Thanks very much for the question. It's an excellent one, and it's one that certainly preoccupies someone like me in my current job.
Before addressing some of the specifics there, I will say that in terms of lessons learned as a matter of process, it is quite normal for us to go through a very formal review process. I believe you might have been exposed to this when you were out in Wainwright as part of your committee deliberations, but there is a sort of line.
We have a doctrine that governs how we conduct operations, effectively how we go about fighting. This doctrine is developed in relation to current events, current nature of warfare, and current nature of operations we find ourselves in. We study that doctrine, we train for that doctrine, and then we execute that doctrine in a theatre of operations, after which we take the time to develop the lessons learned from that. We are actually in that process now of discerning those specific lessons learned. The idea is that once you get those lessons learned, you feed them back into your doctrine so that not only are we're taking account of the lessons we've learned but our doctrine remains relevant, it remains an effective reflection of the operating environment. That process is ongoing now. It's occurring at a variety of levels. General Bouchard, when we had a video teleconference earlier this week, indicated that they are doing that within NATO. We at the Canadian Forces are undertaking that. We've had an initial review, and we'll finalize this in the coming months.
When we do lessons learned, we try to find those things that we want to reinforce, as well—it's not that everything's bad. Then we want to find new areas where we have to perhaps show some improvement. The way this operation came about, it happened very quickly. Our readiness levels will be discussed, as you made reference to, and I believe there will be further discussions with this committee with people who are responsible for that aspect of our force management. I'll leave some of the detail of that for your further deliberations. Certainly what we had reinforced with us is that with the posture we were on when the call came, we were able to anticipate, and we responded within a matter of days.
Now, when you respond that quickly, there are things that need to be improved, and we've identified those as a matter of command and control within the Canadian Forces. But I have to say, in terms of our responsiveness, that we were very pleased with the speed with which we responded strategically and operationally, and we were able to put forces into theatre and within days of arrival, executing operations in support of the UN Security Council resolutions.
On the more tactical level, the other thing we've discerned is, again, the tremendous capability and fighting effectiveness of our airmen and our sailors who were deployed on this mission. It's through the professionalism and the training of our pilots that they were able to execute very difficult missions under very demanding circumstances. They did that with alacrity, and full credit goes to them for any kudos that are due. It's the same thing with our maritime forces. The two vessels, HMSC Charlottetown and HMSC Vancouver, did a tremendous job in terms of working up, being prepared for their mission, and executing again under very difficult circumstances.
There were some things we've done there that would not be appropriate to discuss in this round, which had to do with the execution of our mission, our targeting processes and what not, which we are constantly reviewing and discussing. We've learned a lot of lessons there that we would apply to future missions. If you want to take a similar look in time between say an operation like Kosovo and what we've just completed in Libya, the reaction time was much more compressed. The circumstances we were operating under in terms of how we structured the mission were different, and we've learned a lot of valuable lessons that will be captured as part of our lessons learned process.
Sorry for the long answer, but it's an interesting question. Forgive me. I have a little bit of passion here.