Episode 51: The Commander: Commanding the RCAF and flying the CF-188 Hornet Part 1 - Eric Kenny

What does it take to complete Canada's "Top Gun", the Fighter Weapons Instructor Course? What is it like to deploy to Bosnia or take part in the bombing campaign in Kosovo with real air-to-air and ground-to-air threats? What does it take to coordinate strikes in Afghanistan? How are we shifting from a counter-insurgency to peer-to-peer warfighting mentality? Today we have Lieutenant-General Eric Kenny, Commander of the RCAF on the show to discuss all these things and much more. Eric has 2900 flying hours, 2200 of which are on the CF-188 Hornet. He has been there and done that at the pointy end as well as from a command perspective. Join us today for a great discussion on his career as we lead up to a discussion on the RCAF as a whole!

Episode Transcript

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Bryan (00:28):
Hey, everybody. It's your host, Brian Morrison here with
our standard RCAF senior officerpre episode commentary. We live
in a twenty four hour news cycleand comments can be very quickly
overtaken by events. So to putthings in perspective, this
interview was recorded in midMarch. Fuel and ignition
switches.

(01:14):
We're ready for departure hereat the pilot project podcast,
the best source for stories andadvice from RCAF and Mission
Aviation Pilots brought to youby Sky's Magazine. I'm your
host, Brian Morrison. With metoday is a very special guest,
the commander of the RCAF,lieutenant general, Eric Kenny.
Eric, welcome to the show. I'mglad we're able to put this
together.

Eric (01:32):
Thanks, Brian. Thanks for giving me this opportunity.

Bryan (01:35):
Yeah. And I have to say it's kind of funny having just
got out in July to call youEric. Every every fiber of my
being is trying to make me callyou sir. So

Eric (01:44):
It is my name. So please know. Yeah. And like I said,
it's very beginning. This is areally unique opportunity,
right, to to be able to answeryour question and other people's
questions and and speak a littlebit about the Royal Canadian Air
Force, which is what I lovedoing.

Bryan (02:02):
Awesome. Today, we will be talking about Eric's career
leading up to his time as thecommander of the RCAF. But
before we get into that, let'sgo through Eric's bio.
Lieutenant General Eric Kennyjoined the Canadian Armed Forces
in 1989 and graduated from theRoyal Military College of
Canada, RMC in Kingston with adegree in computer engineering.
He completed pilot training atfifteen Wing Moose Jaw in 1995

(02:24):
and was selected to fly the CFone eighty eight Hornet.
Following f 18 training, heserved as an f eighteen line and
instructor pilot and flightsupervisor at four three three
and four ten tactical fightersquadrons or TFS in three wing
Baggettville and four wing ColdLake. Lieutenant General Kenny
has held a number of commandpositions including commanding
officer of four zero ninetactical fighter squadron in

(02:45):
Cold Lake, Commander of fourwing Cold Lake, and commander of
one Canadian air division inCanadian NORAD region in
Winnipeg. His staff toursconsist of deputy wing
operations officer at four wing,a three fighter at one CAD
headquarters in Winnipeg,Director Air Force Readiness at
RCAF HQ in Ottawa, and deputydirector j seven at NORAD United
States Northern Command or USNORTHCOM headquarters in

(03:06):
Colorado. As a brigadiergeneral, he held the positions
of deputy commander forcegeneration at one CAD in
Winnipeg and subsequently asdirector general air readiness
at RCAF headquarters in Ottawa.Lieutenant General Kenny has
deployed numerous times andparticipated in multiple
operations.
He deployed twice to Abiano,Italy to participate in
operation Echo in Bosnia andoperation Allied Force in Kosovo

(03:29):
where he took part in combatmissions, and he was the deputy
director of the Air OperationsControl Center at the
International SecurityAssistance Force HQ in
Afghanistan. His deployedcommand tours include task force
commander for operation ignitionin Iceland, Detachment Commander
of the c f eighteen's c c onethirty h Hercules and c c one
fifty Polaris in Trapani, Italy,where he took part in combat

(03:50):
missions for operation mobile inLibya, Commander Air Component
Coordination Element in PoggioRenatico, Italy, also for
operation mobile and commanderof Roto Zero Air Task Force Iraq
for operation impact. Throughouthis career, lieutenant general
Kenny has accumulated 2,900flying hours, 2,200 of them in
the c f one eighty eight. He isa graduate of the NATO tactical

(04:11):
leadership program, fighterweapons instructor course,
Canadian Forces College JointCommand and Staff program,
United States Air Force or USAFAir War College, USAF combined
force air component commandercourse, US capstone course, and
has a master of defense studiesfrom RMC. He was promoted to
lieutenant general in Februaryand appointed commander of the

(04:31):
RCAF on 08/12/2022.
So let's start with your earlydays. What inspired you to
pursue aviation as a career?

Eric (04:40):
I wouldn't say that I started early on in terms of
wanting to be in aviation, but Ilived amongst it. My dad was in
the Royal Canadian Air Force. Hewas a pilot. And my grandfather
was a pilot within the RoyalCanadian Air Force. He joined in
the Second World War, flewCatalina, stayed in after the
Second World War, eventuallywould rise up to the rank of
group captain that we had at thetime, and command Goose Bay back

(05:05):
when it was an American bomberbase with Canadians there.
So growing up across Canada,lived in Germany for many years
with my parents, my dad being inthe military. I I saw jets and
aircraft flying every singleday. That, of course, had an
effect on me. I didn't join theair cadets. I was in scouting as
I went up.
But ultimately, it was, thedesire to to wanna serve. But at

(05:29):
the same time, I applied forHoboken University, so one of
them was a military college.

Bryan (05:32):
Okay. So your desire to serve was combined with your
desire to maybe pursue aviation?

Eric (05:39):
Yeah. So I applied to many universities. I was at an
American high school living inGermany at the time. And so I
applied to some Americanuniversities and subpoena
universities. And because thiswas a transition between grade
twelve and thirteen, for thosethat would know that history
decades ago, getting into someof the Canadian universities in
particular in Ontario waschallenging to go from a US

(05:59):
based system.
So I applied to College MilitaryRoyal in Saint in Quebec, and I
got accepted. And and with that,you had to pick a trade. And so
I picked Air Force and I askedfor aircrew, pilot, and that's
how I was enrolled.

Bryan (06:14):
Okay. You started at the College Milletail Royale in
Saint Jean, but you graduatedfrom RMC Kingston. Right?

Eric (06:20):
Yeah. So I did a preparatory year at CMR in Saint
Jean plus two more years. Andthen in my third year, moved to
RMC in Kingston to complete myengineering degree for the last
two years.

Bryan (06:32):
And you did, as you said, complete a degree in computer
engineering. What made youchoose this degree?

Eric (06:37):
So initially, wanted to go into robotics. This is back when
computers were kind of new.Internet was not a thing yet.
For some of your viewers thatthey probably couldn't even
comprehend that. But so this iswhere you had punch cards, you
know, going into computers.
And robotics was really excitingfor me. So I actually applied to
many universities to go into arobotic or computer engineering

(06:58):
field. And I wanted to followthe initially the hardware side
of computer engineering, butultimately, software interested
me quite a bit too. So all thatto say is I wanted to get into
computers, was relatively new atthe time, and then see how I can
pursue that in an engineeringsense.

