National Defence Committee on Oct. 20th, 2011

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Good morning, everyone.

We're going to continue with our study of the readiness of the Canadian armed forces.

Joining us today is Major-General Steve Bowes, who is no stranger to many of us at committee. He hosted us just at the beginning of the week on Monday and Tuesday at the Canadian Manoeuvre Training Centre at Camp Wainwright.

We're going to open it up for your opening comments, General. You have the floor.

[Major-General Steve Bowes, Commander, Land Force Doctrine and Training System, Department of National Defence]

Thank you, sir.

Mr. Chair, members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity to provide you with a briefing on the army doctrine and training system.

I am Major-General Steve Bowes, commander of the land force doctrine and training system at Canadian Forces Base Kingston.

As you saw during your recent visit to the Canadian Manoeuvre Training Centre, we go to great lengths to ensure that our soldiers are trained in a realistic way to prepare them for the challenges of operations. Doctrine and lessons learned provide the underpinning for effective training. Doctrine is a word that is often misunderstood, but in essence it means a common understanding of the nature of land warfare, and thus a consistent approach to how we solve tactical problems.

This approach is grounded in theory, history, and the experience gained in fighting Canada's wars. But it is also informed by the latest lessons we have learned from operations. Before you are four slides providing a broad view of the Canadian army's doctrine and training system. I would like to walk you through this quick briefing, after which I would be pleased to answer your questions.

Slide 1 is on the army training continuum.

Army training follows a well-defined methodology, the army systems approach to training, and that in itself is nested in the Canadian Forces system approach to training, which ensures the most effective and efficient training possible. This methodology is applied in a pyramid training paradigm that starts with a broad base of institutional training, layered by a central core of foundation training, followed by a regime of high readiness training for specific units and, finally, topped off by mission-specific training.

Throughout all levels of training, from individual to collective, the army's soldiers and officers are provided with ample opportunity for professional development in the form of general education, trades specific training, language training, and ethics, to name a few. The system of army training produces quality individuals and formed units capable of carrying out missions and tasks across a broad spectrum of employment, ranging from domestic and expeditionary response, to natural or man-made disasters, peace support operations, stability operations, support for failed or failing states, and through to the higher end of full spectrum operations.

Army training must be general enough in nature to cover the full gamut of tasks and missions Canadians expect its army to be able to carry out in times of need. Army training is based on the Canada First defence strategy that prioritizes at-home requirements over those of an expeditionary nature. The reserve component of the army is heavily involved in training for likely domestic tasks, as reservists are well suited to respond locally given that they are embedded in communities across the country. In more northern communities, the Canadian Rangers play a similar and equally vital role. The regular component of the army, while often employed domestically, focuses much of its training on preparing for expeditionary operations. The flexible nature of army training has allowed us to transition effectively from a combat to a training role in Afghanistan.

Turning to slide 2, the army's doctrine is the intellectual foundation upon which all of our training and professional development is built. Doctrine is defined as the formal and authoritative expression of military knowledge and thought that the army accepts as being relevant at any given time, covering the nature of conflict, the preparation of the army for conflicts, and the method of engaging in them to achieve success.

The army's approach to doctrine development is achieved through a process of five phases: analysis, development, production, approval, and validation. This process ensures that we continuously adapt to maximize our effectiveness in a given situation, while respecting the understanding of the nature of conflict that we have developed as an institution over many years. We must continuously monitor and analyze changes in our operating environment, including technological developments, deficiencies identified during operations, and the experience of allied nations, in order to determine whether our doctrine may need to be adapted or reconsidered.

Once a problem is identified, the development phase determines how best to achieve a solution. Options will be developed, informed by research, experimentation, discussion, debate, and war gaming. Allied and joint approaches, as well as professional journals and research papers, can be used to broaden the examination.

Once we have decided on a resolution, we enter the production phase, which covers the processes required to draft, comment, publish and disseminate army doctrine, including any additional debate and experimentation. The army commander and I are the approving authorities for publishing and disseminating doctrine. Doctrine approval briefs are provided to governance forums, such as the army council, prior to dissemination.

The validation phase is really a continuous activity whereby we assess the relevance, accuracy, and currency of doctrine, whether from lessons learned or from issues raised by the schools or observed during training activities. The validation phase can also drive doctrinal changes and thus overlaps with the analysis phase in what is really a continuous cycle of doctrine development.

We'll now consider the army learning process.

The army learning process ensures that the Canadian Army collects, analyzes, and assimilates the experience that we have gained from operations, in order to continuously improve our performance and to keep ahead of an adaptive adversary.

The reporting process starts with the observations and insights of our personnel on operations, whether in Canada or overseas. These observations can be submitted directly, as a result of an after-action review, but frequently they are collected by embedded lessons liaison teams. The army commander's critical topic list also provides direction and focus to the collection and priority efforts.

