Episode 47: The Div Commander: Commanding 1 Canadian Air Division as it prepares for the future and flying the CH-146 Griffon and CH-147 Chinook Part 2 - Chris McKenna

What is it like to deploy as the Task Force Commander for a violent mission in Mali? What difficulties does working with the UN bring? What is it like to be the Commander of 1 Canadian Air Division, or 1 CAD, and have 5 different official jobs? What modernization projects and new aircraft is the RCAF getting? Major-General Chris McKenna has over 2600 flying hours and is currently the Commander of 1 CAD. In this episode we'll talk about his time in Mali, his time as the Commander of 1 Wing and his current position as Commander 1 CAD. We'll also begin our talk about the amazing new modernization projects and aircraft that are coming online in the near future (or are already here)! Tune in today!

Episode Transcript

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Bryan (00:28):
Hey, everybody. This is your host, Brian Morrison, with
a quick note. We have decided tostart adding a blanket
disclaimer for any episode wherewe interview a high level
officer from the RCAF. We livein a twenty four hour news
cycle, and comments can beovertaken by events very
quickly. So to put a time frameon things, this interview was
made in late February.

(01:17):
Alright. We're ready fordeparture here at the pilot
project podcast, the best sourcefor stories and advice from RCAF
and mission aviation pilotsbrought to you by Sky's
Magazine. I'm your host, BrianMorrison. With me today is major
general Chris McKenna, a pilotin the RCAF and current
commander of One Canadian AirDivision or One CAD. Chris,
welcome back to the show, andthanks for being here today.

Chris (01:36):
Yeah. Thanks, Brian. So appreciate it.

Bryan (01:38):
Today for part two of our chat with Chris, we're going to
talk about his time in Mali,some of his command positions,
and begin our talk on themodernization of the RCAF and
the new platforms we're bringingonline. Listeners can check out
part one of our chat to hearabout Chris's early career, his
deployments to Afghanistan, andhis time as the CEO of four
fifty Tactical HelicopterSquadron. So you were the task

(01:58):
force commander in Mali for thefirst rotation in 2018 to 2019.
What was the overall mission inMali?

Chris (02:05):
Yeah. So we we were in Mali, the Canada was tasked with
replacing a German task forcethat was in place and they had
been in place for quite sometime, an aviation task force. So
in the North Of Mali in Gao,there was a large scale
peacekeeping mission going on inthat country and Germany had a
large swath of the North astheir area of operations. And up

(02:26):
until this point, they hadrotationally held medevac
between the Dutch and theGermans back and forth. And they
were both pretty much done.
They had to get back home to dosome forced generation. They'd
sort of expended what they hadAnd they were asking for help
from Canada. And so there was adiscussion as far as we knew it
between the chancellor and ourprime minister, that resulted in
us being tasked and announced asthe replacement for that German

(02:50):
aviation task force. Theirmissions were essentially air
medical evacuation, tactical airmedical evacuation. And they use
the NATO term, which is tentwelve or ten minutes for
bleeding airway type stuff likeABCs, you and I would know it.
One hour damage control recessor resuscitation, which is blood

(03:12):
at point of injury and two hoursto surgery, damage control
surgery. And so that bubble,that creation and sustainment of
that bubble is what we weregiven as a mission. So we had to
get into theater and establish athirty minute notice to move, to
launch, to be able to do thateffect. And really what that
meant was, within one hour of aninjury, we had to get to someone

(03:34):
and be able to get blood intothem and provide them very
advanced medical care. So thatwas the first sort of line of
effort or line of operation weran.
And additional to that with ourexcess capacity, we conducted
maneuver for the in place groundtask force up in Gout. And so
those are the two lines ofeffort that we maintain every
single day. The CMERT line orCanadian Medical Evacuation

(03:55):
Response Team, CMERT is what wetagged it. That team consisting
of about 13 people in a back ofa Chinook with an additional two
Griffins layer on top of it forprotection. That team is what
carried that role throughout theentire tour.
And then with whatever we hadleftover, I would conduct air

(04:16):
mobile operations in support ofthe UN.

Bryan (04:18):
Okay. So you've stated that the mission in Mali was a
very difficult and violentmission to take part in. Can you
elaborate on that?

Chris (04:25):
Yeah, it was violent in a different way, Brian. Like, you
you think about Afghanistan, theviolence was really directed
towards the coalition. And so wewere in sort of force on force
type engagements prettyroutinely, both on the ground
and ground to air. And in Mali,it was a lot of intercommunal
violence occurring betweenvarious factions on the ground.

(04:45):
You know, you had an accord thatwas agreed upon, in the sort of
2015 timeframe in the NorthO'Malley that essentially gave
all the parties to the conflicta framework to operate within.
You had sort of a group that waskind of secessionist. You had a
group that was kind of loyal tothe government. And then you had
essentially a group that was acollection of militias who had

(05:08):
operated in that region that hada different view of where that
region should go. And so like areally complex environment and
all, there's a lot of, tribaland intercommunal violence in
terms of history. I'll maybegive you one example, which was,
there's a group of people calledthe Fulani and they, typically
would move cattle around grazingzones in, you know, in Northern

(05:29):
Mali or in the Sahel, they wouldcross borders routinely and to
graze their cattle.
Well with climate change and thedesertification of that region
in the Sahel, the place you cangraze your cattle was
disappearing and these folkswere having to move their cattle
closer and closer toagricultural land, sedentary
sort of farmers, and they wouldstart to destroy their crop. And

(05:50):
because there was no judiciaryand no constabulary really
established, there's no courts,there's no real police in the
North, They would solve thatproblem by killing each other.
Oh wow. And so there was a fairbit of violence just going on on
these incidents. And you thinkabout, it's just basic, it was
just sort of survival that ifyour crop wasn't harvested, you
didn't have food next year,family wasn't gonna survive.

(06:11):
And so I, like I fullyunderstand it. There's a lot of
like centuries old sort ofrivalries that resulted in this
stuff, and then the retributionthat would occur between groups,
that would get violent with eachother. And we were kind of
behind a window almost lookingat this, and you would, we would
be called to bring human rightsinvestigators to a village that
had a whole bunch of violenceand a lot of people killed, and

(06:32):
we were always kind of behind,behind it. You were never really
ahead of it being able to bepredictive of it. But it just,
it was occurring kind of allaround us, and you were aware of
it in the theater.
We were extremely well protectedin terms of our rules of
engagement, our weapons, and theaircraft's a hard target. So
they did not, come after us everin terms of a force on force

(06:54):
against us. But the violence wasoccurring in the theater.

Bryan (06:57):
Wow, that sounds really challenging. Actually kind of
sounds in some ways similar tothe Bosnia mission.

Chris (07:03):
Yeah, except they, I would say the Bosnia side, there
was three parties to thatconflict, but it was sort of
settled space. Right. Still tonsof trauma. And, but it was, it
was cool as opposed to thisbeing hot. And so they were
still alive.
And you know, a lot of peopleangling for position as the, as
the government and the UN wastrying to sort of solidify a

(07:24):
framework for peace goingforward. And so those moments
where they were trying to anglebecame quite violent.

Bryan (07:30):
Okay. So you were present in Maui for a big mission we've
covered in the past with JackieRuiz, which was the medevac from
Eglhawk. Listeners can checkthat out in episode nine. Can
you tell us about that day fromyour perspective?

Chris (07:42):
Yeah, it was right near the end of my tour. So I had
five days left in command and Ihad my replacement, General
Travis Moorhan, who was, who wasshowing up, he was a colonel at
the time, so was I. And so agood friend of mine and a guy
that I've worked with my wholecareer. So we were in the middle
of a, of about a week long, tenday long handover. And so he was
kind of shadowing me.
So at that point, meeting Iwould go to, so we'd gone for

(08:03):
breakfast together that morning.And typically communications in
Mali are really bad. It's kindof like being in the Arctic.
There's not a lot ofrebroadcasting going on. Line of
sight is kind of your thing.
There might be some cell towers.And And so this particular
attack, I think Jackie probablydescribed it pretty well, but
port operating base of Chadiansoldiers up about 200 nautical

(08:24):
miles north of Gao. And theywere encircled by a violent
extremist organization whostarted shooting into the FOB.
Those Chadians had shown up thenight before they conducted a
relief in place. So a companysize, call it 120ish soldiers on
the ground there.