Bryan (07:17):
Okay. Did you find that your degree helped you in your
future career path?

Eric (07:22):
Yeah, absolutely. Like I find, I mean engineering is very
process and logic based typeapproach to either looking at
problem sets. I love the factthat there's only one answer
typically. And when you do, Ialways enjoy math, not everybody

(07:43):
does. And so engineering wasjust kind of a logical place for
me to go.
I wasn't a big person to writeessays, it just wasn't my thing.
So engineering seemed like theright field. And then I was able
to use that as I did my pilottraining because a lot of it is
reasoning, you know,calculations, things that are
all done now by computers thatwe didn't have at the time. And

(08:04):
so I was able to use that quitea bit and just the thought
process that goes behind lookingat things as well.

Bryan (08:09):
Yeah, that makes sense for sure. There's a lot of
things that I would imagine likea background in science and math
essentially would be prettyhelpful for.

Eric (08:17):
Yeah. And now over time, I still I've learned how to write
essays. I have learned how to doresearch papers. I'm actually I
think I'm a bit of a I'm not abit. I do a lot of reviewing of
essays and papers.

Bryan (08:31):
Of course.

Eric (08:31):
So I think I've gotten good at that. But definitely
math, science was my mystrength.

Bryan (08:37):
Okay. You must have done phase one then, right?

Eric (08:40):
Yeah. Well, I did, but in a different way.

Bryan (08:43):
Okay. Can you explain that?

Eric (08:44):
Yeah. So we had the musketeer at the time was the
phase one trainer and they'retransitioning to slingsby. I
graduated from military collegein 1994, and that's when they
had shut down the Musketeer andSlingsby was not up yet. So what
they did is my year only, theysent us to the Victoria Flying
Club. We stayed at Royal RoadsCollege for housing.

(09:05):
Nice. And we did a month offlying at the Victoria Flying
Club. A bit of a backstory. Iinitially went through air
cruise selection that was notselected for pilot. I was
selected for navigator.
And what I did not do well onwas a simulator. So I was told
after that, that if you got yourprivate license, that might help

(09:26):
you reapply for pilot. So thefollowing summer, I got my
private license on a Cessna. Andthen I reapplied and I was
accepted in my third year to gopilot, did aircrew selection,
which was just a simulator, andI was selected for pilot. All
that to say is, you know, it wasa bit of a path for me to get to

(09:46):
pilot training.
And when I arrived in Victoria,I already had my private
license. So I did night flying,I did instrument flying, nobody
failed, everybody passed thecourse. Awesome. You know, it
was it was actually a lot offun, Not what most people would
see on a phase one.

Bryan (10:01):
Yeah. That sounds like a pretty unique experience. So
when you did get to Moose Jaw,what was your first impression
of flight training in the RCAF?

Eric (10:09):
It was a bit of a shock, but a pleasant pleasant one. You
know, lots of good friends thatI did what we call phase one
flying in Victoria. And reallygood feel for, you know, the
connection with the instructorsat the time. They knew what they
were doing. They made us feelwelcomed.

(10:31):
Ground school was a lot oflearning because that's some of
the stuff that we did not get inphase one.

Bryan (10:38):
Mhmm.

Eric (10:38):
And then, flying the tutor was so I flew the tutor as my my
trainer aircraft and it was sucha fun aircraft to fly. We had so
many of them at the time. Theflight line was just packed with
tutors.

Bryan (10:52):
Yeah. It was definitely a a different era in Moose Jaw in
terms of aircraft number ofaircraft on the ramp, flying all
at once. Like, it was a totallydifferent operation in terms of
scale.

Eric (11:02):
Much different than today. Yes.

Bryan (11:03):
Yeah. Did flying the CT one fourteen Tutor solidify your
desire to fly jets?

Eric (11:09):
Yeah. It so we did phase two and phase three, I guess, as
we would call it now on theTutor. And I just really enjoyed
flying it, because it was agreat aerobatic aircraft. It was
okay for instruments. It wasn'tthe best aircraft for
instruments.
Yeah. But, you know, we did anadvanced instrument flying trip

(11:31):
where I recall I flew to ChicagoO'Hare International Airport in
this tiny little tutor. That wasa maybe not the best thing to
do. But anyways, I did that. Andwent to many different locations
and, and really got to know howthe aircraft performs in a way
that I don't think we always getto know these days just because
it was such a relativelystraightforward aircraft to fly.

Bryan (11:54):
Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. I wonder, do you remember
in those early days taking ayoung Chris McKenna, the current
commander of one CAD on a fewflights in the tutor?

Eric (12:04):
So Chris Chris talked to me about that. I've Chris and I
have worked together for manyyears. So after I graduated from
my pilot training, I wasselected for f eighteens and I
had to wait two and a half yearsbefore my f 18 course. So when I
finished, a lot of people weregoing to what we called hotel

(12:25):
flight is what it was called atthe time, which was a place
where pilots that are waitingtraining would continue to fly
on the tutor. There wasn't anyroom for me.
So I got sent to Winnipeg fromMoose Jaw at the Central Flying
School, which had four tutoraircraft Okay. To them. Only a
couple pilots. Basically, I hadmy own plane. And I worked there
for a year flying at CentralFlying School doing air shows

(12:46):
around North America, doingformation flying.
And Chris McKenna was there onOJT and he was one of the people
that I flew. I flew so manypeople over that one year period
before I was eventually postedto Cold Lake to do a staff tour
for a year while waiting for myF18 course. So yeah, he reminds
me about it. It's in my logbook,whether I recall specifically

(13:09):
that trip, not as much.

Bryan (13:12):
That sounds like a pretty, sweet way to spend a
year though going to air showsall around North America.

Eric (13:18):
It was one of the better years of my life. Yeah. Yeah.
It's, you know, because I wouldoften bring people that were not
pilots with me or at least notqualified on the tutor. I'd
always usually fly with somebodyfrom the Central Flying School.
And I just learned so much aboutinstrument flying. I went to
major international airportsthroughout The US in particular
and in Canada. It wasn't justthe air show, it was that

(13:38):
learning from doing crosscountry trips all the way down
to Florida, the way toCalifornia and a two aircraft
that only go so far in each hop.

Bryan (13:46):
Mhmm.

Eric (13:46):
And it made me really comfortable with, you know,
being an aircraft captain flyingand and operating and then
fixing it when it got broken orworking at MRPs and so on.

Bryan (13:57):
Well, nothing solidifies your skills and your familiarity
with an aircraft like taking iton the road, having those
decision making experiences,dealing with problems as they
arise. Like that's what reallyshapes you as a pilot. Right?

Eric (14:09):
I absolutely agree. Yeah.

Bryan (14:10):
Yeah. So as we've said, after completing pilot training
at fifteen Wing Moose Jaw in1995, you were selected to fly
the CF one hundred eighty eightHornet. Normally, ask if this
was what you wanted, but I don'tthink too many people go to jets
who don't want it, do they?

