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
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Bryan:Hey, everybody. This is your host, Brian Morrison, with a quick note. We have decided to start adding a blanket disclaimer for any episode where we interview a high level officer from the RCAF. We live in a twenty four hour news cycle, and comments can be overtaken by events very quickly. So to put a time frame on things, this interview was made in late February.
Bryan:Alright. We're ready for departure here at the pilot project podcast, the best source for stories and advice from RCAF and mission aviation pilots brought to you by Sky's Magazine. I'm your host, Brian Morrison. With me today is major general Chris McKenna, a pilot in the RCAF and current commander of One Canadian Air Division or One CAD. Chris, welcome back to the show, and thanks for being here today.
Chris:Yeah. Thanks, Brian. So appreciate it.
Bryan: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 the modernization of the RCAF and the new platforms we're bringing online. Listeners can check out part one of our chat to hear about Chris's early career, his deployments to Afghanistan, and his time as the CEO of four fifty Tactical Helicopter Squadron. So you were the task force commander in Mali for the first rotation in 2018 to 2019. What was the overall mission in Mali?
Chris:Yeah. So we we were in Mali, the Canada was tasked with replacing a German task force that was in place and they had been in place for quite some time, an aviation task force. So in the North Of Mali in Gao, there was a large scale peacekeeping mission going on in that country and Germany had a large swath of the North as their area of operations. And up until this point, they had rotationally held medevac between the Dutch and the Germans back and forth. And they were both pretty much done.
Chris:They had to get back home to do some forced generation. They'd sort of expended what they had And they were asking for help from Canada. And so there was a discussion as far as we knew it between the chancellor and our prime minister, that resulted in us being tasked and announced as the replacement for that German aviation task force. Their missions were essentially air medical evacuation, tactical air medical evacuation. And they use the NATO term, which is ten twelve or ten minutes for bleeding airway type stuff like ABCs, you and I would know it.
Chris:One hour damage control recess or resuscitation, which is blood at point of injury and two hours to surgery, damage control surgery. And so that bubble, that creation and sustainment of that bubble is what we were given as a mission. So we had to get into theater and establish a thirty minute notice to move, to launch, to be able to do that effect. And really what that meant was, within one hour of an injury, we had to get to someone and be able to get blood into them and provide them very advanced medical care. So that was the first sort of line of effort or line of operation we ran.
Chris:And additional to that with our excess capacity, we conducted maneuver for the in place ground task force up in Gout. And so those are the two lines of effort that we maintain every single day. The CMERT line or Canadian Medical Evacuation Response Team, CMERT is what we tagged it. That team consisting of about 13 people in a back of a Chinook with an additional two Griffins layer on top of it for protection. That team is what carried that role throughout the entire tour.
Chris:And then with whatever we had leftover, I would conduct air mobile operations in support of the UN.
Bryan:Okay. So you've stated that the mission in Mali was a very difficult and violent mission to take part in. Can you elaborate on that?
Chris:Yeah, it was violent in a different way, Brian. Like, you you think about Afghanistan, the violence was really directed towards the coalition. And so we were in sort of force on force type engagements pretty routinely, both on the ground and ground to air. And in Mali, it was a lot of intercommunal violence occurring between various factions on the ground. You know, you had an accord that was agreed upon, in the sort of 2015 timeframe in the North O'Malley that essentially gave all the parties to the conflict a framework to operate within.
Chris:You had sort of a group that was kind of secessionist. You had a group that was kind of loyal to the government. And then you had essentially a group that was a collection of militias who had operated in that region that had a different view of where that region should go. And so like a really complex environment and all, there's a lot of, tribal and intercommunal violence in terms of history. I'll maybe give you one example, which was, there's a group of people called the Fulani and they, typically would move cattle around grazing zones in, you know, in Northern Mali or in the Sahel, they would cross borders routinely and to graze their cattle.
Chris:Well with climate change and the desertification of that region in the Sahel, the place you can graze your cattle was disappearing and these folks were having to move their cattle closer and closer to agricultural land, sedentary sort of farmers, and they would start to destroy their crop. And because there was no judiciary and no constabulary really established, there's no courts, there's no real police in the North, They would solve that problem by killing each other. Oh wow. And so there was a fair bit of violence just going on on these incidents. And you think about, it's just basic, it was just sort of survival that if your crop wasn't harvested, you didn't have food next year, family wasn't gonna survive.
Chris:And so I, like I fully understand it. There's a lot of like centuries old sort of rivalries that resulted in this stuff, and then the retribution that would occur between groups, that would get violent with each other. And we were kind of behind a window almost looking at this, and you would, we would be called to bring human rights investigators to a village that had a whole bunch of violence and a lot of people killed, and we were always kind of behind, behind it. You were never really ahead of it being able to be predictive of it. But it just, it was occurring kind of all around us, and you were aware of it in the theater.
Chris:We were extremely well protected in terms of our rules of engagement, our weapons, and the aircraft's a hard target. So they did not, come after us ever in terms of a force on force against us. But the violence was occurring in the theater.
Bryan:Wow, that sounds really challenging. Actually kind of sounds in some ways similar to the Bosnia mission.
Chris:Yeah, except they, I would say the Bosnia side, there was three parties to that conflict, but it was sort of settled space. Right. Still tons of trauma. And, but it was, it was cool as opposed to this being hot. And so they were still alive.
Chris:And you know, a lot of people angling for position as the, as the government and the UN was trying to sort of solidify a framework for peace going forward. And so those moments where they were trying to angle became quite violent.
Bryan:Okay. So you were present in Maui for a big mission we've covered in the past with Jackie Ruiz, which was the medevac from Eglhawk. Listeners can check that out in episode nine. Can you tell us about that day from your perspective?
Chris:Yeah, it was right near the end of my tour. So I had five days left in command and I had my replacement, General Travis Moorhan, who was, who was showing up, he was a colonel at the time, so was I. And so a good friend of mine and a guy that I've worked with my whole career. So we were in the middle of a, of about a week long, ten day long handover. And so he was kind of shadowing me.
Chris:So at that point, meeting I would go to, so we'd gone for breakfast together that morning. And typically communications in Mali are really bad. It's kind of like being in the Arctic. There's not a lot of rebroadcasting going on. Line of sight is kind of your thing.