Bryan (08:39):
And

Chris (08:40):
they had come in the night before and replaced folks
who were there. And they hadn'tfully unpacked, quite honestly
hadn't fully unpacked all theirweapons and they had not stood
two in the morning. That is tosay, typically at dawn and dusk,
there's bit of a risk. And sothis attack occurred pretty much
at dawn and these vehicles, itwas tactical vehicles with like
anti aircraft weapons on theThey're pouring fire into the
FOB. There's a big firefightthat ensued.

(09:02):
And then indirect fire, like 81millimeter mortar fire into the,
into the Fort Operating Basethat occurred. A suicide vehicle
borne IED that hit the frontgate, detonated. And then people
wearing vests into the hole thatthat that was made. Wow. And
then they cut the cell phonetower with explosives and they
and they knocked out theobservation post north and
south, all within about a minuteand a half, two minutes.

(09:22):
Wow. So extremely violentmoment. Like to be honest, far
in excess of anything I saw inAfghanistan. But it took a while
for us to know about it. And sothe comms, you can imagine the
comms towers down, so these sortof sat phones are kind of your
only And the French commander upin Kidal, which is about 60 or
70 miles away from Albuquerque,he received the first call that

(09:44):
this had happened and he startedasking for medevac.
Travis and I were walking at abreakfast and I got the phone
call and we sort of ran right tomy operations center and we
spooled up the medevac and justsaid like, just launch the
medevac package and we will dealwith where you're going
specifically while you're onroute, we'll push it to you on
Satcom. And so the first packagelaunched, so we were able to

(10:07):
activate them and go and they'reon a thirty minute notice,
notice to move, but typicallythey were in the air in about
twelve or thirteen minutes. Andtypically the Griffins we ready
at launch, Chinook would beready five or six minutes after
that just because of the systemschecks. They would launch and
they would, because of the speedadvantage of the Chinook, they
would just conduct like a rejoinon the way to the incident. In

(10:28):
this case, that formation thatJackie and Pete were flying,
they had to go 160 miles to getgas and then go into the
medevac.
So pretty awful. Like, you knowsomeone's hurt. Right. And you
know you need to get to them,but you have to do a fuel stop
even with a fat tension up toget in there. And so they did
that.
They went into Qidal. It wasgood though because Pete and

(10:51):
Jackie were able get out andsort of talk to the ground force
commander. He was able to askthem to do some extra things. So
they took a counter IED team andsome reinforcements in the back
of their helicopter. They flewout to the FOB.
They landed proximate to it. AndJackie's told the story of one
them sort of rushed into the FOBand they triaged folks. And then
they took the eight most woundedpeople into the airplane. And

(11:14):
then they launched and they madeanother really good call where
they decided to detach theGriffins because they thought
they had just enough gas to getback to Gal without having to do
that fuel stop on the way back.And it was probably a very
difficult decision for PeteHanley for fuel, but it paid
off.
And so he was able tocontinually to recalculate his

(11:35):
best range speed over and overand over again throughout that
trip so that he was gaining aknot a time as he burned gas
off. Was literally trying to geta knot each minute or so just so
that he would, he would maximizehis ability to get home. And you
can imagine the medical teamback working on these patients
for a long period of time. Sofrom my point of view, like that
launched and we were providingsome direction and guidance to

(11:56):
them and trying to get thedetail from them in terms of
what was the status of thesepatients and what hospitals are
they going to go to? There's acouple options in Gao.
There was a Chinese hospital,Chinese military hospital, it's
part of the mission. And therewas a French hospital and the
French had surgeons in a lotsort of higher levels of care.
And many of these patients thatJackie was flying had blast frag

(12:18):
injuries, penetrating chesttrauma, bullets and frag in
them. And so they were in prettybad shape. And so it allowed the
SATCOM conversation between usand that aircraft was critical
because we were able to getready to be able to push these
patients where they needed togo.
And then, we had realized thatthere had been an earlier
medevac by a civilian helicopterthat brought a bunch of patients

(12:38):
down to Kidal and Kidal was nowoverwhelmed. Their hospital
couldn't take these folks. So welaunched our second up medevac
to go up to Kedale and grab allthese badly wounded people who
are no longer being looked afterto bring them back to Gao. And
so I had sort of two fullformations in the air at the
same time. And then we putGriffins over top of that FOB,

(13:00):
the ones that Pete had detachedso that they could at least give
them some form of security.
And so we're making a lot ofthese fast risk decisions. Where
are my aircraft? Where do theybest need to go? And we had
eight aircraft in the task forceand you know, my maintenance
team was just unbelievable.Seven of those eight flew that
day.
Wow. Some of which were sort ofdisassembled in the morning,

(13:21):
right? They were doingmaintenance, panels were off,
you know, and so by midafternoon, they had somehow
managed to get all the aircraftup and running minus one, which
had its rotors off. And justamazing. Just super proud of the
team.

Bryan (13:34):
That's amazing. That's super impressive. Just goes to
show how how dependent we are oneach other and what a team
effort it is to get thesemissions done.

Chris (13:41):
Yeah. And I'll tell you like, some non traditional
stuff, like nearing the end ofthat day. And, you know, I was
there when Jackie and Petebrought back their Chinook and
obviously the back end of itwould look like you would think
after a lot of really woundedpeople were there, are covered
in blood, etcetera. You know,getting people out of their
uniforms that are soiled intofresh uniforms, super important
from a mental health point ofview. And also just the mission

(14:02):
focus.
Like I talked to Pete and Jackieand their medical team very
briefly, and they cross loadedinto a fresh Chinook and went
back into it. And so they didn'teven have time really to think
through, what they had justdone, which I think is like the
longest range medevac of verycritical people in a Chinook in
probably a long, long time. Andthen somehow managed to keep
these people all alive becauseall eight survived, which is

(14:24):
just a testament to the medicalcare in the back. Yeah. And then
just trying to manage that, thetails, You have to clean the
tails, there's all kinds ofbiological stuff in the back.

Bryan (14:32):
Oh yeah.

Chris (14:33):
Just really, really proud of the crew.

Bryan (14:34):
Yeah, no kidding.

Chris (14:35):
Was an incredible day.

Bryan (14:38):
So this was a UN mission, working with the UN can have its
challenges and even bringfriction. Can you tell us about
some of these challengingexperiences you had with the UN?

Chris (14:46):
Yeah, the UN is like a bureaucracy like you and I would
know it the sense that it's sortof like working for D and D, you
know, there's just a lot ofpublic servants who work in the
UN, but I think we take forgranted in our bureaucracy in
Canada, that people are going tomake, they're well educated and
they're going to make gooddecisions and they don't have
weird other equities at play.And what I found in the UN, I

(15:08):
found it very challengingbecause it looks and feels like
a Canadian bureaucracy, but theydo not act like they make
decisions that are, that make nosense whatsoever, or they're
making decisions with the wrongfactor in play. Example I'll use
is money. So if you think aboutmedevac, it to me, a non
discretionary event. If someoneis hurt, the helicopter is

(15:29):
launching.
I don't care who you are, whatnationality you are, what tribe
you're from, if you're civilianor military, if I've been called
and I know where you are, we arelaunching. And that was my
mandate there to my team was abias to action. If you know
something, get in the air andwe'll figure it out. And so the
UN does not operate like that.So every, nine line request that

(15:52):
would come in, they would sortof look at it and determine if
they could fund it.