Eric (14:25):
I I don't think so. You know, I'm not gonna speak on
behalf of everybody, but therewas several people in my course
I know that wanted to go feighteens. We were allocated to
only one slot and, yeah, for me,it was it's what I always wanted
once I became a pilot or, youknow, Gus liked to be a pilot.
And so I very much, was excitedabout going f 18 route.

Bryan (14:46):
How did you find the f 18 after flying the Tutor?

Eric (14:49):
Obviously, much different. Yeah. You know, the f 18 is it's
actually a relativelystraightforward aircraft to fly.
There's a lot of ground school,a lot of aircraft operating
instructions, AOIs that you guysstudy. But at the end of the
day, the aircraft itself isstraightforward to fly.
The hard part about thatF-eighteen is the system
integration.

Bryan (15:10):
Okay.

Eric (15:10):
And the cockpit management. So you have so much
information available to youthat you can easily get
overwhelmed with that and forgetto fly the aircraft. If you just
look outside or through theheads up display of the HUD, at
the end of the day, put thevelocity vector where you want
it to go, you got lots of powerand you just gotta make sure you
don't over speed your gear andthings such as that and try to
avoid icing as much as possible.But yeah, it was it was so much

(15:33):
fun to fly.

Bryan (15:34):
I've never managed to get up for a ride in one, but they
sound amazing. Like, I've neverI've never heard a bad review of
a Flight in a Hornet. That's forsure.

Eric (15:41):
Yeah. Well, some it's for some, it's not their thing.
Right? And if it's different ifyou're flying it compared to
being in the back seat.

Bryan (15:48):
Okay.

Eric (15:48):
If you have control over where you're turning or when
you're pulling g or you don't.Yeah. Especially for motion
sickness. I was

Bryan (15:56):
gonna say, must be like especially in terms of if people
tend to get airsick, then I canimagine that's true for sure.

Eric (16:01):
Yeah. I I brought a few people up who I don't think
we're gonna go up again.

Bryan (16:07):
After qualifying as a line pilot and doing your
various upgrades, you wereeventually an instructor pilot
on the f 18. What did you learninstructing on Hornets that you
still carry with you on the jobtoday?

Eric (16:18):
Everybody learns differently. So it took me a
while because I, you know, forme, as I mentioned a little bit
earlier, kinda logic based andspent a lot of time
understanding things. That's notthe way everybody operates or
learns. So I had to develop away to recognize the skill sets

(16:41):
and approaches of eachindividual and then try to
tailor my instructing to matchthat. I wouldn't say that that's
a strong suit of mine.
Okay. Some some are much moreadept at it than I am. But I by
doing that, it's really given mean ability to to think
differently and to approachpeople differently.

Bryan (17:01):
Yeah. I think those soft skills are some of the most
challenging skills that weencounter as pilots, whether
you're talking about leadershipor mentorship or instructing.
The hands and feet, theprocedures, you know,
emergencies, all that stuff. Youcan just about memorize all that
stuff and and kind of perform itby rote after enough repetition.

(17:22):
But those skills with the peopleskills, think are are the
actually the the skills thattake the longest to master.
And some people seem to benaturals at it. And for others
like myself, I find that ittakes a lot more work.

Eric (17:34):
Yeah. I agree. You know, somebody might be natural in
hands and feet and flying anaircraft. And so you get
comfortable doing instructionaltrips with them. And then all of
sudden, there's a task or amission where they just aren't
able to do it for some reason.
And then you got to reflect,okay, what's changed? Is it
because we've introducedsomething new? Or maybe I didn't
teach it properly? So, yeah,having those people skills to be

(17:58):
able to assess the situation andultimately, they make them a
better pilot.

Bryan (18:02):
Mhmm. Yeah. I really admire those peers of mine that
I've seen in the past that arejust seem to be naturals that,
you know, especially thementorship stuff, I think is is
a very challenging skill tomaster. And it's really cool to
work with someone who's who'sgot that down.

Eric (18:17):
I agree.

Bryan (18:19):
So I'm really interested in hearing your thoughts on
this. Eventually, you attendedthe fighter weapons instructor
course, which is essentiallyCanada's Top Gun course. How did
that change how you conductedyourself as a fighter pilot?

Eric (18:31):
That was an intense course. So at the time, it was a
three month course. I was inBagdiville, and it was all done
in Cool Lake. So I was there forthree months on TD. Probably
about a year's worth of lead uptraining to be ready to do
fighter weapons instructorcourse.
And then, a very, very intensecourse the way it was run at the

(18:52):
time. And lots of ground school,lots of incredible flying, not
only Cold Lake, but we deployedto other places in The States as
well. And it really allowed meto focus on the weapon system
and understand explicitly howeach portion of that weapon
system worked. So how themissile air to air missiles, air

(19:14):
ground weapons, how theelectronic warfare and the
defensive system worked. Notonly how it works, but how you
can teach others how it works.
And then provide advice as atactician to your squadron or to
the fighter force to make youthe best and most lethal

(19:36):
capability that we can employ.And where we can't, make sure
you provide that advice for whatwe need to do to either upgrade
or replace specific systems. SoI walked away learning a
tremendous amount. It probablytook me at least another year
after the course before I reallyfelt comfortable with everything
that I had learned and nowprocessed and really started to

(19:58):
get back to the to the squadronthat I was on.

Bryan (20:01):
So it sounds like, you know, I I feel like from, you
know, my experience with Top Gunis the movies, which obviously
is Hollywood. But myunderstanding kind of was that
the purpose of these courses isto turn you into the most lethal
fighter pilot possible. But itsounds like on top of that, a
big part of it is turning youinto a mentor within the fighter
community.

Eric (20:22):
That's exactly it. You know, we actually had some
course plans and lesson planswhere we need to present an idea
or a tactic and then we wouldget critiqued on how well we
presented it, whether it was agood tactic. Those are the type
of skills that you don't alwaysget. An ability to speak in a

(20:43):
confident manner in front of alarge or very intelligent group
in terms of that specific topic.And and come across as somebody
with credibility.
And it actually allowed me earlyin my career when I did it to
better hone those skills as Imove forward.

Bryan (21:03):
Mhmm. Let's talk a little bit about your deployments.
You've had quite a few. Youdeployed twice to Aviano, Italy,
once for Operation Echo inBosnia and once for Operation
Allied Force in Kosovo. Can youtell us what the overall mission
of the fighter force was inBosnia?

Eric (21:20):
The deployment over Bosnia was relatively short notice. I
was just arriving at thesquadron when it occurred and
initially it was going to beabout three months long. So I
was worried I was going to missit. It turned out to be turned
out to be extended And it wasstraightforward. We were
working, we're flying overBosnia to do close air support.