Chris:There might be some cell towers. And And so this particular attack, I think Jackie probably described it pretty well, but port operating base of Chadian soldiers up about 200 nautical miles north of Gao. And they were encircled by a violent extremist organization who started shooting into the FOB. Those Chadians had shown up the night before they conducted a relief in place. So a company size, call it 120ish soldiers on the ground there.
Bryan:And
Chris:they had come in the night before and replaced folks who were there. And they hadn't fully unpacked, quite honestly hadn't fully unpacked all their weapons and they had not stood two in the morning. That is to say, typically at dawn and dusk, there's bit of a risk. And so this attack occurred pretty much at dawn and these vehicles, it was tactical vehicles with like anti aircraft weapons on the They're pouring fire into the FOB. There's a big firefight that ensued.
Chris:And then indirect fire, like 81 millimeter mortar fire into the, into the Fort Operating Base that occurred. A suicide vehicle borne IED that hit the front gate, detonated. And then people wearing vests into the hole that that that was made. Wow. And then they cut the cell phone tower with explosives and they and they knocked out the observation post north and south, all within about a minute and a half, two minutes.
Chris:Wow. So extremely violent moment. Like to be honest, far in excess of anything I saw in Afghanistan. But it took a while for us to know about it. And so the comms, you can imagine the comms towers down, so these sort of sat phones are kind of your only And the French commander up in Kidal, which is about 60 or 70 miles away from Albuquerque, he received the first call that this had happened and he started asking for medevac.
Chris:Travis and I were walking at a breakfast and I got the phone call and we sort of ran right to my operations center and we spooled up the medevac and just said like, just launch the medevac package and we will deal with where you're going specifically while you're on route, we'll push it to you on Satcom. And so the first package launched, so we were able to activate them and go and they're on a thirty minute notice, notice to move, but typically they were in the air in about twelve or thirteen minutes. And typically the Griffins we ready at launch, Chinook would be ready five or six minutes after that just because of the systems checks. They would launch and they would, because of the speed advantage of the Chinook, they would just conduct like a rejoin on the way to the incident. In this case, that formation that Jackie and Pete were flying, they had to go 160 miles to get gas and then go into the medevac.
Chris:So pretty awful. Like, you know someone'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 to get in there. And so they did that.
Chris:They went into Qidal. It was good though because Pete and Jackie were able get out and sort of talk to the ground force commander. He was able to ask them to do some extra things. So they took a counter IED team and some reinforcements in the back of their helicopter. They flew out to the FOB.
Chris:They landed proximate to it. And Jackie's told the story of one them sort of rushed into the FOB and they triaged folks. And then they took the eight most wounded people into the airplane. And then they launched and they made another really good call where they decided to detach the Griffins because they thought they had just enough gas to get back to Gal without having to do that fuel stop on the way back. And it was probably a very difficult decision for Pete Hanley for fuel, but it paid off.
Chris:And so he was able to continually to recalculate his best range speed over and over and over again throughout that trip so that he was gaining a knot a time as he burned gas off. Was literally trying to get a knot each minute or so just so that he would, he would maximize his ability to get home. And you can imagine the medical team back working on these patients for a long period of time. So from my point of view, like that launched and we were providing some direction and guidance to them and trying to get the detail from them in terms of what was the status of these patients and what hospitals are they going to go to? There's a couple options in Gao.
Chris:There was a Chinese hospital, Chinese military hospital, it's part of the mission. And there was a French hospital and the French had surgeons in a lot sort of higher levels of care. And many of these patients that Jackie was flying had blast frag injuries, penetrating chest trauma, bullets and frag in them. And so they were in pretty bad shape. And so it allowed the SATCOM conversation between us and that aircraft was critical because we were able to get ready to be able to push these patients where they needed to go.
Chris:And then, we had realized that there had been an earlier medevac by a civilian helicopter that brought a bunch of patients down to Kidal and Kidal was now overwhelmed. Their hospital couldn't take these folks. So we launched our second up medevac to go up to Kedale and grab all these badly wounded people who are no longer being looked after to bring them back to Gao. And so I had sort of two full formations in the air at the same time. And then we put Griffins over top of that FOB, the ones that Pete had detached so that they could at least give them some form of security.
Chris:And so we're making a lot of these fast risk decisions. Where are my aircraft? Where do they best need to go? And we had eight aircraft in the task force and you know, my maintenance team was just unbelievable. Seven of those eight flew that day.
Chris:Wow. Some of which were sort of disassembled in the morning, right? They were doing maintenance, panels were off, you know, and so by mid afternoon, they had somehow managed to get all the aircraft up and running minus one, which had its rotors off. And just amazing. Just super proud of the team.
Bryan:That's amazing. That's super impressive. Just goes to show how how dependent we are on each other and what a team effort it is to get these missions done.
Chris:Yeah. And I'll tell you like, some non traditional stuff, like nearing the end of that day. And, you know, I was there when Jackie and Pete brought back their Chinook and obviously the back end of it would look like you would think after a lot of really wounded people were there, are covered in blood, etcetera. You know, getting people out of their uniforms that are soiled into fresh uniforms, super important from a mental health point of view. And also just the mission focus.
Chris:Like I talked to Pete and Jackie and their medical team very briefly, and they cross loaded into a fresh Chinook and went back into it. And so they didn't even have time really to think through, what they had just done, which I think is like the longest range medevac of very critical people in a Chinook in probably a long, long time. And then somehow managed to keep these people all alive because all eight survived, which is just a testament to the medical care in the back. Yeah. And then just trying to manage that, the tails, You have to clean the tails, there's all kinds of biological stuff in the back.
Bryan:Oh yeah.
Chris:Just really, really proud of the crew.
Bryan:Yeah, no kidding.
Chris:Was an incredible day.
Bryan:So this was a UN mission, working with the UN can have its challenges and even bring friction. Can you tell us about some of these challenging experiences you had with the UN?
Chris:Yeah, the UN is like a bureaucracy like you and I would know it the sense that it's sort of like working for D and D, you know, there's just a lot of public servants who work in the UN, but I think we take for granted in our bureaucracy in Canada, that people are going to make, they're well educated and they're going to make good decisions and they don't have weird other equities at play. And what I found in the UN, I found it very challenging because it looks and feels like a Canadian bureaucracy, but they do not act like they make decisions that are, that make no sense whatsoever, or they're making decisions with the wrong factor in play. Example I'll use is money. So if you think about medevac, it to me, a non discretionary event. If someone is hurt, the helicopter is launching.
