Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Congratulations, General Lawson, formally on your appointment. We're all delighted to have you here today. You have the support of this committee and the Canadian Forces have the support of this committee. That is the reason we're all here.
Of course, your opening remarks are stimulating for us, but also inspiring for us in that they remind us how broad the effort now under way is to bring about the systematic modernization, the continuous improvement of which you spoke. You know from your personal history—and you mentioned ancestors and children—how important it is to put that process of adaptation and transformation at the centre of what the Canadian Forces do. That has been the key to their excellence at every stage of their history. Part of that relates to new acquisitions, and you mentioned many of them in your opening remarks. Obviously, seven new aircraft in one decade is unprecedented and complicated.
I've personally been impressed, since coming back from Afghanistan, by the effort under way to learn lessons in terms of doctrine, in terms of tactics, in terms of strategy preparation for the very different kinds of operations the Canadian Forces are asked to perform. The army has learned exhaustive lessons, and still is learning them, from Afghanistan, the navy from recent missions and training in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and the air force, obviously, from Libya and other missions.
I'd like to ask you to tell us a bit more about the “tooth” side of the future, which we hope will continue to benefit from an effective and streamlined “tail”. Part of it is obviously in leadership. Some of it's in the net workforce of the future, on which a lot of work has been done, but some of it relates to the basics: firepower; mobility; intelligence, which is more complex than ever; and the partnerships we have, not just with a huge number of allies now, but with non-NATO countries with which we operate.
Tell us a bit about—after your first month—what that front-line capacity of an improved fighting force looks like for the Canadian Forces in the years to come.