After an initial analysis, observations are prioritized based on their relevance and importance. Those designated as key lessons identified—that is, those that relate to an urgent operational problem, require acquisition of new equipment, or involve a significant re-evaluation of existing doctrine—are moved forward for detailed analysis.

Responsibility for each key lesson identified is determined by the army learning working group. Subject matter experts then analyze and validate the observation and recommend solutions to address the issue.

The observation and recommended plan of action is then briefed to the appropriate authority and their decisions and direction are tracked by the army lessons-learned centre. The director of the army lessons-learned centre periodically reports to army senior leadership on the progress of these key lessons identified. The director of land staff ensures that Canadian Forces agencies outside the army, as well as other government departments, are kept apprised of issues that are relevant to them.

Once the commander of the army has concurred with the direction issued by the line of governance, the director of army doctrine and the centres of excellence implement the necessary changes, and the army lessons-learned centre uses a variety of communication methods to ensure that the changes are understood by all the units and soldiers.

The Canadian army can be justifiably proud of its record in the Afghanistan combat operation, but we are well aware that the skills we developed at great cost are perishable. The challenge for army training is to sustain the successes we have achieved while continuing to adapt to the changing environment. We also need to work on some of the deficiencies we have identified—and, regrettably, we will need to allow a few mission-specific skills to degrade gracefully.

Our focus needs to remain on training combat-effective, medium-weight forces that can adapt to any task. The experiences in Afghanistan have validated some of the central concepts of our doctrine. The all-arms battle group remains the core of our capability. It delivers effects on the ground throughout the spectrum of operations, from humanitarian assistance all the way to full-scale combat. The brigade group headquarters, forming the nucleus of a task force headquarters, provides the essential link that plans and synchronizes operations, sustains the force, and integrates the enormous range of capabilities available in a coalition context, including satellite imagery, air power, unmanned aerial vehicles, long-range fire support, civil-military cooperation, medical evacuation, etc. We need to continue generating confident and well-trained battle groups and brigade headquarters to meet the requirements laid out in the Canada First defence strategy. Our managed readiness plan will ensure that high-readiness forces receive the right amount of training at the right time, while disciplining the natural desire of commanders to expand the training envelope.

All of this rests on the quality of our people. We need to continue to provide individual training that prepares soldiers for operations in complex environments based on the hard-won lessons we have learned. Above all, we need to continue developing outstanding leaders.

I'd like to highlight a few of the specific successes we need to sustain and build upon. In a few short years, we have developed a superb level of integration and cooperation with our colleagues, the airmen and airwomen of the Royal Canadian Air Force, and I know that the air force leadership is as committed as we are to keeping this flame alive. We have also made huge strides in building mutual respect between the regular and reserve components of the army. The implementation of common training standards for regular and reserve soldiers means that we can continue to incorporate reserve personnel into high-readiness forces with full confidence that they will perform to the same level as their regular-force counterparts, although in a narrower range of tasks without high-readiness training.

In the near term, there are a few areas where we need to catch up. The focus on counter-insurgency operations in Afghanistan has inevitably led to a reduction in the time available to train in the fundamentals of combat operations. Our exercises, starting with Exercise Maple Resolve 2011, will include a near-peer adversary capable of armoured manoeuvre, while retaining the challenges of a complex, heavily populated battle space and the integration of allied forces. We will also be placing more emphasis on medium-intensity combat operations at the army staff college course and on other professional development activities.

Finally, there are two longer-term training challenges that I would like to highlight. Having gone through a very intense period of activity, we are entering a stretch of time when there is no immediate prospect of another major operation. This could change very quickly, but for our soldiers there is a risk that they might want to seek other challenges if we don't keep them engaged.

The army commander has coined a phrase, “train to excite”. This means there will be an increased emphasis on training in Arctic and jungle operations, mountain warfare, and littoral operations, as well as in parachute and air mobile operations. Some might find the word “excite” hard to square with the prospect of slogging through the jungles of Brazil, but this is the sort of professional and personal challenge that will keep soldiers interested and motivated.

The other challenge to the training system is to sustain the adaptive culture that has served us well over the last few years. We need to continue to incorporate lessons learned into our training in a rapid and efficient way. But we also need to exploit emerging technology, particularly within the realm of simulation, to make our training not just more efficient but also more effective.

I hope this brief outline has provided you with a better understanding of how we train Canada's soldiers. Our soldiers are our most valuable resource. Well-trained, they can be prepared to meet any challenges in Canada and to go anywhere in the world to represent Canadians and our values.

I'm ready to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you, sir.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you, General.

We'll start our first round of questions, for seven minutes.