Chris:I don't care who you are, what nationality you are, what tribe you're from, if you're civilian or military, if I've been called and I know where you are, we are launching. And that was my mandate there to my team was a bias to action. If you know something, get in the air and we'll figure it out. And so the UN does not operate like that. So every, nine line request that would come in, they would sort of look at it and determine if they could fund it.
Bryan:And
Chris:then, you would either get authorized to launch or not authorized to launch based on that funding. The problem that I had from an ethical point of view is I would have the data. I would have the nine line data, which is, you know, the patient, what the injury was, where they are, what time occurred, what kind of medical care has been given to them, that kind of thing. So I knew enough detail so much so that I now can't not launch. Like I ethically, someone's hurt, I'm here, I have this kit, we're going.
Chris:And those two things caused the UN and me to clash quite a bit. Like I would get an online from a field unit would also go to the UN and they would go through the process, which could take a couple of hours and I wouldn't wait. I would just launch my team. And then we would conduct the medevac and they would be very surprised and upset with me that we have taken these patients back to the hospital and we'd hear about it. Or conversely, they would launch me, and this occurred once where we had a convoy that hit a double stack anti tank mine and took the legs off two drivers.
Chris:And we knew exactly where they were, and we were actually talking to the doctor on the ground. And the UN rescinded launch authority from us in the middle of that because of the status of those patients who didn't fit the status that would be, whatever entitled to medevac. At which it's tough. So you're sitting there in the in the 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, that medevac's gonna land.
Chris:It's gonna pick that those people up, and we're gonna do our best. And I don't really care what the UN thinks because this is what's right. And so that was the challenge. Some of it was miscommunication, some of it's language too. Like we understand what you're saying because everyone speaks a different language.
Chris:And so it can be very frictiony from that point of view, or they'll ask you to do things which you might perceive as unsafe and you might ask for some things to de risk them and they won't agree. And then you won't agree to go and there's like, you just start smashing ads with them. So I had a lot of friction, personal friction with them and my ops team really, really wore that. They were at that cold face dealing with the UN every day trying to, you know, cut through the chaff and just make sure we were launching when someone was hurt.
Bryan:So you've talked about launching without UN launch authority or continuing without that launch authority. What support did you receive from higher ups during these situations?
Chris:It was exceptional actually. You know, if you've read, I'm sure you've read Romeo D'Ilere's book and you've read maybe Lou McKenzie's book about his experiences with the UN, they're pretty negative. I had read them all a couple of times as a young officer and again, I read them before I went on this tour. I'd read a thing called the Decentos Cruise Report, which talks about, it was a Brazilian general that was called in to do an assessment of Mali and try and come up with some ways to minimize deaths and injuries to peacekeepers. And he takes a very hawkish approach on how you have to act in these UN missions.
Chris:And so that's the sort of the frame is that I'd sort of read in about it. And then before I left, the chief of defense staff grabbed me and said, words that stuck with me the entire tour. It was my last sort of briefing that he was involved in, SGS was briefing him, but I was there as commander. And he said, I don't want the UN to happen to you. I want you to happen to the UN.
Chris:I thought that was a kind of an interesting frame, right, to look at it. Like do the right thing. You're gonna be placed in situations where you might have to, really make people angry. And it might be me, but you were gonna have to make the call and I trust you. And that was kinda neat.
Chris:And then I had, General Rouleau was my CJOC commander, and we had a lot of meetings before I went. And I knew I had his confidence. And he expressed that confidence in my mission acceptance launch authority document that allowed me the autonomy I needed to operate in theater. And they really tried to push as much authority down to me, that I only had to reach back for certain things. So that was, to be honest, extremely liberating, but also terrifying, because you can make some pretty bad calls and you have to answer for them.
Chris:And then maybe the last layer to answer that question is the diplomatic layer. Because in these missions, there's always a diplomatic aspect with the UN. And there was a Canadian ambassador who was a two and a half hour flight south in Bamako where my headquarters was and my boss. And my boss was a Swedish three star, who was the commander of Manuzma. And I had a wonderful relationship with him, General Dennis Gillinspore was his name.
Chris:But my ambassador always had a role to play. He would, because he was a troop contributing nation ambassador, he was always called into these menuslim discussions. And he dealt with the senior political, element in Mali, which was the SRSG, or the special representative of the secretary general, who was like the minister, I guess, in charge of the mission. And so when things got ugly, it would escalate, and it would escalate through my commander, who always backed me. Like the Swedish commander was one of the best bosses I've had in my career, just tremendous.
Chris:And then the SRSG who has different equities, political equities. And so there'd be friction and they would call Canada on the carpet. And I'll tell 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 my ambassador and brief him on what we're up to and I'd highlight to him frictions. I'll tell you in those moments where it became spicy, and when we were sort of arguing between Canada and the UN, the ambassador and all of his staffs were standing right next to me defending me. And so that's different in my view.
Chris:That's Canada kind of learning from past experiences in the UN, where I really felt I had a team in Canada behind me. I had a whole hockey team behind me who was supporting me and I did not ever feel like I was caught between our political level and global affairs and the UN. Never.
Bryan:Okay. So given all these issues, why is it still important that we work with the UN today?
Chris:You know, it's funny when I give my talk, on on this and I do it, I still do it once in a while. I I basically say before I say negative things and I will in in closed circuit say some negative things, I will say the thesis that I would offer is that the UN is an indispensable organization for which there is no replacement. Like there is literally no one else behind them, right? They're the last resort. And so if we just give up and throw our hands up and say, Oh, there's no place for Canada in there.
Chris:I don't agree actually. I think Western nations specifically have a big role to play in the UN. And if you want them to be more effective, you need to invest in it. I am not advocating that Canada needs to be more involved right now in a bunch of U admissions, there's other things going on, but there is a place for us there. And bringing high end capability that's hard to generate like medevac is very consequential.
Chris:I will tell you, I had relationships with every ground force commander in Gal and I went and met every one of them with my cert major. We sat down with them and said, Hey, Canada's here. You guys get hurt. We're going to come get you. And I'll tell you that little contract between military professionals, irrespective of nations, Senegal, Niger, Chad, I work with all these guys and being a Francophone, I'm an Anglophone but I can speak French.
Chris:I grew up in Quebec. That was our secret power, in Mali. Being able to speak French to a military colleague of the same rank or higher and convey to them that we're here for you and like we have a little contract, you and me, and I will come and get you if you're hurt or your troops are hurt. That went a very long way with, the troop contributing countries.