Bryan (15:55):
And

Chris (15:56):
then, you would either get authorized to launch or not
authorized to launch based onthat funding. The problem that I
had from an ethical point ofview is I would have the data. I
would have the nine line data,which is, you know, the patient,
what the injury was, where theyare, what time occurred, what
kind of medical care has beengiven to them, that kind of
thing. So I knew enough detailso much so that I now can't not

(16:17):
launch. Like I ethically,someone's hurt, I'm here, I have
this kit, we're going.
And those two things caused theUN and me to clash quite a bit.
Like I would get an online froma field unit would also go to
the UN and they would go throughthe process, which could take a
couple of hours and I wouldn'twait. I would just launch my
team. And then we would conductthe medevac and they would be

(16:37):
very surprised and upset with methat we have taken these
patients back to the hospitaland we'd hear about it. Or
conversely, they would launchme, and this occurred once where
we had a convoy that hit adouble stack anti tank mine and
took the legs off two drivers.
And we knew exactly where theywere, and we were actually
talking to the doctor on theground. And the UN rescinded

(16:59):
launch authority from us in themiddle of that because of the
status of those patients whodidn't fit the status that would
be, whatever entitled tomedevac. At which it's tough. So
you're sitting there in the inthe in the as the colonel in the
op center, you're like, well,I'm pretty sure I know what I'm
gonna do here. Like, thatmedevac's gonna land.
It's gonna pick that thosepeople up, and we're gonna do

(17:20):
our best. And I don't reallycare what the UN thinks because
this is what's right. And sothat was the challenge. Some of
it was miscommunication, some ofit's language too. Like we
understand what you're sayingbecause everyone speaks a
different language.
And so it can be very frictionyfrom that point of view, or
they'll ask you to do thingswhich you might perceive as
unsafe and you might ask forsome things to de risk them and

(17:42):
they won't agree. And then youwon't agree to go and there's
like, you just start smashingads with them. So I had a lot of
friction, personal friction withthem and my ops team really,
really wore that. They were atthat cold face dealing with the
UN every day trying to, youknow, cut through the chaff and
just make sure we were launchingwhen someone was hurt.

Bryan (18:04):
So you've talked about launching without UN launch
authority or continuing withoutthat launch authority. What
support did you receive fromhigher ups during these
situations?

Chris (18:14):
It was exceptional actually. You know, if you've
read, I'm sure you've read RomeoD'Ilere's book and you've read
maybe Lou McKenzie's book abouthis experiences with the UN,
they're pretty negative. I hadread them all a couple of times
as a young officer and again, Iread them before I went on this
tour. I'd read a thing calledthe Decentos Cruise Report,
which talks about, it was aBrazilian general that was
called in to do an assessment ofMali and try and come up with

(18:37):
some ways to minimize deaths andinjuries to peacekeepers. And he
takes a very hawkish approach onhow you have to act in these UN
missions.
And so that's the sort of theframe is that I'd sort of read
in about it. And then before Ileft, the chief of defense staff
grabbed me and said, words thatstuck with me the entire tour.

(18:59):
It was my last sort of briefingthat he was involved in, SGS was
briefing him, but I was there ascommander. And he said, I don't
want the UN to happen to you. Iwant you to happen to the UN.
I thought that was a kind of aninteresting frame, right, to
look at it. Like do the rightthing. You're gonna be placed in
situations where you might haveto, really make people angry.

(19:21):
And it might be me, but you weregonna have to make the call and
I trust you. And that was kindaneat.
And then I had, General Rouleauwas my CJOC commander, and we
had a lot of meetings before Iwent. And I knew I had his
confidence. And he expressedthat confidence in my mission
acceptance launch authoritydocument that allowed me the
autonomy I needed to operate intheater. And they really tried

(19:41):
to push as much authority downto me, that I only had to reach
back for certain things. So thatwas, to be honest, extremely
liberating, but also terrifying,because you can make some pretty
bad calls and you have to answerfor them.
And then maybe the last layer toanswer that question is the
diplomatic layer. Because inthese missions, there's always a
diplomatic aspect with the UN.And there was a Canadian
ambassador who was a two and ahalf hour flight south in Bamako

(20:04):
where my headquarters was and myboss. And my boss was a Swedish
three star, who was thecommander of Manuzma. And I had
a wonderful relationship withhim, General Dennis Gillinspore
was his name.
But my ambassador always had arole to play. He would, because
he was a troop contributingnation ambassador, he was always
called into these menuslimdiscussions. And he dealt with
the senior political, element inMali, which was the SRSG, or the

(20:29):
special representative of thesecretary general, who was like
the minister, I guess, in chargeof the mission. And so when
things got ugly, it wouldescalate, and it would escalate
through my commander, who alwaysbacked me. Like the Swedish
commander was one of the bestbosses I've had in my career,
just tremendous.
And then the SRSG who hasdifferent equities, political
equities. And so there'd befriction and they would call

(20:51):
Canada on the carpet. And I'lltell you, like I would, every
time I went down to Bamako,every two weeks or so, I'd go
down there and I'd meet with myambassador and brief him on what
we're up to and I'd highlight tohim frictions. I'll tell you in
those moments where it becamespicy, and when we were sort of
arguing between Canada and theUN, the ambassador and all of
his staffs were standing rightnext to me defending me. And so

(21:13):
that's different in my view.
That's Canada kind of learningfrom past experiences in the UN,
where I really felt I had a teamin Canada behind me. I had a
whole hockey team behind me whowas supporting me and I did not
ever feel like I was caughtbetween our political level and
global affairs and the UN.Never.

Bryan (21:32):
Okay. So given all these issues, why is it still
important that we work with theUN today?

Chris (21:37):
You know, it's funny when I give my talk, on on this and I
do it, I still do it once in awhile. I I basically say before
I say negative things and I willin in closed circuit say some
negative things, I will say thethesis that I would offer is
that the UN is an indispensableorganization for which there is
no replacement. Like there isliterally no one else behind

(21:57):
them, right? They're the lastresort. And so if we just give
up and throw our hands up andsay, Oh, there's no place for
Canada in there.
I don't agree actually. I thinkWestern nations specifically
have a big role to play in theUN. And if you want them to be
more effective, you need toinvest in it. I am not
advocating that Canada needs tobe more involved right now in a
bunch of U admissions, there'sother things going on, but there

(22:18):
is a place for us there. Andbringing high end capability
that's hard to generate likemedevac is very consequential.
I will tell you, I hadrelationships with every ground
force commander in Gal and Iwent and met every one of them
with my cert major. We sat downwith them and said, Hey,
Canada's here. You guys gethurt. We're going to come get
you. And I'll tell you thatlittle contract between military

(22:41):
professionals, irrespective ofnations, Senegal, Niger, Chad, I
work with all these guys andbeing a Francophone, I'm an
Anglophone but I can speakFrench.
I grew up in Quebec. That wasour secret power, in Mali. Being
able to speak French to amilitary colleague of the same
rank or higher and convey tothem that we're here for you and
like we have a little contract,you and me, and I will come and

(23:04):
get you if you're hurt or yourtroops are hurt. That went a
very long way with, the troopcontributing countries.

Bryan (23:11):
Yeah. I can only imagine that would be extremely
comforting to hear. It's nice toknow that if something goes
wrong, someone's there to comeand get you. Like, when we were
in, flying over Iraq, knowingthat the, ParaJumpers, the PJs
were there was hugelycomforting.

Chris (23:26):
Oh, yeah. Yeah. And and like, the cool part from my
point of view is pretty muchevery Canadian military person
can speak a bit of French. Evenif you don't have, you know,
seeds in French, like your yourgovernor of Canada levels. If
you're interacting with someonewho's hurt, and you can speak
French to them, because most ofthe troops there were French.

Bryan (23:42):
Okay.

Chris (23:42):
It was it was dramatically better and easier.

Bryan (23:45):
Yeah. So the task force took part in a very risky long
range air mobile with the Dutchin the Niger River Delta to
extend UN reach into areas thatwere regarded as impenetrable
and too dangerous to operate.Can you tell us about this
mission?