(21:41):
And at the time, we were workingwith what's called for their
controllers now called JTAX,Joint Terminal Attack
Controllers now before it usedto be for their controllers. And
so we it'd be Canadians or othernationalities that were on the
ground. And we would practiceour procedures just in case they
needed to call in a strike. Ifthere's something happening on
the ground. While I was there,it was quiet on the ground.
So we weren't dropping weapons.But we were working every single

(22:03):
time in a fairly tight portion,a piece of sky, to do those
tactics. And we had justrecently introduced a new
targeting pod. And we justrecently introduced the joint
guided bombs at the time or theguided bomb units at the time
with laser guided bombs. So wewere practicing the use of the

(22:24):
the new light or the new pod atthe same time as the new
weapons.

Bryan (22:29):
Was that the sniper pod that they have on the f
eighteens now or was it aprecursor?

Eric (22:34):
It was actually the precursor is called the
Nighthawk pod. Okay. Which wasin hindsight was not that great.
It was it was way better than wehad before, which was just
looking out visually. Yeah.
But once we got the sniper pod,it was night and day in terms of
the clarity and range. Yeah.

Bryan (22:51):
Operations in Bosnia were renowned for putting Western
forces into very difficultcircumstances. What were your
experiences with that in Bosnia?

Eric (22:59):
Much different. Because we were in there. So I'm operating
out of Aviano, Italy, just Northof Venice. We take off, you
know, do our mission over Bosniaand fly back. At the time,
there's no direct threat to us,and we weren't dropping into
weapons.
So somebody that was on theground in Bosnia had a much
different experience to us. Andthat was something else that I
learned in all my missions isthat the reality is you're often

(23:21):
for at least fighter operations,not staged out of the same
location as where thehostilities are occurring. And
so you need to make sure you'reconnected to the mission and
what's going on on the ground.Because if you don't understand
that, you're not going be aseffective.

Bryan (23:36):
Yeah. I think it would be pretty easy to sanitize kind of
your experiences and justconfine it to take off, do the
mission, land, that's it, withno real connection to what is
going on outside the cockpit.

Eric (23:48):
Yeah. Exactly.

Bryan (23:49):
Yeah. What would you say was the greatest challenge you
experienced while flying inBosnia?

Eric (23:55):
I was brand new on squadron. I just got combat
ready. There was a need to getmore pilots over there, so I was
fast tracked through my mytraining. So I went from just
learning how to fly the f 18,getting on squatter and quickly
doing a combat ready upgrade, bea wingman to now flying over
Bosnia in a completely newcountry, flying out of a

(24:17):
different country. So just thedomestics of takeoff, traveling,
you know, refueling, workingwith the forward air controller
was a little bit overwhelming atthe beginning.

Bryan (24:29):
No kidding.

Eric (24:29):
So you need to do it multiple times after you do it a
couple times. Now you'recomfortable with just getting
there and back and then you canreally focus on making sure you
can do the mission set whenyou're over there.

Bryan (24:40):
So I believe the mission in Kosovo was far more kinetic
and involved combat. Can youtell us what your mission there
was?

Eric (24:46):
One of the reasons that we were extended for the Bosnia
mission is because we werewatching very closely what was
happening at Kosovo. I came backFebruary, or mid February,
sorry, from OpEco in Bosnia. Andwhen I got back, I was asked if
I can be put on a twelve hournotice to fly back if something
was gonna happen in Kosovo. Isaid, absolutely, I'm ready to
go if you need me. And a coupleweeks later, was called up and

(25:08):
on a flight within twelve hoursand flying back.
And a couple days later, theKosovo conflict kicked off. That
one was Serbia attacking Kosovo.And really doing heinous and
horrific things to the citizensthere. And NATO came in and was

(25:29):
my first combat experience. Andwhen I mean combat, it was
combat.
The very first mission. So thevery first night, we thought it
was gonna last three nights,maybe two nights, and obviously
went much longer, I think it wasseventy nine days total. The
very first night I was put onground alert for closer support.
Myself and other individualsleeping by our jets loaded

(25:49):
ready to go. We never got acall.
Thank goodness because I didn'tsleep that whole night. Was
quite awake watching what wasgoing on. But the very first
Canadian force ship that wentup, I watched a Dutch f 16 shoot
down a Serbian MiG 29.

Bryan (26:04):
Really?

Eric (26:04):
Surface air missiles being fired at us, triple a being
fired at us. When I did severalof my missions, which most of
them were at nighttime, and Ididn't have a lot of night
experience. The AAA, you see itin the movies. Holy smokes, when
you're flying, even if you're at22, 20 four thousand feet, and
the AAA only goes to 18,000feet. I could tell you, and we

(26:26):
didn't have goggles back then,just to be clear, we didn't have
night vision goggles.
It felt like the AAA was goingway above me. Yeah. And, and it,
you have to do a couple missionsbefore you start feeling
comfortable. And you probablyshould never feel overly
comfortable. So I was able to doI ended up doing six missions
total dropping weapons there andin different locations.

(26:48):
And I was very proud to havebeen part of that. At the end of
the day, we were able to toresolve that after this the air
war.

Bryan (26:56):
That sounds really intense. What was your most
exciting experience duringoperations in Kosovo?

Eric (27:03):
Flying night with very little training, trying to do a
four ship formation using,lights that are turned down
without night vision goggles,using a radar where you could.
Super challenging. The one Iwill recall the best is besides
the AAA that I saw was we wereflying as a force ship. I was,

(27:26):
number two. We just passed ourtarget.
And as we're, going past it,number three, who was a couple
miles behind us, called, an SAfive, missile, which exploded in
between us. Wow. Just just aboveus. They were shooting. They
weren't radar guided at thetime.
They're shooting optically.

Bryan (27:44):
Oh.

Eric (27:45):
So you can imagine that, you know, the heart's pumping
and

Bryan (27:49):
That's a pretty good shot optically.

Eric (27:51):
They were just there was a lot of aircraft flying. We we
tend to follow kind of the sameroute because we wanted to make
it as simple as possible. So wedidn't run into each other in
the And many of us wererelatively new to this, what we
call medium altitude operations.My first part of my training had
all been done low level. Sogoing me and altitude with laser

(28:12):
guided bonds was all new to usat the time.

Bryan (28:14):
Yeah. And I wonder, there's probably listeners who
are who are saying, well, whydid they take the same route
every time? But it's about, Iwould imagine mitigating risk.
Right? And the higher risk witha bunch of lesser experienced
pilots was potentially runninginto issues from making things
overly complicated, I wouldthink, versus the risk of of
surface to air fire.

Eric (28:33):
Yeah. It's weird to have packages of a hundred aircraft,
a mix of airborne early warning,tankers, fighters, EW

Bryan (28:40):
Wow.

Eric (28:41):
To do suppression. And we would do a lot of that
coordination right in Aviano. Iwould sit there with the mission
commander. We would plan thewhole package out. You take off
out of Aviano, fly down theAdriatic.
I would air to refuel off ofItalian Boeing seven zero seven
or American KC 10 or you pickthe country, we would tank off
of it. We'd consider go all theway down and then go feet dry

(29:02):
South Of Kosovo and move in.Total flight time was typically
about five hours. Oh, wow. Andif you did if you did a longer,
mission, some people did aneight hour missions.

Bryan (29:11):
That's a long time in a fighter.

