeployment process. We will stand up a capability on the strategic line of communication to assist in the mental health and education piece, a little bit of relaxation, and very much a decompression intent.

Sir, I hope that answers the question.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Yes, it does. Thank you.

On this strategic line of communication vis-à-vis readiness, in your preparations where you're identifying potential areas, where you're looking at readiness and determining some of the likely things that you may be called upon to deal with, given what's going on currently in the world, do you automatically build in a strategic line of communication as part of that preparation? Without those supplies to keep the front lines going, you're limited in how long you can be effective. Do you do this immediately upon identifying where you're going and what the need is and then build that in?

I'm curious about the readiness, the strategic line of communication, when you're identifying potential hot spots that you may be called upon to respond to as part of the pre-planning. Do you think about where that strategic line of communication is and try to form some rough idea of it ahead of time, or can that happen only after you've identified the mission?

[MGen Mark McQuillan]

That's a great question. It allows me to talk a little more about hubs. In developing the concept of the hub, what we did at the front end was consider the dynamics of the world. When Canada asks a military force to go somewhere, whether it's for humanitarian assistance or for security operations, normally it means that you're going to go some distance, and that you're going to an area that is devastated in some way or other. So our planning assumption is not to expect to have much there. We do not want to put a strain on the local economy as we start to move into an operation.

Yes, we do need to plan, and that's in essence what the hub concept allows us to do. We have modelled strategic lines of communication against tactics. In a global context, by studying the geopolitical realities, we know that there are parts of the world where we might need to be prepared to respond, sometimes without any detailed direction from government. This allows a level of flexibility, so that if government decides that a military response is required, we're able to carry it through.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

In identifying those potential missions and the strategic line of communication, is this so crucial that if you don't have it in place you may not necessarily be able to respond the way the government of the day might like?

We can ask for anything, but you can only deliver what you can deliver. I thought it was interesting when you said you must not put demands on the local economy. I never thought of that. It never crossed my mind. That's assuming there's any kind of a going economy where you're headed anyway. I appreciate your mentioning that.

But anyway, coming back to your preparation, do you ever have to tell your political masters that you can't do it quite that way, because you're not able to sustain it, and if you're not able to sustain it, you don't want to start it? Or do you sometimes have to tell them that you can't go there quite as quickly as they'd like?

How relevant is this strategic line of communication to your ability to mount a response? Does it need to be there before you can go, or do you go no matter what and then figure out how you're going to get that strategic line of communication in place to support the mission?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. Christopherson, your time has expired.

General, please keep your response as short as possible.

[MGen Mark McQuillan]

In simple principles, we will go when and if required. Haiti is a good example. It wasn't an ideal place. It wasn't an ideal time, because of other CF operations. But we can and will respond.

The idea behind pre-planning a strategic line of communication is just increasing flexibility. It helps to be able to put agreements or contract arrangements in place with nations. My reality is that I usually need to have military provision of support, and I normally need to complement that with contracted support in a range of functions. So that flexibility is just good logistical pre-planning, and we attempt to do that.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

Mr. Opitz.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for being here today, General.

I can see why they say amateurs talk tactics and professionals talk logistics. What you're doing is a tremendously complex operation in coordination with many of our allies and some of the other dot-coms.

In an international mission such as the one in Afghanistan, how would you and CANOSCOM coordinate with our allied partners to ensure that all operational support requirements were met by our ISAF partners? You could also expand on how the hubs fit into this whole program.

[MGen Mark McQuillan]

Thanks for the question.

Afghanistan, as you can understand, is a challenging mission. I don't think we could pick any more demanding from a logistics perspective in terms of how you sustain a force that is in combat, or it was up until the summer and now we're transitioning to a training missing, so the sustainment of peace is real.

It does highlight the earlier question when you talked about how we coordinate with others. Very clearly, as we went into the Afghan mission—and getting back to the point that Afghanistan, in the 2001 moving forward timeframe, was very basic in terms of its capabilities from an industrial perspective. Therefore, when we go in, and we understand that, for us to have the effect that government wants, of course we have to be operational. In simple terms we need to ensure that the support to the soldiers is coordinated.

An example of what we ended up doing ISAF-partner specific is the fuel. Fuel is a huge commodity in a mission such as this. It's not resident in Afghanistan; we have to move it in. That ended up being--or it is today--a NATO-managed contract through headquarters that runs from one of the task forces, the ISAF task force headquarters, that manages the fuel delivery into ISAF. Millions of litres of fuel in a year are being consumed. That is an example of how, instead of all independent nations working independently to bring in their own fuel, which would have challenged each and every nation, working collectively to come together, to have a construct together for that, works. In addition you end up with contracted solutions. For instance, Kandahar, where the Canadians were employed...in the evolution of that support, you ended up actually giving a contracted solution for some of what we call real-life support, so the feeding, for instance, and some of the other basic services in and around the air field.