Chris (24:00):
Absolutely. And so it anchors in the thing I've said
previously, which is thisDeSantis Cruz report that the
best defense is a bit of a goodoffense and you need to be out
there present as a peacekeeper,visible and reaching communities
that are even under extremerisk. So there's a lot of
discussion with our Europeanallies. We had a camp called
Camp Castor that we lived in. Weshared it with the Germans, the

(24:23):
largest troop contributor whoran the camp, and the Dutch who
had a long range patrol taskgroup there, sort of Mad Max
type, soft types who weredriving in the desert, doing all
kinds of really neat things.
And they had a mandate from hometo be more present forward. But
the challenge is Europe takesthat ten-one-two bubble very,

(24:46):
very seriously. And so to dothings far away, you to
establish a medevac bubblearound it. And you had to de
risk it, and typically itrequired a discussion with very
high levels of everyone'scountry to make sure they were
comfortable with that. And sothe Dutch approached us and
said, we would like to conductlong range into this very

(25:07):
impenetrable area.
The Niger River Delta is like agiant sort of swamp, but it's
habitated. There's villages allthe way through it, but it's
extremely hard to reach,especially in the rainy season
with vehicles. And so you can'treally patrol in there. And it's
an area where violent extremistorganizations would sort of
anchor and then they wouldstrike from. And so we had a lot
of risk that emanated fromthere, and they wanted to sort

(25:29):
of get ahead of that and beproactive.
So they asked us, would you bewilling to conduct an aerosol
into an area called Dilube,which is about 120 miles
Southwest of Timbuktu in theNiger River Delta, right in the
most impenetrable heart of thatarea. And so we said, okay,
we'll look at it. And we did amission analysis and figured out

(25:50):
time and space from a fuel pointof view, from a protection point
of view. We could do this. Weneed to do a few things.
We need to put the Ford Armyrefueling point down in a little
Ford operating base calledMopty, close by. That was about
30 miles away from the incidentarea or the target area. And
we'd have to put probably someextra enablers like indirect

(26:10):
fire. So if things got reallybad, it would be really good to
have mortars or indirect fire.And it would be really good to
have a quick reaction force thatyou could launch in to reinforce
something that went bad.
And so collaboratively with theDutch and the Germans, we
planned and planned and planned.We came to the agreement that we
could do this. We had to usesome fixed wing assets from our
countries outside of the UN toforce project people to the

(26:32):
right places. And we, and weconducted the the air one well.
But it required a conversationwith my commander back home
because it was pointed out to meby him that was outside my
authority as I was down thepath, planning path, which I
thought that was pretty, prettygreat.
So he's like, I'm hearing aboutthis. You need to tell me a lot
more about it. So I walked himthrough it, but it was like a
700 kilometer long air mobile,which is the longest thing I've

(26:55):
ever done in a helicopter.Certainly in Kandahar, they were
all about 20 miles, right? Orthirty, forty kilometers would
be the furthest.
So this was a big deal and wewere well hung out there with no
joint personnel recovery center,assets like you would have had
in Iraq. We had to self recoverif something went bad or get the
French to help us. And so a lotof planning and then we executed

(27:16):
it. We bounced through Timbuktuwith a Chinook and we conducted
the landing and a bunch of Dutchpeacekeepers came off with soft
hats on with ball caps andrifles and wandered into the
village. And we stayed over topof them.
Our Griffin stayed over top ofthem protecting them. And they
were able to conduct some reallyinteresting leadership
engagements and understand whatthe needs of that village was so
that we could follow it up withaid, with water, with a health

(27:41):
clinic, like to fly healthclinic in to be able to look
after people. Like the core UNmandate behind all this and I
loved it. It was probably thebest mission we did in theater.

Bryan (27:53):
And it sounds like you received good support from
higher ups as well.

Chris (27:56):
Yeah, so I had to, I'll be honest, I had to brief
General Lowe on my entire schemeof maneuver start to finish. And
then I had to spend a secondsession with him walking him
through all my contingencies andhow de risk them. And with that
in place, he basically said,yeah, you know what, I really
like how aggressive you're beingand how much leadership Task
Force Mali is showing to the UNthat you were willing to go and
take this risk on, but you'vemitigated it to a point where

(28:18):
I'm very comfortable with youexecuting it. And we did. I
think it went off pretty much asbriefed.

Bryan (28:23):
That's awesome. Shortly after that, you were the
commander of One Wing, theRCAF's tactical aviation wing.
What exactly is the purpose ofOne Wing?

Chris (28:33):
So it's the tactical aviation enterprise in the Royal
Canadian Air Force. So it'ssupporting our army and
supporting our specialoperations side of the world.
And so, you know, about 2,500people all told 500 of which are
reservists, eighty threehelicopters arrayed across seven
actual locations in Canada. Andwe support firepower, maneuver,

(28:58):
mobility and reconnaissance forthe land force. And so I've been
doing that my whole career andwe have units that are focused
deeply on that.
Obviously Chinook capability forthe air assault capability or
the air mobility capability. Andthen Griffin is a light
mobility, but kind of morefocused on reconnaissance and
firepower.

Bryan (29:17):
Okay. During your time there, you managed to re qualify
on the CH146 Griffin. Was this alead from the front type thing
or was this more of a perk ofthe job?

Chris (29:26):
I think it was a mental health thing if I'm being
honest, Brian. I really wantedto get back flying. Yeah. You
know, I'd gone to Maui and I wasnot qualified and Maui wasn't
current. And so I didn't, I flewa couple of missions with, just
to sort of get an understandingwhat the AO looked like, but I
wasn't able to fly operationallythere.
And so I do believe when youcommand something you should be,
if you're a pilot, you shouldfly. You learn a lot in the

(29:46):
cockpit from your people. And tobe honest, it's just, you get a
good pulse of the unit if you'rea flyer of a flying unit as a
CO. And so weirdly, the reason Igot requalified was a COVID
outbreak. So I was the CO rightduring COVID.
So 2020 I took over, you know,three months into COVID and I
had it for a year into '20, intoDecember of twenty one. And one

(30:08):
of my units had a complete COVIDoutbreak just before Christmas
and they basically had to shutdown for two weeks as everyone
recovered. And so, my standards,my standards evaluation team and
I had an idea to go get one oftheir helicopters and bring it
back to Kingston and do myrecall. And it was great because
then, as we continued toexercise during COVID, we just
had to be really careful of howmany people, how they were

(30:29):
living, etcetera. I was able tofly on exercise all over Canada
and still connect with mytroops, and be in the cockpit,
be part of it, in that year Iwas in command.
It was, it's a great idea to flyif you are a flyer in command of
something.

Bryan (30:45):
Yeah. Yeah. That that makes sense. Just to sort of
stay in touch with the pointyend a little bit.

Chris (30:51):
Yeah. And I and and to be honest, whenever I have one of
my wing commanders come in, likeswitch out in my initial
discussion and guidance to them,I tell them that exactly. My
expectations are you're gonna beflying. I get it. I don't need
them to be the highest categoryguy or girl in the unit, but
they should very least have autility category and just be in
the mix because you will be muchmore effective in your job if
you fly.

Bryan (31:11):
Mhmm. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about your current
job as one cad commander. As theone cad commander, you actually
have five, as long as I havethem all here, five jobs. That
is commander of one cad,commander of the Canadian NORAD
region, joint force aircomponent commander, commander
of search and rescue regionTrenton, and also operational
airworthiness authority.

(31:32):
Can you briefly describe theseroles?

Chris (31:34):
Yeah. It's it's a schizophrenic existence, Brian,
I'll tell you. Like, so I havereally four bosses. Yeah. I have
really four bosses.
And I think my goal is not todisappoint them simultaneously.
I just want to do sequentialdisappointment. I'll walk
through it. So one CAD, it's 11wings from Comox to Gander,
arrayed across Canada, and thensome units that are affiliated.