Mr. Christopherson, you have the floor.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

And thank you very much, General. I appreciate the briefing. I'm sorry I couldn't be with you earlier in the week. I've just been appointed the interim—and I emphasize interim—defence critic for the official opposition, so I'll be with the group for at least a little while.

I'm starting at square one, and my questions are about as fundamental as you're ever going to hear, General.

First of all, help me understand the difference between doctrine and a mission goal.

[MGen Steve Bowes]

Doctrine is simply a body of knowledge, the foundation that we use to solve a tactical problem. Let me talk about doctrine in the highest sense. In Canada we follow a doctrine of mission command. That means that as we move through solving a tactical problem, we identify what needs to be achieved and we enable our subordinate commanders to exercise flexibility and initiative in solving any tactical set. So we identify that, we give them the resources they need to accomplish the mission, but we let them figure out how to do it. That's an example of doctrine.

To go to the next point, sir, to—

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I'm probably not using the right terminology. When I read it, I thought it seemed very similar to what a mission goal would be, that as soon as a mission starts out, the things that you listed under doctrine would, in my mind, also seem to fit a specific mission goal.

There has to be a difference; I was looking for that differentiation.

[MGen Steve Bowes]

A mission goal is an effect that you want to achieve on the ground, and that's a task that's assigned through by the Government of Canada through CEFCOM to the forces that are going out the door. We prepare them for the broadest range of tasks, but it's actually after they get into theatre and are conducting the analysis of the campaign plan for that particular operation that they determine the tasks that have to be achieved to achieve the goals of the government.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you.

Explain if you can for me the challenge of being combat-ready, trying to maintain your readiness—which is the focus of this—while at the same time actually being at war. Are these two separate streams of thinking and responsibility, or is it the case that, because of the nature of war, there has to be a fundamental impact on your readiness?

Do you understand my question? You're trying to do two things at the same time: you're actively engaged in war, while at the same time you're getting ready to respond to any situation.

[MGen Steve Bowes]

In order to prosecute any operation overseas in a sustained fashion, you have to build a base from the soldiers who are recruited in the door to the units that will relieve those who are overseas in operations. It's a continuous cycle of training.

We have forces that are deployed somewhere in the world, wherever that theatre may be. We know they're not going to stay there indefinitely, so we prepare the forces back in Canada that are going to take their place.

At the same time we're doing that, we're still doing—if you go back to slide 1— the institutional component. People are being recruited by the Canadian Forces in the door every day. They go through courses in Saint Jean. Once they graduate from those basic training courses, they proceed into the army, the Royal Canadian Navy, the air force as appropriate, and our institutional system kicks over. We train them up in various qualifications, we put them into units, and those units go to the field, to sea, into the air, to do their training and build up through a road to high readiness.

When we talk about the road to high readiness, it's not a case of everybody in the army doing the same thing every day. We are challenged by our geography in Canada and by the diverse nature of our organization, so we have different elements in the Canadian Forces doing different components of that training paradigm on a daily basis.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Very good. Thank you.

You mentioned in your remarks, General, that “In a few short years we have developed a superb level of integration and cooperation with our colleagues....” Then you go on to list which ones.

Can you describe for me where we were that makes you feel so proud about where we are now, just so I can get a sense of that evolution?

[MGen Steve Bowes]

We just need to take this back even 20 years, sir, to where we were at the tail end of the Cold War.

Canada had an army, navy, and air force designed to work with other armies, navies, and air forces within a NATO context. Even though we were heavily engaged in peace support operations, we didn't have a robust history of that joint environment within a national context. We went through a difficult period through the nineties. As we moved through the middle part of this decade, we moved into a phase of operations in Afghanistan in which it became apparent that we would need to further define the relationship with, for example, the air force.

The first thing your colleagues saw when they visited us on Monday was a Chinook helicopter. Although in the Canadian context we equate that with the Royal Canadian Air Force, as we should, and the fact it was an allied helicopter, it is an essential component of land combat power.

What we have done is to redevelop that synergy overseas. We've had an air wing with us in Afghanistan. As part of the task force, besides having combat troops on the ground, we've had an air wing. Tactical aviation has been supporting us—tactical and strategic airlift getting us in there—and although our CF-18s weren't deployed to southern Afghanistan, other NATO air forces were, and we had tactical air parties and forward air controllers working as part of the team.

We've developed a level of integration that has come at a great cost, and that is something we definitely want to maintain as we go forward.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Very good. Thank you.

How's my time, Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

You have a minute and a half.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thanks.

I might get two questions in, but one for sure.

I'm interested in the phrase “train to excite”, and you acknowledged that the word jumps out. Could you expand on that a little for us?