Bryan:Yeah. I can only imagine that would be extremely comforting to hear. It's nice to know that if something goes wrong, someone's there to come and get you. Like, when we were in, flying over Iraq, knowing that the, ParaJumpers, the PJs were there was hugely comforting.
Chris:Oh, yeah. Yeah. And and like, the cool part from my point of view is pretty much every Canadian military person can speak a bit of French. Even if you don't have, you know, seeds in French, like your your governor of Canada levels. If you're interacting with someone who's hurt, and you can speak French to them, because most of the troops there were French.
Bryan:Okay.
Chris:It was it was dramatically better and easier.
Bryan:Yeah. So the task force took part in a very risky long range air mobile with the Dutch in the Niger River Delta to extend UN reach into areas that were regarded as impenetrable and too dangerous to operate. Can you tell us about this mission?
Chris:Absolutely. And so it anchors in the thing I've said previously, which is this DeSantis Cruz report that the best defense is a bit of a good offense and you need to be out there present as a peacekeeper, visible and reaching communities that are even under extreme risk. So there's a lot of discussion with our European allies. We had a camp called Camp Castor that we lived in. We shared it with the Germans, the largest troop contributor who ran the camp, and the Dutch who had a long range patrol task group there, sort of Mad Max type, soft types who were driving in the desert, doing all kinds of really neat things.
Chris:And they had a mandate from home to be more present forward. But the challenge is Europe takes that ten-one-two bubble very, very seriously. And so to do things far away, you to establish a medevac bubble around it. And you had to de risk it, and typically it required a discussion with very high levels of everyone's country to make sure they were comfortable with that. And so the Dutch approached us and said, we would like to conduct long range into this very impenetrable area.
Chris:The Niger River Delta is like a giant sort of swamp, but it's habitated. There's villages all the way through it, but it's extremely hard to reach, especially in the rainy season with vehicles. And so you can't really patrol in there. And it's an area where violent extremist organizations would sort of anchor and then they would strike from. And so we had a lot of risk that emanated from there, and they wanted to sort of get ahead of that and be proactive.
Chris:So they asked us, would you be willing to conduct an aerosol into an area called Dilube, which is about 120 miles Southwest of Timbuktu in the Niger River Delta, right in the most impenetrable heart of that area. And so we said, okay, we'll look at it. And we did a mission analysis and figured out time and space from a fuel point of view, from a protection point of view. We could do this. We need to do a few things.
Chris:We need to put the Ford Army refueling point down in a little Ford operating base called Mopty, close by. That was about 30 miles away from the incident area or the target area. And we'd have to put probably some extra enablers like indirect fire. So if things got really bad, it would be really good to have mortars or indirect fire. And it would be really good to have a quick reaction force that you could launch in to reinforce something that went bad.
Chris:And so collaboratively with the Dutch and the Germans, we planned and planned and planned. We came to the agreement that we could do this. We had to use some fixed wing assets from our countries outside of the UN to force project people to the right places. And we, and we conducted the the air one well. But it required a conversation with my commander back home because it was pointed out to me by him that was outside my authority as I was down the path, planning path, which I thought that was pretty, pretty great.
Chris:So he's like, I'm hearing about this. You need to tell me a lot more about it. So I walked him through it, but it was like a 700 kilometer long air mobile, which is the longest thing I've ever done in a helicopter. Certainly in Kandahar, they were all about 20 miles, right? Or thirty, forty kilometers would be the furthest.
Chris:So this was a big deal and we were well hung out there with no joint personnel recovery center, assets like you would have had in Iraq. We had to self recover if something went bad or get the French to help us. And so a lot of planning and then we executed it. We bounced through Timbuktu with a Chinook and we conducted the landing and a bunch of Dutch peacekeepers came off with soft hats on with ball caps and rifles and wandered into the village. And we stayed over top of them.
Chris:Our Griffin stayed over top of them protecting them. And they were able to conduct some really interesting leadership engagements and understand what the needs of that village was so that we could follow it up with aid, with water, with a health clinic, like to fly health clinic in to be able to look after people. Like the core UN mandate behind all this and I loved it. It was probably the best mission we did in theater.
Bryan:And it sounds like you received good support from higher ups as well.
Chris:Yeah, so I had to, I'll be honest, I had to brief General Lowe on my entire scheme of maneuver start to finish. And then I had to spend a second session with him walking him through all my contingencies and how de risk them. And with that in place, he basically said, yeah, you know what, I really like how aggressive you're being and how much leadership Task Force Mali is showing to the UN that you were willing to go and take this risk on, but you've mitigated it to a point where I'm very comfortable with you executing it. And we did. I think it went off pretty much as briefed.
Bryan:That's awesome. Shortly after that, you were the commander of One Wing, the RCAF's tactical aviation wing. What exactly is the purpose of One Wing?
Chris:So it's the tactical aviation enterprise in the Royal Canadian Air Force. So it's supporting our army and supporting our special operations side of the world. And so, you know, about 2,500 people all told 500 of which are reservists, eighty three helicopters arrayed across seven actual locations in Canada. And we support firepower, maneuver, mobility and reconnaissance for the land force. And so I've been doing that my whole career and we have units that are focused deeply on that.
Chris:Obviously Chinook capability for the air assault capability or the air mobility capability. And then Griffin is a light mobility, but kind of more focused on reconnaissance and firepower.
Bryan:Okay. During your time there, you managed to re qualify on the CH146 Griffin. Was this a lead from the front type thing or was this more of a perk of the job?
Chris:I think it was a mental health thing if I'm being honest, Brian. I really wanted to get back flying. Yeah. You know, I'd gone to Maui and I was not qualified and Maui wasn't current. And so I didn't, I flew a couple of missions with, just to sort of get an understanding what the AO looked like, but I wasn't able to fly operationally there.
Chris:And so I do believe when you command something you should be, if you're a pilot, you should fly. You learn a lot in the cockpit from your people. And to be honest, it's just, you get a good pulse of the unit if you're a flyer of a flying unit as a CO. And so weirdly, the reason I got requalified was a COVID outbreak. So I was the CO right during COVID.