(31:54):
And so, you know, 13,000 people,including civilians and
reservists across Canada.
And it's really the command andcontrol of those 11 wings and
making sure they're being lookedafter from a disciplinary point
of view, a financial point ofview, from a fleet management
point of view. So making surethat the fleets itself are
covered off. And I spend a lotof time obviously in that role,

(32:17):
because that's sort of the lineand command role that I'm used
to, that Commander Air Force ismy boss and I have a reporting
thing to him on, you know, therunning of the operational Air
Force. The second one isCommander Canadian NORAD Region.
And so I report to a US Fourstar who's in Colorado Springs,
General Gill, Gregory Gill.
Air battle managementbackground, so he's a AWACS

(32:38):
background and he's thecommander of NORAD NORTHCOM. And
as commander NORAD, he's gotthree regions that in which he
has to conduct air defense. Soaerospace warning and control
and maritime warning of themissions for NORAD. And so in,
he has a Continental U. Region,which is commanded by an
American two star down inTyndall Air Force Base.
He's got the Alaska NORADregion, which is commanded by an

(33:00):
American three star up inAlaska. He's got the Canadian
NORAD region, which I command.And I have an American one star
deputy and much like the otherregions, they have Canadian one
or two star deputies dependingon the region.

Bryan (33:12):
And

Chris (33:13):
so, very busy job to be honest. We are responsive to air
defense penetrations and alsothe operational Noble Eagle,
which is the post nineelevenstandby to go and intercept the
airliners that are doing weirdthings. And so we have, we're
busy. We have a lot of assets onvery short notice to launch any
given day. As the search andrescue region commander for

(33:34):
Trenton, obviously I'm justlooking after making sure that
we execute the mandate to searchand rescue all the way to the
Arctic, to the Alberta border,Alberta BC border, and
essentially out to the NewBrunswick border.
So I have pretty large swath oflike a big triangle in which we
conduct aeronautical search andrescue. And I have all the
assets I need to do that. Andthen lastly, operational

(33:54):
worthiness. There's authoritiesvested in the commander of the
air force that he sub delegatesin different places. I have
operational risk managementresponsibilities, but there's a
technical and a flight safetyinvestigative as well.
And so that's a fairly paperworkintensive and it's all about
making sure that you can, youidentify the risks, you trap
them, that you mitigate them tothe best of your ability so that

(34:16):
you can conduct air operationssafely.

Bryan (34:19):
Would that be things like a RARM, which you'll have to
remind me again what RARMexactly stands for but?

Chris (34:27):
A record of airworthiness risk management. And so myself
and my colleague, who's thetechnical airworthiness
authority, we have to sort ofagree on risks identified, how
are we going to mitigate it? Getit using technical means, like
put a new radio in the airplaneor whatever. And the operational
side is, do I change tactics?What's the qualification side of
it?

(34:47):
Are there any sort of proceduresI need to put in place to de
risk that risk? And so it's abit of a two key turn between
myself and the technicalreadiness authority. We both
report back to the commander ofthe air force.

Bryan (34:57):
Okay. So let's talk a little bit about modernization
of the RCAF, which honestly is ahuge topic right now. From 2021
to 2024, you served as theRCAF's director general of Air
and Space Force Development,working to set the requirements
and coordinate the acquisitionfor several key new RCAF
capabilities, which we'lldiscuss in detail shortly. How
did it feel to be able to affectsuch real change for the RCAF?

Chris (35:21):
Oh, yeah. First of all, I'm not gonna take credit for
all the the goodness. There's ait's a huge team fight, Brian.
In defense acquisition andprocurement in Canada, it truly
is. It's by definition teamfights.
It's the RCFD and D PublicProcurement Canada and

(35:41):
Innovation Science and EconomicDevelopment Canada. So you have
to sort of build a team andbuild a network, but it felt
awesome. Like I think we're inthe midst of the largest
recapitalization of the AirForce since World War II. We put
just under $60,000,000,000through treasury board and under
contract in about a twenty eightmonth period. And that is in my

(36:03):
career, I've never seen that.
I was very privileged to be theguy kind of at the end of that
because there was a lot of folksthat got those files to be
ready. And then I just sort ofcarried them across the line.
But it was one of the mostsatisfying things I've done in
uniform and remains to this day.Because I'll tell you, like a
lot of us were quite frustratedin the Air Force. We were not

(36:24):
seeing recapitalization of corecapabilities and you're feeling
yourself being sort of lessoperationally relevant.
And all of a sudden, like in aflood, you have seen a whole
bunch of new capes, showing upand they're showing up pretty,
pretty rapidly.

Bryan (36:38):
Yeah. Your entire career had been within the tactical
aviation bubble at this point.So how did you inform yourself
properly about the needs ofother communities within the
RCAF?

Chris (36:49):
Yeah. I would say a lot of listening And I was
privileged to have a director ofair requirements, a guy named
Dave Plutz, who'd already beenthere for a year, was a fighter
background and a weaponsbackground. So that part was
covered off every time I had tointeract with the fighter team.
I had Dave to sort of give methe straight goods. But then
each of the director of airrequirements, if you're talking

(37:12):
about the aircraft side of this,know, in and around 2017, '20
'16, I think the air force madea very deliberate decision to
put very high end people intoprocurement.
And we're seeing what theoutcome of that is. I mean, I
don't think other servicesnecessarily have done that in
the past. The air force was notvery good at this in the early
2010s. By the end of the 2010s,were probably best in the

(37:34):
department because we had takenour best people, our post
command lieutenant colonels, andour charging majors. And we had
thrown them in to requirements.
And that might feel like a bigstop for like a high end sort of
operational focused person, butman, do I need that exact person
to be the one advocating forrequirements? And so I relied on

(37:57):
them quite a bit to answer yourquestion. I would ask a lot of
questions and then, you know, Iwould do very little
independently withoutconsultation to make sure that,
you know, whatever argument wewere making was one factual, two
logical and three, you know, itmade operational sense for the
current context.

Bryan (38:12):
Yeah. So you've alluded to this. The RCAF is currently
going through its greatestperiod of modernization since
World War II. Why has thisbecome so essential for Canada?

Chris (38:23):
I actually think it's existential for the air force.
So I think to be maybesimplistic or maybe a bit trite,
like what we're seeing aroundthe world is just a failure of
deterrence. Like our adversariesare undeterred and they are
doing what they wish or they'retaking advantage of rifts
between alliances, etcetera.Mhmm. And they're finding and

(38:44):
carving out new spaces forthemselves.
And without that the air forceis the force you're gonna call
to deter at the edge of thecontinent first. We can we're a
fight tonight kind of force. Ifyou ask one cad to solve a
problem, I am probably flyingsomething tonight to solve that
problem, irrespective of whatyou asked for. The Navy has
longer lead times to get a shipto sail somewhere. The Army

(39:06):
takes a bit longer to movesomewhere.
But the air force is a fighttonight organization. And we are
the ones that will reestablish,I think, some measure of
deterrence. And so one, we arealso seeing change in the
geostrategic sort of equities inthe world. You've seen The US
kind of contract a bit, Europegrow a little bit. Where does
Canada fit?
We have questions, right? And sowe need to stand on our own

(39:27):
more. I think we need to be moreindependent. We have an
opportunity here to show a lotof leadership and we're about to
get a lot of capability that ismassively consequential, not
only to us as a sovereign nationto defend our nation, but also
to our allies that see us, like,stepping up in a very big way.

Bryan (39:42):
Yeah. Absolutely. So let's get into some of the
platforms that are comingonline. Let's start with our
nonwarfighting acquisition andone that has quite frankly had
some growing pains, the CC twonine five Kingfisher. What
issues has it had during itstesting and evaluation in Canada
that have led to delays inreaching operational function
point or OFP?