Eric (29:13):
It's a long time. Fly in, hit and for about an hour of
that, it's super exciting andnerve racking and the rest of
the time is transit nervewracking part is air refueling,
especially when there'sthunderstorms around. So yeah,
the complexity, not to behopefully not lost on people is
to coordinate that manyaircraft, make sure that you're

(29:33):
suppressing the because they hadan active integrated air missile
defense system. So suppressingtheir IADS system while you're
going in with the bombers, whileat the same time you have air to
air activity going on with theirMiG 29 and other aircraft, which
eventually went away once wesuppressed them. And doing that

(29:53):
in a you know, often withoutit's deconfliction in altitude
and time was driving a lot ofit.

Bryan (30:00):
Now there's a lot more to that than I was pretty young
when that happened. I rememberseeing it in the papers.
Honestly, I think I was in wasit '98?

Eric (30:07):
It was '99.

Bryan (30:09):
'90 '9? I think I was in grade six. But I remember
hearing about it and I rememberhearing about it as more of a
bombing campaign. So I didn'trealize there was so like that
there was air to air and surfaceto air and all these threats
involved in this conflict.

Eric (30:21):
Yeah. I mean, there was some some fighters were shot
down in particular US Fightersthat were shot down. Might
recall a Nighthawk f oneseventeen fighter got shot down
and then some f sixteens as wellgot shot down with combat search
and rescue. So we had combatsearch and rescue, CSAR
available ready to go in andpick up pilots.

Bryan (30:39):
Wow.

Eric (30:39):
We did not lose any Canadian aircraft or crew in
that conflict. But it was prettyintense. As it went on, it
became less so. Because we wereable to suppress their
eventually their defenses air toair and air to ground. But in
the early stages of thatconflict, it was quite intense.

Bryan (30:57):
Wow. What did you learn by operating in this combat
environment that later informedthe way you led pilots into
combat operations?

Eric (31:06):
Everybody reacts differently. Your training is
effective to be able to do themissions. But at the same time,
you need to experience itprobably a few times before you
can really become able to betruly effective. So when we used

(31:26):
to do exercise maple flag inCoal Lake, and we would fly the
first ten missions of combatreplicated over the two week
exercise. Doing things such asthat are critical to being
successful on day one.
Otherwise, you have a wholebunch of people that have never
seen it. Who training will work,but they're not going be as

(31:46):
effective. If you've never seenAAA, you've never been shot at
by a surface air missile.Doesn't matter how many times
you've done it in the sim. Oryou've replicated it by somebody
calling it out.
It's just not the same. So yougotta you actually need to to
see it to be the most effective.

Bryan (32:04):
Well, and I can only speak from my experience flying
in op impact over Iraq. But evenjust knowing that there is some
level of threat for real is a isa totally different experience
than training and seeing thethreat ranges on, you know, on
your display, but it's it's allfor training. Like, it's totally
different when you see the firsttime you see that a targeting

(32:28):
radar is picking you up is,like, real world is a totally
different feeling.

Eric (32:34):
I absolutely agree.

Bryan (32:36):
Yeah. So you also deployed to Afghanistan where
you were the deputy director ofthe Air Operations Control
Center at the InternationalSecurity Assistance Force HQ in
Afghanistan. Can you brieflyoutline what your job there
involved?

Eric (32:51):
So I worked for an American colonel. Our role was
in the joint operations center.There was an air section within
the joint operations center, andthat was the joint operations
center for the commander ofICESAF, which at the time was
General McChrystal who came in,American four star. And our role
was to coordinate all airrequirements and allocations for

(33:12):
Afghanistan on behalf of theCombined Air Operations Center,
the Kayak and L UD. BecauseLUDEED at the time had multiple
theaters that they're servicingand they, in fact, not
delegated, but they left it tous to do that coordination.
So we would work with each ofthe different regions within
Afghanistan to gather their airrequirements. We would then

(33:34):
prioritize them based on thecommander of ISAS priorities and
feed that back to the CFAC and LUDID and then they would
apportion us the assets. Ofcourse, never got everything you
needed. So then we make surethat appropriate support. One of
the other things I did was, Iwas the air briefer every single
day.
So every day that CommanderVaisnav was there to get his

(33:54):
morning brief, I would be theone that briefs him on all the
air activities, the strikes thatoccurred during the day. And
that was interesting becauseGeneral McChrystal came in with
a plan to really connect withthe population and reduce
civilian casualties, of course,which is what we want. Mhmm. But
he would use every strike thatwe did as an opportunity to

(34:16):
reinforce how he didn't think weshould be doing strikes. Oh.
And and because I was the onebriefing it, he he asked me to
explain every single strike ingreat detail, and asked why the
ground commander called in thestrike and why the aircraft
commander agreed to do it. And Iwould have these joint task
force commanders, regionalcommanders, usually two or three

(34:36):
stars, I was a lieutenantcolonel, listening to me
describe the situation in theirregion, and talking about what
their ground controller hadauthorized for a strike. But I
would take pretty much the heatfor for doing that strike. So it
was it was an interestingdynamic. I learned so much, and
I worked with many NATO nations.

Bryan (34:56):
That's a difficult position to be put in as a
lieutenant colonel.

Eric (34:59):
I would say that my you know, we go back to fighter
weapons instructor course, andsome of these other things I've
done help, I guess, provide mesome of the skill sets that
would help me in thosesituations.

Bryan (35:12):
Yeah. I can imagine. What were the biggest challenges you
faced coordinating airoperations in a complex
environment like Afghanistan?

Eric (35:21):
It was understanding the the written and unwritten
caveats of all the differentnations and what they would
accept, what the level of riskacceptance was amongst different
nations as well. Mhmm. The andthen trying to be the go between
with the kaok and then therequirements. One of the biggest

(35:42):
moments I would say was duringone of their elections, which
happened to occur when I wasthere. And we would have about
20 troops in contacts per day.
Okay. We call them ticks thatwould And so typically, those
are what would I brief thecommander of ISF on on the next
day, whereby normally, we woulddrop weapons to support the

(36:04):
troops in contact. On the day wedid election, there was 80 of
them. Wow. And it was and I wasgetting called from all over
Afghanistan, from many AfghanNational Guard, or army
personnel directly, through anynot through their regions,
saying I'm under attack at thisspot, you need to call aircraft

(36:24):
in right now.
And we were able to do thatusing what's called the US ASOC
at the time. And they were ableto quickly shift and send a
fighter over or send whateverasset was available to go over
there. And it just showed theagility of air power. In my
mind, that solidified howquickly we could react to a
situation on the ground. Andsometimes it was just presence,

(36:47):
the fact that there's somethingthere, made people feel more
confident.
They didn't necessarily theyprobably weren't always in a
troops in contact situation, butthey felt like they were.

Bryan (36:55):
Okay.

Eric (36:56):
But seeing that aircraft overhead really, allowed them to
be, feel much more confident.And sometimes, adversaries also
went away.

Bryan (37:03):
Yeah. You talk about the agility of airpower. That's
pretty amazing that if you werenormally expecting 20 ticks in a
day to go to four times out at80 and still be able to support
everyone. That's prettyincredible.