Chris:So 2020 I took over, you know, three months into COVID and I had it for a year into '20, into December of twenty one. And one of my units had a complete COVID outbreak just before Christmas and they basically had to shut down for two weeks as everyone recovered. And so, my standards, my standards evaluation team and I had an idea to go get one of their helicopters and bring it back to Kingston and do my recall. And it was great because then, as we continued to exercise during COVID, we just had to be really careful of how many people, how they were living, etcetera. I was able to fly on exercise all over Canada and still connect with my troops, and be in the cockpit, be part of it, in that year I was in command.
Chris:It was, it's a great idea to fly if you are a flyer in command of something.
Bryan:Yeah. Yeah. That that makes sense. Just to sort of stay in touch with the pointy end a little bit.
Chris:Yeah. And I and and to be honest, whenever I have one of my wing commanders come in, like switch out in my initial discussion and guidance to them, I tell them that exactly. My expectations are you're gonna be flying. I get it. I don't need them to be the highest category guy or girl in the unit, but they should very least have a utility category and just be in the mix because you will be much more effective in your job if you fly.
Bryan:Mhmm. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about your current job as one cad commander. As the one cad commander, you actually have five, as long as I have them all here, five jobs. That is commander of one cad, commander of the Canadian NORAD region, joint force air component commander, commander of search and rescue region Trenton, and also operational airworthiness authority.
Bryan:Can you briefly describe these roles?
Chris:Yeah. It's it's a schizophrenic existence, Brian, I'll tell you. Like, so I have really four bosses. Yeah. I have really four bosses.
Chris:And I think my goal is not to disappoint them simultaneously. I just want to do sequential disappointment. I'll walk through it. So one CAD, it's 11 wings from Comox to Gander, arrayed across Canada, and then some units that are affiliated. And so, you know, 13,000 people, including civilians and reservists across Canada.
Chris:And it's really the command and control of those 11 wings and making sure they're being looked after from a disciplinary point of view, a financial point of view, from a fleet management point of view. So making sure that the fleets itself are covered off. And I spend a lot of time obviously in that role, because that's sort of the line and command role that I'm used to, that Commander Air Force is my boss and I have a reporting thing to him on, you know, the running of the operational Air Force. The second one is Commander Canadian NORAD Region. And so I report to a US Four star who's in Colorado Springs, General Gill, Gregory Gill.
Chris:Air battle management background, so he's a AWACS background and he's the commander of NORAD NORTHCOM. And as commander NORAD, he's got three regions that in which he has to conduct air defense. So aerospace warning and control and maritime warning of the missions for NORAD. And so in, he has a Continental U. Region, which is commanded by an American two star down in Tyndall Air Force Base.
Chris:He's got the Alaska NORAD region, which is commanded by an American three star up in Alaska. He's got the Canadian NORAD region, which I command. And I have an American one star deputy and much like the other regions, they have Canadian one or two star deputies depending on the region.
Bryan:And
Chris:so, very busy job to be honest. We are responsive to air defense penetrations and also the operational Noble Eagle, which is the post nineeleven standby to go and intercept the airliners that are doing weird things. And so we have, we're busy. We have a lot of assets on very short notice to launch any given day. As the search and rescue region commander for Trenton, obviously I'm just looking after making sure that we execute the mandate to search and rescue all the way to the Arctic, to the Alberta border, Alberta BC border, and essentially out to the New Brunswick border.
Chris:So I have pretty large swath of like a big triangle in which we conduct aeronautical search and rescue. And I have all the assets I need to do that. And then lastly, operational worthiness. There's authorities vested in the commander of the air force that he sub delegates in different places. I have operational risk management responsibilities, but there's a technical and a flight safety investigative as well.
Chris:And so that's a fairly paperwork intensive and it's all about making sure that you can, you identify the risks, you trap them, that you mitigate them to the best of your ability so that you can conduct air operations safely.
Bryan:Would that be things like a RARM, which you'll have to remind me again what RARM exactly stands for but?
Chris:A record of airworthiness risk management. And so myself and my colleague, who's the technical airworthiness authority, we have to sort of agree on risks identified, how are we going to mitigate it? Get it using technical means, like put a new radio in the airplane or whatever. And the operational side is, do I change tactics? What's the qualification side of it?
Chris:Are there any sort of procedures I need to put in place to de risk that risk? And so it's a bit of a two key turn between myself and the technical readiness authority. We both report back to the commander of the air force.
Bryan:Okay. So let's talk a little bit about modernization of the RCAF, which honestly is a huge topic right now. From 2021 to 2024, you served as the RCAF's director general of Air and Space Force Development, working to set the requirements and coordinate the acquisition for several key new RCAF capabilities, which we'll discuss in detail shortly. How did it feel to be able to affect such real change for the RCAF?
Chris:Oh, yeah. First of all, I'm not gonna take credit for all the the goodness. There's a it's a huge team fight, Brian. In defense acquisition and procurement in Canada, it truly is. It's by definition team fights.
Chris:It's the RCFD and D Public Procurement Canada and Innovation Science and Economic Development Canada. So you have to sort of build a team and build a network, but it felt awesome. Like I think we're in the midst of the largest recapitalization of the Air Force since World War II. We put just under $60,000,000,000 through treasury board and under contract in about a twenty eight month period. And that is in my career, I've never seen that.
Chris:I was very privileged to be the guy kind of at the end of that because there was a lot of folks that got those files to be ready. And then I just sort of carried them across the line. But it was one of the most satisfying things I've done in uniform and remains to this day. Because I'll tell you, like a lot of us were quite frustrated in the Air Force. We were not seeing recapitalization of core capabilities and you're feeling yourself being sort of less operationally relevant.
Chris:And all of a sudden, like in a flood, you have seen a whole bunch of new capes, showing up and they're showing up pretty, pretty rapidly.
Bryan:Yeah. Your entire career had been within the tactical aviation bubble at this point. So how did you inform yourself properly about the needs of other communities within the RCAF?
Chris:Yeah. I would say a lot of listening And I was privileged to have a director of air requirements, a guy named Dave Plutz, who'd already been there for a year, was a fighter background and a weapons background. So that part was covered off every time I had to interact with the fighter team. I had Dave to sort of give me the straight goods. But then each of the director of air requirements, if you're talking about the aircraft side of this, know, in and around 2017, '20 '16, I think the air force made a very deliberate decision to put very high end people into procurement.
Chris:And we're seeing what the outcome of that is. I mean, I don't think other services necessarily have done that in the past. The air force was not very good at this in the early 2010s. By the end of the 2010s, were probably best in the department because we had taken our best people, our post command lieutenant colonels, and our charging majors. And we had thrown them in to requirements.