Chris (40:03):
Yeah, I think in the requirements stage, it's so
important to get therequirements right for any of
these aircraft. And that waskind of my earlier point about
making sure you have all theright people stacked in as they
write those requirements.They're beautiful. This is one
where, you know, this was kindof a mid, mid 2010s and the
decision by government was toacquire the two ninety five. It

(40:23):
was a proven aircraft that flewin sort of an air transport
role, but had not been heavilymissionized.
And this was the first, I think,big step for Airbus to
missionize that aircraft. AndI'll be honest, the
missionization of it now is eyewatering. There's some really
good stuff about that airplane,but the growing pains were sort
of anchored on the certificationof that aircraft and the

(40:45):
software loads that were in it.I mean, the aircraft was
designed as an airliner, you getlow. The software is telling
you, Hey, this passenger's notgoing to like being low.
And so they're giving you awhole lot of warnings and
cautions. It's not, it was notdesigned, from a software point
of view to enable the coremission set of SAR, which is to
get down and drop things topeople in distress.

Intro (41:04):
Right.

Chris (41:05):
So we've had to work through all those challenges and
we're, I think we're very closeto being there. They have not
done a lot of airdrop work outof the aircraft and the, all the
things you need like hung jumperretrieval, like good laminar
flow of air behind the airplane.So we had to work through some
of those challenges, which Ithink again, we're there now.
And then there was, integratingall the sensors. And so you have

(41:26):
a really good AESA radar on thebottom of that airplane that
just, if it's a maritime thing,you were going to find that
piece of a piece of aircraft orship out there on the way to get
it.
Like that radar is unreal andit's paired with an EOIR
capability.

Bryan (41:41):
Which is for the listeners, electro optic
infrared. So basically a camerawith infrared modes and a bunch
of other bells and whistles.

Chris (41:49):
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, man. Sorry. And so, and then, you
know, the configuration of theCanadian context for SAR is
different than like the Europeancontext.
And so trying to make the OEMunderstand like the austerity of
Canada. Like if you end upisolated here, you can't walk 10
miles and go to a bakery and getsome food. Right. You're going
to be in the middle of nowhereand bears are going eat you.
This aeroplane needs to berobust.

(42:10):
Like the Arctic is unforgiving.They have to operate off of semi
prepared runways. And so we werethe first customer to have to
qualify it through that. Andwe've done the work. I'm happy
to say it like we've done thework.
So, we'll be releasing it toservice formally, likely in the
March. That's that's the plan.

Bryan (42:26):
Okay.

Chris (42:27):
And then I will likely have it on the line, doing a
line of search and rescue in inearly May.

Bryan (42:34):
So by early May, it will be doing its job in search and
rescue?

Chris (42:37):
That's the intent. You bet.

Bryan (42:39):
That's great news. How will the Kingfisher change the
way we do search and rescue?

Chris (42:44):
I honestly think fundamentally. And so, you know,
if you think about how we usedto do it with the Buffalo or
with the Hercules, you had a lotof eyeballs looking out the
airplane for wreckage. And thatis not super efficient way to
search for downed aircrew. It'sthe way it was done for years,
but technology has rapidlychanged. And I think we have an
opportunity here to change ourtactics.

(43:05):
And that's what the folks infour eighteen Squadron in their
operational test and evaluationphases, they've broken it up
into search and rescue. And sothey're trying to get the
procedures right to leveragethose new sensors and the new
context of the aircraft. So, youknow, I just need to give an
example. Historically, if youhad a crash on the side of a
mountain, you would have tocontour crawl that mountain at

(43:27):
increasing altitudes, just tokeep an eyeball on each sort of
layer and where a crash mightbe. And now you might be able to
fly a bit higher, stand off anduse your radar to find that
wreckage to highlight where thatcrash site would be.
There's also some other newthings I think that they don't
have. So historically in thecombat side of the ERCF, we rely

(43:48):
on IR SPARQL, that is to say aninfrared laser, designating a
target for us on the ground toshoot at or to land in. I use
SPARQL quite a bit on airassault landings in Afghanistan.
So I'd ask for SPARQL, someonewould take their MX-fifteen EOR
capability, their camera, andthey would, they can lay
something for me and it would,the laser would stay on that
thing as the aircraftmaneuvered. SAR has that now.

(44:11):
So you can imagine like aKingfisher is going show up over
a crash site. They're going havegreat imagery of it instantly.
They have a radar picture of itinstantly. They actually have a
data length to push that databack to GRCC, which is also game
changing.

Bryan (44:22):
Oh, that's huge.

Chris (44:23):
But they can also now sparkle. Yeah, they can sparkle
the target so that a cormorantcan run-in and conduct the
rescue. And so that, you know,I'm trying to talk an airplane
on thing that we've all done,very inefficient, or just like
reference my laser. There it is.

Bryan (44:38):
Wow.

Chris (44:38):
And tell me when you want me to turn it off.

Bryan (44:40):
That's huge.

Chris (44:40):
I think that's going be very game changer for the
Starforce.

Bryan (44:44):
A hundred percent. What kind of challenges do you think
the Kingfisher will face in itsSAR role?

Chris (44:49):
So I think Arctic is hard and we've done one of the one of
the things we had to workthrough was some modifications
to the aircraft to get it readyfor the Canadian cold. We've
had, we went to the McKinleychamber, we've done a bunch of
design mods with the OEM andit's good now. They've
demonstrated unassisted startand an assisted start at very
cold temperatures. But semiprepared runways are always

(45:10):
tricky. And you can just imaginethat, you know, that radome was
quite close to the ground.
So if you're working a lot ofsemi prepared runway, there's
damage to props and damage toradomes you gotta manage. So
we've got to be careful aboutexactly where this airplane
operates out of. And if there'sa need, we're going to
obviously, but we've got tomanage that. And then I think
some of the oceanic stuff, likethe really far oceanic stuff,

(45:33):
that's, that might be achallenge in certain kinds of
weather like heavy icing,etcetera, but it would be a
challenge for any aircraft.

Bryan (45:38):
Yeah.

Chris (45:39):
I think that's offset by tremendous advantage of a
censored airplane. And when youthink about the last Cape, which
is not yet onboarded, but it islikely to in the future, which
is a cell phone detection systemthat allows you to latch onto
cell phones that an isolatedperson or a victim might have to
be able to find them muchfaster. We have them on our H
model Herx right now. We had arescue actually over this past

(46:01):
weekend where we actually founda snowmobiler using, a lost
snowmobiler using his IMEI andhis cell phone.

Bryan (46:07):
Yeah, I was just, talking with Mike Reno from Sky's
Magazine about that capabilitythe other day. It's an amazing,
search capability.

Chris (46:15):
It is. Yeah. It's game changing. The Norwegian military
has told us they find aboutninety three percent of their
victims using cell phonedetection.

Bryan (46:23):
Wow. Let's get into our war fighting acquisitions and
upgrades and talk about theGriffin limited life extension
or GLLE. What exactly are wedoing to upgrade our Griffins
and what problems will theseupgrades solve?

Chris (46:35):
Yeah. So I think the challenge with the Griffin is,
you know, it was acquired inthe, in I think the acquisition
decision was like '92 and wesort of saw the first Griffins
in '95. They've had softwareupgrades to their control
display units, their CDUs, butnot a whole lot of wholesale
digital upgrades. So it's stillrelatively an analog airplane.
And then we've run into the2020s here, regulatory

(46:57):
challenges with respect to ADS Band making sure that the
aircraft can be seen on, youknow, in the mandated way.

Bryan (47:03):
ADS B stands for automatic dependent surveillance
broadcast. And it's basically arelatively new method of
uploading and downloading datato and from an aircraft. It can
be used to pick up weather,traffic information, all that
kind of stuff. But the biggestreason it was mandated is

(47:24):
because it's also used fortracking aircraft positions. So
it is now required in The UnitedStates.