Eric (37:14):
Yeah. Felt like it was the longest day No doubt. I had when
I was there, but at the sametime, it was the most
satisfying.

Bryan (37:20):
Yeah. What lessons learned from the Afghanistan
mission will shape the AirForce's approach to future
operations and conflict zones?

Eric (37:29):
So that was a counterinsurgency. And the
reality is we went from the coldwar to, you know, going over
Gulf War one and then Kosovo tocounterinsurgency for twenty
years.

Bryan (37:41):
Mhmm.

Eric (37:43):
And we just assumed that's the way it's always gonna be
going We assumed we would alwayshave, ear superiority that we
would have unlimited access andnot be threatened in different
locations. So we learned in avery positive way how to do
counterinsurgency and providebest effects. That's why we got

(38:05):
our Chinooks. That's why we gotour C130Js and C17s was because
of that specific one. And werented or leased some Chinooks,
and then eventually bought ourown Chinooks.
So we were really good atcounterinsurgency by the end of
the Afghanistan war. And weassume that that's where we're

(38:26):
going forward. And we haveshaped our current Air Force and
our current military because ofwhat we saw ten years ago. Of
course, now we recognize thatthat's not necessarily the case
anymore. And so we're trying tomodify that.

Bryan (38:43):
Yeah. And we'll talk we'll talk more about that later
in the interview and possibly inpart two about kind of where
we're heading with currentchallenges and threats. So you
took part in combat missions forOP Mobile in Libya. During this,
you were the detachmentcommander for the f eighteens
Hercules and CC one fiftyPolaris in Tripoli, Italy. What
were your roles andresponsibilities there?

Eric (39:06):
It's about two months into Operation Mobile. My good friend
at the time, Lieutenant ColonelSylvain Gogo is his call sign,
Menard, who was commandingofficer of four two five
Squadron, was the first one togo in. He did the Roto Zero into
Trepenny with f eighteens and hebrought, the tankers, which
weren't supposed to stay, theAirbus tankers, which weren't
supposed to stay, but then theydid. And they started the

(39:27):
initial strike missions intoLibya. I came in two months
later, which was always a plan.
And then we were gonna stay mysquadron was staying for six
months. And then we're gonna setup a six month rotation. So he
went in with his squadron fortwo months, because it was such
short notice, like literallydays notice. And then then we
came in for a six monthdeployment. While I was there,

(39:49):
one of the Airbuses had to goback to do its long term
maintenance.
So that's when we brought in theHerc tankers, which ended up
doing other things outside ofHerc tanking.

Bryan (39:57):
Yeah, of course.

Eric (39:57):
They flew the Minister of Foreign Affairs into Libya to
meet with some of the forcesthat were trying to overturn
Gaddafi at the time. So it wasan a tremendous opportunity to
not only do FAT missions andleads my squadron at the time
for those that went over, butalso to really understand how

(40:18):
tanker operations work and tocommand the Airbus and the Herc,
detachment when they came in.And if you were to ask me out of
all my deployments, what was thehighlight? That was the
highlight. That deployment wasthe highlight for me because I
felt like it was all thosethings that we talked about
before had led me to that pointto be ready to to be a part of

(40:40):
that.

Bryan (40:41):
Did you find it was difficult to balance flying in a
combat zone while alsocommanding several detachments
of aircraft?

Eric (40:48):
Yes. I got my crew rest whenever I was flying and I flew
quite a bit. But it waschallenging because I was flying
at nighttime, flying during thedaytime, the schedule was pretty
fluid. Sometimes as the packagecommander, mission commander
with multiple nations involved,do strike operations within
Libya. So I had a lot of energy,and I got my sleep, but I tell

(41:14):
you that to manage the day today personnel and the detachment
effectively while also trying todo the combat missions can
really weigh on you.
But when you do a mission likethat, everybody is absolutely
focused on the mission. There'svery few distractions or other

(41:35):
things going on that you wouldsee day to day back home,
particular in a trainingenvironment. So everybody's very
motivated to be there. They'reenergized by what they're doing,
contributing. And so the amountof time required to make sure

(41:56):
things were going well there wasnot as much as you would see
back home, which which affordedme an opportunity to do some
flying too.

Bryan (42:02):
Yeah. I mean, I experienced that as well during
my tours. It's just a differentworld when you're when you're in
the the combat zone when you'reor when you're in an operational
flying capacity. Like you said,there's just less noise. You're
able to focus on the mission andmake that your priority, and
that's basically what everyonearound you is doing too.
So everyone's got that focus.Absolutely. It must have been

(42:24):
pretty cool to command a diversegroup of aircraft in a combat
environment though.

Eric (42:29):
It was. And in many cases, we would take off and then use
our tankers, go and do so youwould take off out of trapping
is in Sicily, Western Portion ofSicily, you take off, you would
tank just North Of Libya, oftenwith our Herc tanker or bus
tanker, but sometimes othertankers, either from the RAF or
from The US, etc. You would flyinto Libya, we did a different

(42:53):
types of mission. Some missionswhere we're just doing
reconnaissance effectively. Ifwe find some artillery or
personnel shooting at populatedareas, then we get authorization
right there to strike them andstop them from doing that.
Other times we went after ammodepots or after deliberate
targets. So you do that missionset, sometimes go back and tank

(43:16):
multiple times and theneventually fly home. So missions
would be four to eight hours,depending on what you're doing
on that particular day. Andwe're we dropped a lot of
weapons while we were there aswell.

Bryan (43:30):
Yeah, That was just before my time on the Aurora,
but I know that was a verykinetic mission set. I had heard
a lot of stories about it fromfrom my peers on the Aurora
squadrons and at four zero fivesquadron. So, I heard it was
quite something.

Eric (43:43):
Yeah. So I didn't command the roars but we worked directly
with them. And so once they gotover land, because initially
they were over water as you knowand then they went over land.
And so they would, we wouldcoordinate directly with them.
We had put some of our JTACsinto the back with them.
Oh, we had a JTAC in the backworking with taco, working with
the sensor operator to then talkus on or others onto targets as

(44:07):
we're moving forward gettingapproval. So we're we're doing
true integration across AirForce, our tankers, our Aurora,
our fighters, or and then withallies as well.

Bryan (44:19):
That's awesome. And that's, what's cool is,
especially after chatting with,Chris McKenna, that's something
we're gonna be able to do moreand more in the future, which we
can talk a bit more about later.Yeah. So you did a second tour
for OP Mobile as the commanderair component coordination
element in Poggio Renatico,Italy. What did your job involve
in this tour and what was thebiggest challenge you had to

(44:40):
overcome in that role?

Eric (44:42):
The combined forces air component commander, Lieutenant
General Joyce sorry, Jotis, USthree star. He was the CFAC for
Operation Unified Protector,which was a NATO operation
overall commanded by CanadianGeneral Bouchard. So his KAOC
that he used was in PozhoiBernadico, which is where I was.