Chris:And that might feel like a big stop for like a high end sort of operational focused person, but man, do I need that exact person to be the one advocating for requirements? And so I relied on them quite a bit to answer your question. I would ask a lot of questions and then, you know, I would do very little independently without consultation to make sure that, you know, whatever argument we were making was one factual, two logical and three, you know, it made operational sense for the current context.
Bryan:Yeah. So you've alluded to this. The RCAF is currently going through its greatest period of modernization since World War II. Why has this become so essential for Canada?
Chris:I actually think it's existential for the air force. So I think to be maybe simplistic or maybe a bit trite, like what we're seeing around the world is just a failure of deterrence. Like our adversaries are undeterred and they are doing what they wish or they're taking advantage of rifts between alliances, etcetera. Mhmm. And they're finding and carving out new spaces for themselves.
Chris:And without that the air force is the force you're gonna call to deter at the edge of the continent first. We can we're a fight tonight kind of force. If you ask one cad to solve a problem, I am probably flying something tonight to solve that problem, irrespective of what you asked for. The Navy has longer lead times to get a ship to sail somewhere. The Army takes a bit longer to move somewhere.
Chris:But the air force is a fight tonight organization. And we are the ones that will reestablish, I think, some measure of deterrence. And so one, we are also seeing change in the geostrategic sort of equities in the world. You've seen The US kind of contract a bit, Europe grow a little bit. Where does Canada fit?
Chris:We have questions, right? And so we need to stand on our own more. I think we need to be more independent. We have an opportunity here to show a lot of leadership and we're about to get a lot of capability that is massively consequential, not only to us as a sovereign nation to defend our nation, but also to our allies that see us, like, stepping up in a very big way.
Bryan:Yeah. Absolutely. So let's get into some of the platforms that are coming online. Let's start with our nonwarfighting acquisition and one that has quite frankly had some growing pains, the CC two nine five Kingfisher. What issues has it had during its testing and evaluation in Canada that have led to delays in reaching operational function point or OFP?
Chris:Yeah, I think in the requirements stage, it's so important to get the requirements right for any of these aircraft. And that was kind of my earlier point about making sure you have all the right people stacked in as they write those requirements. They're beautiful. This is one where, you know, this was kind of a mid, mid 2010s and the decision by government was to acquire the two ninety five. It was a proven aircraft that flew in sort of an air transport role, but had not been heavily missionized.
Chris:And this was the first, I think, big step for Airbus to missionize that aircraft. And I'll be honest, the missionization of it now is eye watering. There's some really good stuff about that airplane, but the growing pains were sort of anchored on the certification of that aircraft and the software loads that were in it. I mean, the aircraft was designed as an airliner, you get low. The software is telling you, Hey, this passenger's not going to like being low.
Chris:And so they're giving you a whole lot of warnings and cautions. It's not, it was not designed, from a software point of view to enable the core mission set of SAR, which is to get down and drop things to people in distress.
Intro:Right.
Chris:So we've had to work through all those challenges and we're, I think we're very close to being there. They have not done a lot of airdrop work out of the aircraft and the, all the things you need like hung jumper retrieval, like good laminar flow of air behind the airplane. So we had to work through some of those challenges, which I think again, we're there now. And then there was, integrating all the sensors. And so you have a really good AESA radar on the bottom of that airplane that just, if it's a maritime thing, you were going to find that piece of a piece of aircraft or ship out there on the way to get it.
Chris:Like that radar is unreal and it's paired with an EOIR capability.
Bryan:Which is for the listeners, electro optic infrared. So basically a camera with infrared modes and a bunch of other bells and whistles.
Chris:Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, man. Sorry. And so, and then, you know, the configuration of the Canadian context for SAR is different than like the European context.
Chris:And so trying to make the OEM understand like the austerity of Canada. Like if you end up isolated here, you can't walk 10 miles and go to a bakery and get some food. Right. You're going to be in the middle of nowhere and bears are going eat you. This aeroplane needs to be robust.
Chris:Like the Arctic is unforgiving. They have to operate off of semi prepared runways. And so we were the first customer to have to qualify it through that. And we've done the work. I'm happy to say it like we've done the work.
Chris:So, we'll be releasing it to service formally, likely in the March. That's that's the plan.
Bryan:Okay.
Chris:And then I will likely have it on the line, doing a line of search and rescue in in early May.
Bryan:So by early May, it will be doing its job in search and rescue?
Chris:That's the intent. You bet.
Bryan:That's great news. How will the Kingfisher change the way we do search and rescue?
Chris:I honestly think fundamentally. And so, you know, if you think about how we used to do it with the Buffalo or with the Hercules, you had a lot of eyeballs looking out the airplane for wreckage. And that is not super efficient way to search for downed aircrew. It's the way it was done for years, but technology has rapidly changed. And I think we have an opportunity here to change our tactics.
Chris:And that's what the folks in four eighteen Squadron in their operational test and evaluation phases, they've broken it up into search and rescue. And so they're trying to get the procedures right to leverage those new sensors and the new context of the aircraft. So, you know, I just need to give an example. Historically, if you had a crash on the side of a mountain, you would have to contour crawl that mountain at increasing altitudes, just to keep an eyeball on each sort of layer and where a crash might be. And now you might be able to fly a bit higher, stand off and use your radar to find that wreckage to highlight where that crash site would be.
Chris:There's also some other new things I think that they don't have. So historically in the combat side of the ERCF, we rely on IR SPARQL, that is to say an infrared laser, designating a target for us on the ground to shoot at or to land in. I use SPARQL quite a bit on air assault landings in Afghanistan. So I'd ask for SPARQL, someone would take their MX-fifteen EOR capability, their camera, and they would, they can lay something for me and it would, the laser would stay on that thing as the aircraft maneuvered. SAR has that now.
Chris:So you can imagine like a Kingfisher is going show up over a crash site. They're going have great imagery of it instantly. They have a radar picture of it instantly. They actually have a data length to push that data back to GRCC, which is also game changing.
Bryan:Oh, that's huge.
Chris:But they can also now sparkle. Yeah, they can sparkle the target so that a cormorant can 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:Wow.
Chris:And tell me when you want me to turn it off.
Bryan:That's huge.
Chris:I think that's going be very game changer for the Starforce.
