Mr. Chair, it's a great observation that having been in combat, arguably for over a decade, there is now an entire generation of junior and senior officers, and young and more senior non-commissioned officers, who have learned all kinds of things that would have taken us double the time to learn in training back in Canada. What I speak about is the interoperational capability with our key allies and more. When I speak about that, I speak about not only our procedures and processes in the field, but also about equipment working together as we go on joint operations together. We've also learned how to operate jointly. The air war going on over top of the ground war in Afghanistan, the air war going on over top of the naval efforts in the Mediterranean during the Libyan conflict—all of these things provide us with an opportunity to experiment with the leading edge of the fabric that holds us together, those things that bring us together that we can then bring into our doctrine.
It's very important, as we come out of these lessons—and as we all learn at staff college, not to fight the last war—to take the lessons out of the war you've just had that can be generalized to other combat and be prepared for what you may find in the future. I think we have an opportunity now, for however long we're out of combat, to really bring back our army, navy, and air force and have joint exercises. We have a wonderful joint exercise coming up in May called JOINTEX—which I'd love to take the credit for, but it was well under way before I came in as CDS—which will bring the army, navy, and the air force together with their three major exercises and the Canadian division over top with some of this connective tissue. When I say “connective tissue”, I refer to some of the things you've spoken about: unmanned aerial vehicles, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities that we were just starting on 10 years ago and now are fundamental to our success and going ahead.
I think that really is a very heartening thing. We have this new generation who have been energized by having practised their craft under the toughest of conditions. We come back, and for a period, at least, we'll be able to really transform that into the doctrine that drives not only our three environments, but also the joint interoperational abilities of those three environments together.