Chris (47:31):
We have a combat sort of limitation for IFF mode five to
make sure that the aircraft isidentification front or foe
transponder is up to speed. Andthen there's a comms suite
upgrade that needs to happen. Sothere's all these sort of
mounting challenges with themachine and it resulted in GLE,
which is a packaging of a wholebunch of upgrades. The aircraft

(47:53):
essentially loses all wires thatare currently in, like every
single box and wire is, has beenremoved. There is a new cockpit
frame that is put in.
Wow. And it's all multifunctiondisplays and they're all
digital. So the airplane isfully digital now, and all of
the avionics have been upgradedvery significantly, close to
what a 04/12 EPX would give you.So it's commonality between that

(48:17):
civilian and aircraft and ours.But there's obviously you've got
to integrate all of the missionkit that we currently have.
So that's the challenge isgetting the software sorted out,
get all the mission kitintegrated, but there's also
some power and some engineissues. So, you know,
historically these engines havebeen pretty tired. They've been
serving us for thirty years. Itneeded an engine upgrade and we

(48:38):
wanted to go digital. And so thereal scope is a large scale
avionics upgrade to get it to bea digital aircraft and it has
all that regulatory compliancestuff looked after.
New engines, so a completely newtwin pack for every aircraft
that gets a new set of engines,fresh out of Pratt and Whitney
that are FADEC engines, they'redigital engines. So it's a lot

(48:58):
lower workload and a lot higherreliability, easier to maintain
for all those things. And thenthere's actually a mod on the
tail. So the tail boom isgetting a strike along it, which
is like it spoils lift, givesyou a bit more pedal authority.
And then the aft, vertical finis being changed where it's
thinner, its profile is thinner.
And so you have less drag, asyou move, air laterally through

(49:21):
the tail motor.

Bryan (49:22):
Okay.

Chris (49:22):
And that gives you more pedal authority. So the aircraft
has a little bit improved,performance in terms of its all
up weight is increasing, and itsavailable payload is increasing
a little bit because of thesavings of avionics.

Bryan (49:36):
Okay. Wow. That's pretty significant. It's pretty neat to
hear about them basically goingfully glass cockpit. I remember
in my time in four hundredsquadron, it was a pretty dated
cockpit, and there were some Iwas part of some testing one
time in Ottawa for, like, somelittle touch they had a little
kind of patchwork solutions.
Like, let's maybe we'll put inthis touchscreen with some soft

(49:56):
keys on the side and it's greatto hear that they're kind of
going whole hog on this andreally putting in a solid
solution.

Chris (50:03):
Yeah and the big thing too is when you have an
opportunity to do that, you sortof take a bit more liberty. So
everyone's flying withelectronic flight bags or iPads
on ForeFlight now at the wholeAir Force, every pilot's issued
that. And so we put powered iPadmini holders in the, in the
cockpit as well. So you willhave, you know, where you're at
the at the corners of thecockpit, you'll have mounts and

(50:25):
power for your iPad. Yeah.
For which is which is key.

Bryan (50:29):
Yeah. Absolutely. How long are we expecting the
Griffin fleet to operate beforeit's replaced?

Chris (50:34):
When this was conceived, it was a bit of a ten year kick,
ten years from the decision. Andso decision in about '22 to
about '32, but the horizon rightnow is no later than '35. And
quite honestly, if you look atthe mission sets we are asking
our tactical aviation fleets toexecute, we need I think more
robust aircraft that have a bitmore solid electronic warfare

(50:59):
and sort of ruggedness. And weneed different roles. We need
long range precision strike.
We need long range assault typeplatforms that can go very long
distances. So the Griffin is a,you know, to two fifty to 300
nautical mile airplane on a goodday. So we can get into that in
the next thing, but that'sreally, it's meant to be about a
ten year gap filler until werecapitalize.

Bryan (51:20):
Okay. Well, let's roll right into that because another
project you've mentioned is NTAXor next tactical aviation
capability set. What is this andwhy is it exciting for the RCAF?

Chris (51:30):
Yeah, so we're, when we're putting policy proposals
into our North Snorong and Free,the defense policy that was
released in April, we hadproposed detailed and large
scale upgrade of the tacticalaviation enterprise minus the
Chinook. Chinook's doing well.It's going to need some
upgrades, likely in the mid toearly thirties, but this is all
about sort of replacing theGriffin with more capability,

(51:53):
not necessarily more numbers,but more capability. And so
there's sort of three bucketareas that I was targeting when
we wrote this and submitted it.And amazingly government agreed
with us.
We need to be able to projectinto the Arctic. And that was
really the basis for thisupgrade was a domestic basis.
You know, tech help, we gooverseas sometimes, but
fundamentally we had strongsecure engaged, strong at home.

(52:14):
So it's a little bit at home andbeing able to get aircraft into
the Arctic Archipelago and to beable to operate sort of freely
up there, you needed a certainrange sort of imperatives you
got to get after. And so if youlook at the three buckets, of
capability, we were looking at aspecial operations aircraft that
is sort of suited to thatMaritime Counterterror role in

(52:36):
addition to all the other thingsthat they have to do for
precision insert extract.
We need, and the army has beenemphatic with us that we need
long range strike from rotary,and we need the ability to sort
of control, swarms of drones.And so you think about how that
could be accomplished. We usethe term air launched effects.
So instead of firing a missile,you can fire a drone and you can

(52:58):
become sort of the mother shipto that. So we're looking at
what that would look like.
And then the third would be thislong range assault platform,
which allows us to reallyproject, consequential distances
like long range, like in theArctic. And that's what Intact
is supposed to encapsulate andthe team is doing all the
requirements work behind that.In addition to potentially
changing the way we've arrayedour main operating bases and

(53:20):
looking at, you know, Arcticoptions for how we could host
that aircraft in the Arctic.Host, I mean, like a Ford
operating location you couldfall into.

Bryan (53:27):
Right. So basically like a well rounded replacement plan
for the Griffin essentially.

Chris (53:34):
Yep. Absolutely. But it's I I think we're stepping up our
game pretty significantly interms of what The Cape would
offer.

Bryan (53:39):
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So next I'd like to talk about
cloud based command and control.Can you tell us what it is and
why we should be excited aboutit?
How will it change how we dobusiness?

Chris (53:50):
It's really important to me in my NORAD role. So we have
a system called Battle CommandSystem Fixed or BCSF that we've
been using since pretty muchright after nineeleven. And it's
the command control system thatallows us to see all of the air
traffic. And then there's abunch of different data feeds
and you're kind of swivelchairing around to make it all
work. And that's what's been inplace since early two thousand

(54:13):
and two.
It's getting to the end of itslife and I'll be honest,
technology has just moved sofar. So getting into the cloud
at the secret level, superimportant. So what, this is a
collaborative program betweenCanada and The U. S. Anchored in
NORAD and it's program executiveoffice digital out of Hanscom
Air Force Base that's runningit.

(54:34):
But we have a bunch of folks whoare working full time on it as
well. And we put a lot of moneyinto it and we were able to
define the requirements. So it'sessentially a cloud based on
secret gov cloud that allows usto get all the NORAD data in
there in terms of all of the airtraffic and more. So there's
about a thousand sensor feedsnow that are plugged into this,
at the secret level. And thereis now a way to bring in higher

(54:55):
than secret into it.
And I'll tell you, like it givesyou the opportunity with all
that data in one place and it'sall curated properly. You can
now use cloud based tools tosort of extract it or using, use
AI and ML to give you someadvantage. And I'll you an
example. So if you have a trackof interest that's moving across
the country, as you can imagine,as it moves, the best option to

(55:17):
intercept that thing will changebased on the geometry of that
aircraft where it is. And inCanada, we only have so many
alert bases.
In The US, they have a lot morealert bases. So as it moves, the
AI will re propose to you newcourses of action about which
alert fighter you should launchthat is best suited to intercept
that based on geometry.

Bryan (55:38):
Okay.

Chris (55:38):
And same for tanker. And so it will offer us opportunity
to really lower the workload andit reduces the decision time
from, hey, that track looksfunny to I'm launching fighters
from, probably close to probablyclose to ten minutes to much,
much less than that.