Bryan:A hundred percent. What kind of challenges do you think the Kingfisher will face in its SAR role?
Chris:So I think Arctic is hard and we've done one of the one of the things we had to work through was some modifications to the aircraft to get it ready for the Canadian cold. We've had, we went to the McKinley chamber, we've done a bunch of design mods with the OEM and it's good now. They've demonstrated unassisted start and an assisted start at very cold temperatures. But semi prepared runways are always tricky. And you can just imagine that, you know, that radome was quite close to the ground.
Chris:So if you're working a lot of semi prepared runway, there's damage to props and damage to radomes you gotta manage. So we've got to be careful about exactly where this airplane operates out of. And if there's a need, we're going to obviously, but we've got to manage that. And then I think some of the oceanic stuff, like the really far oceanic stuff, that's, that might be a challenge in certain kinds of weather like heavy icing, etcetera, but it would be a challenge for any aircraft.
Bryan:Yeah.
Chris:I think that's offset by tremendous advantage of a censored airplane. And when you think about the last Cape, which is not yet onboarded, but it is likely to in the future, which is a cell phone detection system that allows you to latch onto cell phones that an isolated person or a victim might have to be able to find them much faster. We have them on our H model Herx right now. We had a rescue actually over this past weekend where we actually found a snowmobiler using, a lost snowmobiler using his IMEI and his cell phone.
Bryan:Yeah, I was just, talking with Mike Reno from Sky's Magazine about that capability the other day. It's an amazing, search capability.
Chris:It is. Yeah. It's game changing. The Norwegian military has told us they find about ninety three percent of their victims using cell phone detection.
Bryan:Wow. Let's get into our war fighting acquisitions and upgrades and talk about the Griffin limited life extension or GLLE. What exactly are we doing to upgrade our Griffins and what problems will these upgrades solve?
Chris:Yeah. So I think the challenge with the Griffin is, you know, it was acquired in the, in I think the acquisition decision was like '92 and we sort of saw the first Griffins in '95. They've had software upgrades to their control display units, their CDUs, but not a whole lot of wholesale digital upgrades. So it's still relatively an analog airplane. And then we've run into the 2020s here, regulatory challenges with respect to ADS B and making sure that the aircraft can be seen on, you know, in the mandated way.
Bryan:ADS B stands for automatic dependent surveillance broadcast. And it's basically a relatively new method of uploading and downloading data to and from an aircraft. It can be used to pick up weather, traffic information, all that kind of stuff. But the biggest reason it was mandated is because it's also used for tracking aircraft positions. So it is now required in The United States.
Chris:We have a combat sort of limitation for IFF mode five to make sure that the aircraft is identification front or foe transponder is up to speed. And then there's a comms suite upgrade that needs to happen. So there's all these sort of mounting challenges with the machine and it resulted in GLE, which is a packaging of a whole bunch of upgrades. The aircraft essentially loses all wires that are currently in, like every single box and wire is, has been removed. There is a new cockpit frame that is put in.
Chris:Wow. And it's all multifunction displays and they're all digital. So the airplane is fully digital now, and all of the avionics have been upgraded very significantly, close to what a 04/12 EPX would give you. So it's commonality between that civilian and aircraft and ours. But there's obviously you've got to integrate all of the mission kit that we currently have.
Chris:So that's the challenge is getting the software sorted out, get all the mission kit integrated, but there's also some power and some engine issues. So, you know, historically these engines have been pretty tired. They've been serving us for thirty years. It needed an engine upgrade and we wanted to go digital. And so the real scope is a large scale avionics upgrade to get it to be a digital aircraft and it has all that regulatory compliance stuff looked after.
Chris:New engines, so a completely new twin pack for every aircraft that gets a new set of engines, fresh out of Pratt and Whitney that are FADEC engines, they're digital engines. So it's a lot lower workload and a lot higher reliability, easier to maintain for all those things. And then there's actually a mod on the tail. So the tail boom is getting a strike along it, which is like it spoils lift, gives you a bit more pedal authority. And then the aft, vertical fin is being changed where it's thinner, its profile is thinner.
Chris:And so you have less drag, as you move, air laterally through the tail motor.
Bryan:Okay.
Chris: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 its available payload is increasing a little bit because of the savings of avionics.
Bryan:Okay. Wow. That's pretty significant. It's pretty neat to hear about them basically going fully glass cockpit. I remember in my time in four hundred squadron, it was a pretty dated cockpit, and there were some I was part of some testing one time in Ottawa for, like, some little touch they had a little kind of patchwork solutions.
Bryan:Like, let's maybe we'll put in this touchscreen with some soft keys on the side and it's great to hear that they're kind of going whole hog on this and really putting in a solid solution.
Chris:Yeah and the big thing too is when you have an opportunity to do that, you sort of take a bit more liberty. So everyone's flying with electronic flight bags or iPads on ForeFlight now at the whole Air Force, every pilot's issued that. And so we put powered iPad mini holders in the, in the cockpit as well. So you will have, you know, where you're at the at the corners of the cockpit, you'll have mounts and power for your iPad. Yeah.
Chris:For which is which is key.
Bryan:Yeah. Absolutely. How long are we expecting the Griffin fleet to operate before it's replaced?
Chris:When this was conceived, it was a bit of a ten year kick, ten years from the decision. And so decision in about '22 to about '32, but the horizon right now is no later than '35. And quite honestly, if you look at the mission sets we are asking our tactical aviation fleets to execute, we need I think more robust aircraft that have a bit more solid electronic warfare and sort of ruggedness. And we need different roles. We need long range precision strike.
Chris:We need long range assault type platforms that can go very long distances. So the Griffin is a, you know, to two fifty to 300 nautical mile airplane on a good day. So we can get into that in the next thing, but that's really, it's meant to be about a ten year gap filler until we recapitalize.
Bryan:Okay. Well, let's roll right into that because another project you've mentioned is NTAX or next tactical aviation capability set. What is this and why is it exciting for the RCAF?
Chris: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 had proposed detailed and large scale upgrade of the tactical aviation enterprise minus the Chinook. Chinook's doing well. It's going to need some upgrades, likely in the mid to early thirties, but this is all about sort of replacing the Griffin with more capability, not necessarily more numbers, but more capability. And so there's sort of three bucket areas that I was targeting when we wrote this and submitted it. And amazingly government agreed with us.