[MGen Steve Bowes]

I have to be cognizant of my age and relative experience in the army versus that of some of the young men and women who are coming in the door now. It's naive to think that everybody coming in the door is going to say, “I was born to be a soldier and I'm going to serve for 35 years and I'm going to make a career out of this.” You need to keep young people today continuously engaged; you need to challenge them. Because we spend a great deal of time and effort recruiting and training them, the last thing we want to do is to see somebody head for the door.

Challenging training means multiple things. It doesn't mean just physically, but also intellectually, challenging. It means giving them an opportunity to develop as a whole person, with professional military education, but also through developing their citizenship skills. At the end of the day, it's really about keeping that person engaged. It's a word that we have chosen specifically because it resonates with the young people, not necessarily with the way we perceive it.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Very good. Thank you, General.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you, Mr. Christopherson.

Mr. Opitz, it's your turn.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

General, many operations involve more than one environment of the CF, and as such there's obviously a need for cooperation among the army, navy, and air force.

Sir, to your knowledge, are there any established guidelines that these environments can refer to during missions where cooperation is needed?

[MGen Steve Bowes]

Absolutely. NATO has a complex system of doctrine that governs joint operations, and so NATO itself has a joint operations publication that we all use to inform ourselves.

We have our own joint doctrine. Getting the army, navy, and air forces to work together in this context is more limited by the platforms and systems available than by our ability to work together with one another.

So there is a framework at play. There is a framework that allows us, as an example, to put Canadian soldiers to work with allies, even in a littoral context with the United States Marine Corps, with the Royal Marines, with the Brazilian marines. That framework exists.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

That's wonderful.

Just as a follow-up to that question, can you describe how joint operations are run? For instance, what's the decision process when deciding what environment or division is to be given the lead on a particular mission? Or are the operations run through the chain of command at NDHQ?

[MGen Steve Bowes]

That piece is well above my focus on training the army, but in a broad context, once the Chief of Defence Staff is given direction by the Government of Canada, he looks at the effect that has to be achieved and examines how best to achieve that effect. He would determine which environment, which component of the Canadian Forces would take the lead. That would be done in consultation with the CEFCOM commander.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Okay.

Now, the LFDTS wears a lot of hats, as you can see from the Directorate of Army Doctrine, DAD, and from the lessons-learned centre.

Can you give us a brief overview of the role and responsibilities that each organization has within the CF?

[MGen Steve Bowes]

As the commander of the land force doctrine and training system, I would point out that we have a number of principal formations, but that it's not just an exercise in command. We also have staff directorates, if you will, of the army organization. So we have the Canadian Manoeuvre Training Centre that you saw out west. That delivers collective training. We have the individual training centre of excellence in Gagetown, called the Combat Training Centre. It's where all our schools are: armour, artillery, infantry, combat engineer, and tactics schools. We also have three other schools: the communication school in Kingston, the electrical and mechanical engineering school in Borden, and the Land Advanced Warfare Centre in Trenton. Those eight schools belong to the Combat Training Centre.

We also have an army staff college in Kingston. Underpinning that, we also have the Directorate of Army Doctrine, the Directorate of Army Training, and the Army Lessons Learned Centre. I also have an influence activities task force. It's all part of the organization. DAD's responsibilities are fundamentally to make linkages. The director of army doctrine is an up-and-out person. That person is constantly looking to see what's going on the international level, surveying how our allies are thinking about evolving doctrinal issues, and linking in with other services.

The Army Lessons Learned Centre is a very small organization. It's actually only about five or six people in total. That includes our use of augmentees in operations. I have two individuals assigned overseas as part of Operation Attention in the mission in Afghanistan. Their job is to bring back lessons learned and observations. Although they report on a daily basis to Major General Mike Day overseas, in effect, they work for the army. They help bring the lessons identified back, and then we work through those and determine what we need to incorporate into doctrine and what we need to use right off in training.

I can give you a specific example of how that process works in a very rapid fashion. We take pride in our ability to adapt—if you wish to pursue that in a subsequent question.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

What I would like to get to right now is slide 4. You mentioned a few mission-specific skills that will degrade or fade. Can you elaborate a little more on what those are?

[MGen Steve Bowes]

Absolutely. We've spent the years since 2005 focusing on counter-insurgency operations in Afghanistan, and southern Kandahar in particular. We recognize that we need to step back from that. We've already turned a page. Although the world operating environment wherever Canadian soldiers can go would probably demonstrate characteristics very similar to what you see in Afghanistan, we're not training for that specific mission. Our knowledge, as an example, of Pashtun culture and some of the things that were necessary to develop a cultural awareness in that particular area need to degrade while we will begin focusing on a baseline to prepare our soldiers to go anywhere else in the world. That's just one example.

In Wainwright, we used a more generic scenario. Our Afghan diaspora that we hired in past training events has been replaced with other actors to simulate the complexity of dealing with another language in another environment. That's just one example.