(45:05):
And so each nation had a seniornational rep, which was me in
this particular case. We had allWichitaeans that were working as
embeds within the Kayak, becauseit was a NATO fill.
We had some that were one way,you know, we provide them there
because we needed them there tocoordinate our activities as
well. My job was to be theliaison with General Jonas to

(45:27):
see fact to make sure Canada'sinterests were being met. At the
same time, my job was to be theCanadian record holder. So any
targets that were approved forstrike by NATO had to be
approved individually bynations. Just because NATO has
approved the target doesn't meanCanada will strike that target.

Bryan (45:46):
Right.

Eric (45:46):
So as a record holder, I would have a board with my
league ad and ops, and we wouldrun a board and we would
determine whether Canada wantedto strike that target. That was
a unique role, because you don'tactually report to the joint
task force commander who wasthere in theater, I reported
directly to the Chief of Defensestaff, as the Canadian Red Card
holder.

Bryan (46:05):
Okay.

Eric (46:05):
Separate from that, as a senior rep on the ground, and as
the air coordination element, Iwas also for the Joint Task
Force Commander, the Canadian Iwould speak to CFAC about
apportionment of assets and usebest use of our air power that
we're providing.

Bryan (46:22):
Okay. You were the commander of the Air Task Force
Iraq for Roto Zero of OperationImpact. For listeners, RotoZero
is the first rotation, the onewhere everyone is still feeling
out what is required and settingup things for follow on
rotations. What was the biggestchallenge of setting up the Air
Task Force on RotoZero?

Eric (46:40):
Each RotoZero is different. Each one is
challenging and exciting. For asseems to happen often, we didn't
have a lot of notice for thisdeployment. I was I had just
taken over as a four wingcolleague wing commander in
April. And in September, I got acall from the air division

(47:01):
commander saying, hey, thisthing is happening over in Iraq
and Syria.
Canada may want to commit. If wedo, I'm looking at you as a
potential Air Task Forcecommander. But he said, I also
am looking at one other oneother individual. So I'll let
you know.

Bryan (47:17):
Okay.

Eric (47:20):
I asked him, should I start preparing? Because I
haven't done my nine miltraining and my CBRNN. He goes,
I'll leave it to you decide. Twoweeks later, we're having a
conference in Winnipeg orcommanders training session. And
just before that, he says, Ithink we're going to do a recce
the week of this trainingsession in Winnipeg.
So I said, am I doing the recce?And should I be training? He

(47:44):
said, I'll leave it to you. Istarted by training. I think I
did gas at nine mil, and a wholebunch of calls within two days.
And then and first aid. And thenI went to Winnipeg. He said,
don't worry, there's a recce,you're not going to go. We
finished the meeting onWednesday. I got to the airport
to fly back to Coal Lake.
And he called me at the airportand says, we're going with

(48:06):
Iraqi, you're doing it, you'releaving tomorrow.

Bryan (48:08):
Oh, wow.

Eric (48:10):
And I said, am I gonna come back from theater when this
occurs? And he goes, I don'tknow, you might stay there for
six months. So needless to say,it was an interesting discussion
with my family.

Bryan (48:22):
No kidding.

Eric (48:23):
I got home, they packed my bag for me. And when I got home,
I picked up my bag and thendrove back to the airport and
flew. Not knowing if I was goingto come back. I did. I did the
recce for a week and a half.
And then I flew back for twoweeks and then was deployed for
six months. So all that say ithappened very quickly. On the
ground, I was with a whole groupof people were there strictly

(48:44):
for the recce. And they're alllooking at me as to what I want,
how I want to set up their taskforce. Three different
locations, what's the commandand control, you're going off
very little sleep because of thejet lag.
So it was a bit of a stressfultime. At the end of the day, all
those things I've done in thepast that we just talked about,
made me very comfortable withthe decisions that needed to be

(49:06):
made about basing location, whattype of risk we would accept,
how we can best sustain theforce, what type of targets we
might want to go after. And so Iwas able to feed that back
through the recce and then andthen kind of lead it during road
to zero. But there's, there'sjust so much going on. We
arrived at a base that hadnothing like it was a desert.

(49:28):
There were some marines there.There was no infrastructure. We
built our tents, which was ourheadquarters and our sleeping
quarters. There's no WiFi.There's nowhere to get a
haircut.
There was nowhere to goshopping. Like it was the
Marines offered free haircuts.

Bryan (49:45):
Yeah.

Eric (49:46):
So it was it was it was interesting. And then by the
time the six months was done, wehad so much infrastructure built
up and much more comfortable forroto one.

Bryan (49:57):
Yeah. Yeah. The difference so I was on roto zero
and on Roto 1. And thedifference was night and day. It
was crazy.
Even through Roto 0, thingsbuilt up. And obviously, being
on the Aurora, we were in CampCanada and LA SLM. So it was
different from where you guyswere at. Like, there was a
previously existing camp. Butthe rate at which Canada was

(50:19):
able to build and develop afully functioning camp was
amazing.

Eric (50:24):
Yeah. And I it was me that made the decision to make sure
we prioritized Aurora over the feighteens because when I asked,
I said, okay, is it gonna taketo get an Aurora capability? I
was told one c 17. And I askedwhat will it take to get an f 18
initial capability? It would befive c seventeens.
Wow. Okay. Well, c 17 chalknumber one will be the Aurora.
And then after that, we'll dothe f 18 so that we have an

(50:45):
initial capability. You wouldhave been there with lieutenant
colonel yeah.
He was still lieutenant colonelat the time, Brennan Cook. Yep.
And and just watching the DMSCand and how you quickly move
forward. LAL Slim was a bit morebuilt up. I think we kicked some
people out as well in some ofthe accommodations that they had
to camp Canada there to at leastfor the air crew and things like
that.

(51:05):
But, yeah, much more establishedthan what we had in El Jabber,
as you would recall.

Bryan (51:09):
Yeah. We felt we felt quite fortunate. We didn't know
what to expect. It was also avery quick deployment from
notice to to move for us, and weweren't really sure what to
expect when we got there. I wasimagining tents in the desert,
basically.
We had hard shelters, port youknow, portables, and they were
air conditioned. And I think wehad some WiFi pretty quickly,

(51:32):
telephones, computers to callhome. So it was it was quite
good.

Eric (51:36):
Yeah. With the LA Slim there with the camp Canada or
Canada host set up andeverything, it was a good spot
to fall onto. Although, like Isaid, we had to we had to remove
some people that have been therefor quite a while to privilege
others. Yeah. And I went backthere many years later, and it
was, you know, every year was somuch different than the previous
year.

Bryan (51:56):
Yeah. The mission for OpImpact was very clear for the
ATF, at least from myperspective, flying the
missions, find and kill ISIS.Did you find that any of your
pilots or crew struggled withthe realities of that mission or
the inherent risks? And if so,how did you deal with that?

