CANADIAN FORCES EXPERIMENTATION CENTRE | |
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Commanding officer Col. Mark Aruja explains
that the official mission statement for the new
centre is "To lead the exploration of emerging
concepts to determine the capabilities required by
DND and the Canadian Forces of the future".
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CANADIAN FORCES EXPERIMENTATION CENTREFinding Smart Ways to Transform our Military: CFEC is part of a broad defence initiative
There is a new establishment being created within the Shirley’s Bay campus called the “Canadian Forces Experimentation Centre” or CFEC. Initiated in late 2001 with only 12 people, the establishment staff should grow to 50 and will be housed in a new $4M building by the end of 2004. We had the good fortune to speak with the commanding officer Col. Mark Aruja. Aruja explained that the official mission statement for the new centre was "To lead the exploration of emerging concepts to determine the capabilities required by DND and the Canadian Forces of the future". Aruja went on to describe some examples of how this could be done, and the kinds of projects in which they are already involved.
"One of the key capabilities which the department has mandated us to develop is a modeling and simulation-based capability to explore ideas from their initial conception, experiment with the good ideas in a rigorous experimentation environment, and then transition those ideas into the Canadian Forces for operational use. We are fundamentally in the business of challenging the way we currently do business with new ideas. Private business has dramatically changed their cycle time from concept to market; it makes sense that we examine ways to do the same. After all, in the Cold War, we knew who our adversary was, and who our allies were. Not so any more: we have to have the capability to deal with uncertain adversaries in concert with ad hoc coalitions. Currently we spend years getting a requirement approved, and then turn to industry to deliver a capability, which fifteen years later is fielded to the force. We then repeat that cycle with a mid-life upgrade. What is a mid-life of a weapon system when the life of digital processing technology is measured in months? The B-52 is still in front-line combat with the US Forces after 40 years, yet desktop computers are disposed of after four years; is there something to be learned from this?
Building models that, irrespective of where they may reside, are able to interact with other models to depict a particular environment will allow us to examine an idea in a digital environment. Industry is engaged early on to provide their ideas, which can be evaluated in that synthetic environment and when proven and accepted, linked to the tools industry and used to actually produce the product. That synthetic environment is then used to allow for continuous improvement, perhaps finding a new use not previously conceived for that system, or even early disposal.
Unmanned systems are a particular application for these new tools. We have already conducted live-fly trials of a number of unmanned aerial vehicles to gain insights from which to baseline our simulation efforts. At specific points we will again conduct live experiments of increasing complexity to validate if what we are seeing in the simulations is in fact true. Unmanned systems are a means for us to ask many questions. For example, when does a piece of equipment become disposable? If software is disposable, notwithstanding the investment, why not hardware? Can we change the software in an unmanned system at the same time as the hardware becomes available to support new capability… like every year, as opposed to the 15 years I mentioned earlier? Sending TV images from unmanned systems uses up a lot of bandwidth, and is expensive. Can we use artificial intelligence to allow us to look for certain things, and only send the information, which is of use? What level of autonomy should we expect to achieve with artificial intelligence. At what level, can an autonomous “vehicle” interact with other unmanned systems? Would these become self-organizing systems, and if so, how might they behave? Would that behaviour be acceptable? Can we apply alternative fuel technologies to unmanned systems as a quick means to reduce the demand on moving fuels and batteries to deployed operations around the globe? How should manned and unmanned systems interact to achieve an effect with maximum synergy?
We do our work not in isolation, but in collaboration with many organizations and people both here in Canada and internationally. The Canadian Forces, when deployed overseas will inevitably work with other countries, so we must take interoperability into consideration from the outset. We are working closely with our allies to look at better ways of conducting coalition operations, and are doing so with distributed simulations across a new network dedicated to experimentation. Concept development and experimentation requires an environment, which stimulates thinking, promotes asking the unquestionable, and accepts the notion that learning from failure is a good thing. We have a mix of scientists who make sure we are bringing the right science to the problem, we have analysts who ensure that we apply sound methodologies and rigor to the work we do, and we have military officers who make sure that the questions we are asking are relevant and that we think through how we are going to move a good idea which stands the test of experimentation into the hands of those who can capitalize on that good idea"
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