That combination of complex contracting, or coalition contracting, in line with agreements with other nations as you come together to solve problems is really important and essential in today's dynamic, and specifically in coalition ops.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

How many of your members in CANOSCOM are serving in bases abroad? Could you comment on the role in those particular bases or hubs and what type of operational support is available to them?

[MGen Mark McQuillan]

Again, thanks for the question.

I should know exactly today how many I have deployed. I'm afraid I don't know the exact number.

I should clarify that Afghanistan, in the support concept, is the Expeditionary Force Command's mission. When we start to build an organizational structure, for instance—and we can talk a little bit later perhaps about the transition task force—the actual members of that come from force generation CF-wide. What we end up doing is essentially in the planning process we develop a table of organization equipment, we determine the tasks, and then we select leadership and/or the members to be able to support them.

To get back to your question, for instance, I would end up providing members of the joint signals regiment as part of the communications real link capabilities that we would deploy in support of the mission transition task force that is responsible to CEFCOM. I highlighted that in Spangdahlem we have people deployed there right now.

Presently I am running what is called an intermediate staging terminal for retrograde operations, where we fly material out, it lands in Kuwait presently, we clean it, then cross-load it onto ships, and send it back. We have about 160 people in the strategic line of communication, which is a task that is directly responsible to me in terms of the retrograde operations that are under way. A portion of those will be members of CANOSCOM and a portion of those.... I talked about leading into the services who force-generate people to go to that table of organization. That is also complimentary.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Can you comment on how many hubs we have, where they are, and perhaps what role they play in readiness? As you know, we've talked about readiness in this committee in the past. Can you just comment on it?

[MGen Mark McQuillan]

Hubs is a concept. In fact what we are running today.... I mentioned the Spangdahlem hub. That is a trial hub that we are running, a very minimal level of activity based on the level of sustainment required for Afghanistan, which is more focused on retrograde operations.

In the context of hub-like activities, Kuwait kindly agreed to support that. Since September we have been operating in Kuwait to provide a level of activity from there.

We happen to be operating in Cyprus right now. I would not call that a hub, but that is where we're doing cleared location decompression, so as we rotate troops out as part of the mission transition task force...to do that body of work back.

There are three active points based on activities that are in operation today that I would classify as hubs. The principal one is the one in Spangdahlem, and then very clearly Kuwait has graciously afforded us the opportunity for IST operations to use Kuwait at this point in time.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Are you solely responsible for setting up these areas? How do you coordinate with the other dot-coms?

[MGen Mark McQuillan]

Again, strategic line of communication, at this point, is a CANOSCOM responsibility. The requirements or the activities—again, I'm a supporting commander to CEFCOM, for instance, with the Afghan mission. As they conduct the retrograde of materiel, people, and equipment out of Afghanistan, I do the supporting plan. What happens in the joint operations area of Afghanistan is clearly for the mission transition task force, under General Chuck Lamarre, who responds to the commander of CEFCOM. Then, I support the commander of CEFCOM likewise by running the strategic line of communications, as indicated.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

We have a lot of missions—Afghanistan, Haiti, Libya, other things have come up. How many missions can CANOSCOM realistically sustain at one time, do you think, if you had to?

[MGen Mark McQuillan]

Sir, that's an excellent question.

How active, how intense, how busy, how far, how complex, how difficult....

We have six mission sets that we all understand the government has given us that we will respond to. Fortunately, to this point, every time we have been tasked, we have been able to respond. I would say back when the Haiti earthquake happened, we were probably challenged because we had the Olympic security piece under way, we had a task force undergoing training in Fort Irwin, California.... We were, of course, focused on the mission given to us with respect to the Haiti support, and we were providing ongoing support to the Afghan mission. It worked.

Again, we are a force of 68,000, plus our reservists and our civilian defence team. There is only so much capacity. I guess the short answer is, we are capable enough to do what the government requires, and we've been able to respond. Part of our requirement, part of my assessment, is to tell the Chief of Defence Staff if I think I'm having a significant impediment in my ability to support the resources, based on the missions tasked. Fortunately, I've not had to have that discussion with the chief thus far.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you. Time has expired.

Mr. McKay, for the last seven minutes.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Thank you, Major-General McQuillan.

For reasons best known to the Minister of Defence and to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, we had to move out of Camp Mirage. How much did that cost?