Eric (52:11):
Yep. You would recall, in particular on the roar side. So
this goes back to understandingthe threat and training within
the threats. And there wasn't aground threat to aircraft as you
would recall. So what's thelevel of risk we're willing to
accept to maximize the Aurora'scapabilities in terms of

(52:32):
altitude it's going to fly at,while minimizing the risk and a
lot of discussions to make surethat people truly understand
that even if a triple a can goup to 17,000 feet, that's a
straight shot.
It doesn't mean it's gonna go upto 17,000 feet. And it has to be
really, really lucky to getthere. So it doesn't

(52:52):
automatically mean you defaultto 18,000 feet or higher as an
example. So lots of discussionsbased on many years of training
and experience to try to educateand make sure people are
comfortable with the tacticsthat we put in place, the
mission acceptance and launchauthorities that we put in place
to maximize the capabilitiesthat we had available to us. And

(53:13):
then trying to establish abattle rhythm where you
normalize combat operations.
There is absolutely people thatwere affected by it. I was
affected by it. I think it wouldbe abnormal if people were not
affected by doing combatoperations. But how you
internalize that is differentfor each person. I have friends

(53:37):
who have been impacted bymissions that they've done
either combat operations or not.
And some of them were from thatparticular operation and what
they saw.

Bryan (53:47):
Mhmm. Yeah, I know. One thing I learned from that tour
or those tours was it affectseverybody differently. And it's
really an individual experience,even though you're going through
it together. People reactdifferently.
And it's just sort of aninherent thing. And you have to
see how it shakes out over time.And sometimes you don't know how
it affected you until yearslater. And then you got to deal

(54:08):
with that.

Eric (54:09):
Yeah. For me, it was all my other deployments, I came
back and I think I was back towork right away, you know, after
your post deployment leave, notnecessarily thinking much about
it. That one affected me more. Iwatched Debbie Strike Mission as
my role as commander. I thinkbecause of how quick it
happened, as well as my positionback at the wing, my family

(54:31):
would tell you that I was notthe same person when I came
back.
And it took me many, many monthsto kind of get back to what
would be viewed as more normal

Bryan (54:40):
Yep.

Eric (54:40):
In terms of how I would react. And so that is the case
for many, many people.

Bryan (54:45):
Yeah. Yeah. Totally agree. Did you find that it was
challenging to command an airtask force that was operating
out of, by my count, threedifferent airports in Kuwait
rather than having them all at acentralized location?

Eric (54:59):
I was initially hoping to have all the assets in one
location as part of my recce,but I quickly realized that
their bus was not going to getinto El Al Aslem or into Al
Jabber and then it made sense tobe at the International Airport.
And the fighters were not goingto fit either in El Al Aslem. So
we had to disperse the forces.At the end of the day having all

(55:23):
the members actually sleep attwo locations but operate out of
three locations was helpful. Idid a lot of travel between all
three locations, many timesdaily to go and visit folks.
But because of videoteleconference, voice and the
fact that we have incredibleleaders and aviators. At the end

(55:46):
the day, it was not hard to doand very common, as you see with
coalition operations around theworld, particular air operations
whereby assets are dispersed,that they meet in the air and
they're able to accomplish theirmission.

Bryan (55:57):
Yeah. It's the nature of the business.

Eric (55:59):
Yeah.

Bryan (56:01):
So you've held a number of command positions, including
commanding officer of four zeronine tactical fighter squadron
in Cold Lake, Commander of fourwing Cold Lake, and commander of
one CAD in the Canadian NORADregion, amongst the many other
jobs that the commander of oneCAD does. How did these roles
prepare you for your currentrole as the commander of the
RCAF?

Eric (56:19):
One of the roles I filled as a one star was deputy
commander of force generation atone Canadian Air Division.
That's probably where I got toknow the Air Force the most.
Because I was responsible forthe readiness of all the
capabilities that we have. WhereI got to learn every single
unit, what the composition ofthe unit was, what the mission
of that unit is. And plus mytime as a a wing commander

(56:42):
understanding the rules of awing.
One CAD puts all that in alarger perspective. Now stepping
into the Air Force, what it gaveme was a real sense of what our
role responsibilities are andhow our aviators and families
operate and what they need tosupport them. What I didn't have

(57:08):
coming into this job was a lotof Ottawa time. I had spent some
time as a colonel, some time asa one star, but not a tremendous
amount compared to some others.So I had a real sense of the air
force and how it operates andwhat it requires.
I didn't know a lot about space.And I've learned a lot about
space, in the last three years.And then, I've since learned all

(57:33):
about force developmentprojects, how things work in
Ottawa. That if you can put allthose together in a person, you
know, that's kind of the ideal,but fundamental would be a
really good understanding ofwhat the Air Force needs.

Bryan (57:48):
Yeah. I can imagine that after spending pretty much your
entire career within the airforce, it would be a whole
different animal to approach thethe workings of Ottawa and and
basically the forces as a wholeand not just the air the air
force in the stovepipe.

Eric (58:00):
There's some skill sets that can only be learned here.
Yes.

Bryan (58:06):
So you have accumulated 2,900 flying hours, 2,200 of
them in the f eighteen. What isthe value of having so much
experience as a pilot when itcomes to leading the RCAF?

Eric (58:16):
So I think it's experience in multiple different
environments, whether it's onoperations at home, base or wing
commander, staff, expectationsof staff, and then understanding
of how, Ottawa works and howother organizations work. So I

(58:37):
say all that with one, you don'tneed to be a pilot to be the
commander of the

Bryan (58:40):
Air Force.

Eric (58:41):
What you do need to have is a good understanding of what
the Air Force needs and how itoperates so that you can explain
that and then advocate for, thefuture requirements for Air and
Space Forces.

Bryan (58:52):
Do you think we'll see more non pilots commanding the
Air Force as time goes on?

Eric (58:57):
There's been several already. And I don't see that
trend changing. It's abouthaving the right individual with
the right skill sets,irrespective of what trade that
they occupy. And, you know, justas a reminder, when you become a
general officer, you're you nolonger have it, your trade is
now general officer. Right.
So it's having, and so each onewill bring different skill sets

(59:19):
that will make them likelybetter in certain areas over
others. But I know we havequality individuals that are
outside of just the pilot tradefor sure, who can easily command
the Air Force.

Bryan (59:32):
I would imagine that a big part of that job at that
point becomes relying on yourexperts, right? You're standing
on the shoulders of other peoplebasically who are who are
advising you and and helping youdo your job.

Eric (59:42):
Yep. Absolutely.

Bryan (59:44):
Okay, Eric. That's gonna do it for part one of our chat.
I really enjoyed learning aboutyour deployments and leadership
experiences today, and I'mreally looking forward to
discussing your current role inthe future of the RCAF when we
return for part two. Thanks forbeing here today.

Eric (59:56):
Thanks.

Bryan (59:57):
Okay. That wraps up our chat with lieutenant general
Eric Kenny looking back over theearly part of his career leading
up to now. Stay tuned for ournext episode where we will sit
down, talk about his currentrole as commander of the RCAF,
as well as the RCAF itself.Where we are currently, where
we're going, what our threatsand opportunities are, and who
our adversaries may be. Thenwe'll take some questions from

(01:00:19):
the audience.
Do you have any questions orcomments about anything you've
heard in this show? Would you orsomeone you know make a great
guest, or do you have a greatidea for a show? You can reach
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aircraft. As always, we'd liketo thank you for tuning in and

(01:00:41):
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