Bryan (55:55):
Okay. Wow. So speaking of launching fighters, we know that
Canada has purchased f 35 aLightnings but we need something
to get us to the point wherethey reach operational function
point or OFP. That's where theHornet extension program comes
in. Can you tell us about thisprogram?

Chris (56:12):
Yeah, so this was born actually before the F-thirty
five was selected because thecompetition was still running
and depending on which fighterwas going to be selected by the
fair and open competition, youmay have ended up with longer or
shorter time lag for delivery,right? So this was the insurance
policy that the RCF put in placeto make sure that we would
continue to have a relevantfighter capability for the NORAD

(56:34):
mission set. And so HornetExtension, it does a little bit
of like what GLEE does, where itbrings the aircraft up to
regulatory compliance for itsradios and its IFF and its ADS
B, etcetera. So we are now ableto operate pretty much in
anyone's airspace. So hugelyimportant.
It also brings in, and there'stwo phases. It's a phase one is
all of the jets, all of theF-18s will get Hornet phase one.

(56:56):
So that's the regulatoryupgrade. And then there's a
subset of 36 jets that we'veactually gone much deeper and
we've added an auto GCAASfunction and we've added new
radios, new tactical radios, arcto 10 Gen six software defined
radios that allows us to takeadvantage of some of the beyond
line of sight comms that wesigned up for with The US. And

(57:16):
then lastly, in HEP two, we addan AESA radar.
So no longer a mech scan radar,an electronically scanned radar.
It's essentially the SuperHornet radar installed and
functioning inside of a classicHornet that we fly. And so that
has been done. We now have 10 ofthose jets on our lines and
they're flying and they'reairworthy and they're released

(57:37):
to service. And so it's a verygood news story.
That APG79V4 radar we put in it,it also opens you up to a whole
bunch of new advancedcapabilities that will lead us
down the road to the F-thirtyfive. It's like a big step
towards the informationmanagement you need to get on
board with, for a very advancedcapability like the F-thirty

(57:58):
five. So it allows us to take abig step in that direction. And
then the radar itself, the keyadvantage is it can see very
small things, very low radarcross section things. So it
allows you to defeat differentkinds of threats.
And then lastly, we've done aweapons upgrade on it. And so
the two key weapons air to airweapons was always an AIM-nine

(58:19):
Sidewinder and an AIM-one 20AMRAAM.

Bryan (58:22):
The Sidewinder and the AMRAAM are two of the most
widely used air to air missilesin the West.

Chris (58:27):
So the Sidewinder is going to be updated to the
newest variant, an AIM-9X. Andwe just signed off on that and
we're done a bunch of good,missile shots this fall and it's
now flying on our jets. Andright now we have 16 F-18s down
at Tyndall Air Force Base outof, Cold Lake and Baggeville,
they're doing a big missileshoot, to to sort of get

(58:48):
everyone up to speed. And thenthe second thing is an upgraded
AMRAAM, which should be on theaircraft as well. So That's
huge.
Very significant upgrades. Yeah.Makes the aircraft a very, very
good defensive aircraft, from afrom an NORAD point of view.

Bryan (59:01):
Right on. So I imagine there'd be critics to this plan.
Why is it important to put moremoney into an aging fleet of
Hornets when we have newfighters on the way?

Chris (59:11):
Well, think one, the world's very unstable and we
can't really allow a capabilityto fall off a cliff while we
wait for the next one. And wehave obligations under the MRT
agreement to provide X number ofaircraft at X threat level. And
so that's sort of nonnegotiable. And then the way the
F-thirty five is coming in, wewill have to be very elegant
about how we sunset one andbring the other one on. I spent

(59:32):
a lot of my time and my team'stime on that.
But in the interim also thethreat was moving so fast that
we, it's sort of, we had to havean AESA jet to be able to deal
with the changing threat of ourkey adversaries in China and
Russia.

Bryan (59:46):
Sorry, that AESA is that type of radar, right?

Chris (59:49):
It's an active electronically scanned radar.
And so it's a much more potentradar. It's all digital and
allows you to see smallerthings. So that's the key
advantage of this jet. And to behonest, we need to keep this jet
running all the way through to02/1932 as we onboard all of our
F-thirty five's.
If we're able to sunset earlier,we will. But I think it's that's

(01:00:11):
pretty accurate. 02/1932 wouldbe the end end of the hornet.

Bryan (01:00:15):
Okay. So finally, another project you've worked on was
MAZR or Manned AirborneIntelligence Surveillance and
Reconnaissance resulting in theacquisition of the CE one forty
five C Vigilance, which is akitted out King Air three fifty
ER. Why did we need thisaircraft when we already had the
Aurora fleet performing ISR?

Chris (01:00:33):
Yeah. It's a good question. I will say there's no
such thing as too much ISR. Andso

Bryan (01:00:37):
Yeah, a %.

Chris (01:00:38):
While the Aurora does overland ISR quite well, it's
going, it's doing quite well.Our country is just so enormous
and special operations have avery specific need for certain
kinds of things on that aircraftthat they have invested in. And
so it's a bit of a collaborationbetween CANsoftcom and the air
force to get this across theline in concert with ADM Matt to
make sure that the airplanes fitfor purpose. They purchased

(01:01:00):
three aircraft. They're allbased in Trenton, Ontario, and
they're flown by 47 Squadronpilots and crews.
And we've added sensor operatorsto the mix now. So ASOPs are now
flying on aircraft, as well as,you know, the other fleets,
legacy fleets that they hadflown on. Going to hold much
like my discussion in theearlier episode about the level
of readiness you need to hold inKansoff, their expectation is

(01:01:23):
you're going to ask forsomething and have it occur
within minutes or hours asopposed to, you know, half a
crew day. And so they needed,their own ability to launch and
self serve with that from adomestic point of view. And they
can use this obviouslyinternationally, depending on
level of level of risk, but ahighly digital aircraft that has

(01:01:44):
a lot of data links, lot ofradios and has targeting pods on
it that allows them to guide andemploy weapons if need be.
So like a really potent littlepackage of an aircraft that
we're about to release toservice as well. So that's about
to be on the books in the nextweek or two.

Bryan (01:02:00):
And so basically the big advantage that that's bringing
in is kind of like a quickreaction ISR platform.

Chris (01:02:06):
Absolutely. And you think about where I'm concerned right
now domestically, I'm concernedabout obviously the ten and
02:00 from a Russian long rangeaviation point of view and the
12:00, but also we have amaritime domain awareness
requirement that the Aurora isobviously fulfilling, but we
have some acute needs that softfills. And so it's going to be

(01:02:27):
really important that thisairplane is employed in the
littorals on the approach toCanada, the eyes and ears.

Bryan (01:02:35):
And littoral is essentially being coastal
waters, right?

Chris (01:02:38):
Coastal, absolutely.

Bryan (01:02:40):
Yeah. Okay, Chris, that's gonna wrap up part two of our
discussion. I really enjoyedhearing about your time in Mali
and honestly, is super excitingto hear about the new things
coming down the pipe for theRCAF in terms of airframes and
new tech. Thank you again forbeing here today and I'm really
looking forward to, part threeof our chat. Thank you.

Chris (01:02:59):
Thanks a lot, Ryan. My pleasure.

Bryan (01:03:01):
Alright. That wraps up part two of our chat with Major
General Chris McKenna about hiscommand positions, his time in
Mali as the task forcecommander, as well as the
beginning of our chat onmodernization of the RCAF. Tune
in to the next episode where wewill continue with this chat
talking about some of theexciting platforms we're
bringing online. We'll talkabout a renewed focus on war
fighting mentality for the RCAF,as well as take questions from

(01:03:24):
the audience. Do you have anyquestions or comments about
anything you've heard in thisshow?
Would you or someone you knowmake a great guest, or do you
have a great idea for a show?You can reach out to us at the
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lots of great videos of our RCAFaircraft. As always, we'd like

(01:03:44):
to thank you for tuning in andask for your help with the big
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That's all for now. Thanks forlistening. Keep the blue side
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