Chris:We need to be able to project into the Arctic. And that was really the basis for this upgrade was a domestic basis. You know, tech help, we go overseas sometimes, but fundamentally we had strong secure engaged, strong at home. So it's a little bit at home and being able to get aircraft into the Arctic Archipelago and to be able to operate sort of freely up there, you needed a certain range sort of imperatives you got to get after. And so if you look at the three buckets, of capability, we were looking at a special operations aircraft that is sort of suited to that Maritime Counterterror role in addition to all the other things that they have to do for precision insert extract.
Chris:We need, and the army has been emphatic 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 use the term air launched effects. So instead of firing a missile, you can fire a drone and you can become sort of the mother ship to that. So we're looking at what that would look like.
Chris:And then the third would be this long range assault platform, which allows us to really project, consequential distances like long range, like in the Arctic. And that's what Intact is supposed to encapsulate and the team is doing all the requirements work behind that. In addition to potentially changing the way we've arrayed our main operating bases and looking at, you know, Arctic options for how we could host that aircraft in the Arctic. Host, I mean, like a Ford operating location you could fall into.
Bryan:Right. So basically like a well rounded replacement plan for the Griffin essentially.
Chris:Yep. Absolutely. But it's I I think we're stepping up our game pretty significantly in terms of what The Cape would offer.
Bryan: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 about it?
Bryan:How will it change how we do business?
Chris:It's really important to me in my NORAD role. So we have a system called Battle Command System Fixed or BCSF that we've been using since pretty much right after nineeleven. And it's the command control system that allows us to see all of the air traffic. And then there's a bunch of different data feeds and you're kind of swivel chairing around to make it all work. And that's what's been in place since early two thousand and two.
Chris:It's getting to the end of its life and I'll be honest, technology has just moved so far. So getting into the cloud at the secret level, super important. So what, this is a collaborative program between Canada and The U. S. Anchored in NORAD and it's program executive office digital out of Hanscom Air Force Base that's running it.
Chris:But we have a bunch of folks who are working full time on it as well. And we put a lot of money into it and we were able to define the requirements. So it's essentially a cloud based on secret gov cloud that allows us to get all the NORAD data in there in terms of all of the air traffic and more. So there's about a thousand sensor feeds now that are plugged into this, at the secret level. And there is now a way to bring in higher than secret into it.
Chris:And I'll tell you, like it gives you the opportunity with all that data in one place and it's all curated properly. You can now use cloud based tools to sort of extract it or using, use AI and ML to give you some advantage. And I'll you an example. So if you have a track of interest that's moving across the country, as you can imagine, as it moves, the best option to intercept that thing will change based on the geometry of that aircraft where it is. And in Canada, we only have so many alert bases.
Chris:In The US, they have a lot more alert bases. So as it moves, the AI will re propose to you new courses of action about which alert fighter you should launch that is best suited to intercept that based on geometry.
Bryan:Okay.
Chris:And same for tanker. And so it will offer us opportunity to really lower the workload and it reduces the decision time from, hey, that track looks funny to I'm launching fighters from, probably close to probably close to ten minutes to much, much less than that.
Bryan:Okay. Wow. So speaking of launching fighters, we know that Canada has purchased f 35 a Lightnings but we need something to get us to the point where they reach operational function point or OFP. That's where the Hornet extension program comes in. Can you tell us about this program?
Chris:Yeah, so this was born actually before the F-thirty five was selected because the competition was still running and depending on which fighter was going to be selected by the fair and open competition, you may have ended up with longer or shorter time lag for delivery, right? So this was the insurance policy that the RCF put in place to make sure that we would continue to have a relevant fighter capability for the NORAD mission set. And so Hornet Extension, it does a little bit of like what GLEE does, where it brings the aircraft up to regulatory compliance for its radios and its IFF and its ADS B, etcetera. So we are now able to operate pretty much in anyone's airspace. So hugely important.
Chris:It also brings in, and there's two phases. It's a phase one is all of the jets, all of the F-18s will get Hornet phase one. So that's the regulatory upgrade. And then there's a subset of 36 jets that we've actually gone much deeper and we've added an auto GCAAS function and we've added new radios, new tactical radios, arc to 10 Gen six software defined radios that allows us to take advantage of some of the beyond line of sight comms that we signed up for with The US. And then lastly, in HEP two, we add an AESA radar.
Chris:So no longer a mech scan radar, an electronically scanned radar. It's essentially the Super Hornet radar installed and functioning inside of a classic Hornet that we fly. And so that has been done. We now have 10 of those jets on our lines and they're flying and they're airworthy and they're released to service. And so it's a very good news story.
Chris:That APG79V4 radar we put in it, it also opens you up to a whole bunch of new advanced capabilities that will lead us down the road to the F-thirty five. It's like a big step towards the information management you need to get on board with, for a very advanced capability like the F-thirty five. So it allows us to take a big step in that direction. And then the radar itself, the key advantage is it can see very small things, very low radar cross section things. So it allows you to defeat different kinds of threats.
Chris:And then lastly, we've done a weapons upgrade on it. And so the two key weapons air to air weapons was always an AIM-nine Sidewinder and an AIM-one 20 AMRAAM.
Bryan:The Sidewinder and the AMRAAM are two of the most widely used air to air missiles in the West.
Chris:So the Sidewinder is going to be updated to the newest variant, an AIM-9X. And we 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. And right now we have 16 F-18s down at Tyndall Air Force Base out of, Cold Lake and Baggeville, they're doing a big missile shoot, to to sort of get everyone up to speed. And then the second thing is an upgraded AMRAAM, which should be on the aircraft as well. So That's huge.
Chris:Very significant upgrades. Yeah. Makes the aircraft a very, very good defensive aircraft, from a from an NORAD point of view.
Bryan:Right on. So I imagine there'd be critics to this plan. Why is it important to put more money into an aging fleet of Hornets when we have new fighters on the way?
Chris:Well, think one, the world's very unstable and we can't really allow a capability to fall off a cliff while we wait for the next one. And we have obligations under the MRT agreement to provide X number of aircraft at X threat level. And so that's sort of non negotiable. And then the way the F-thirty five is coming in, we will have to be very elegant about how we sunset one and bring the other one on. I spent a lot of my time and my team's time on that.
Chris:But in the interim also the threat was moving so fast that we, it's sort of, we had to have an AESA jet to be able to deal with the changing threat of our key adversaries in China and Russia.
Bryan:Sorry, that AESA is that type of radar, right?
Chris:It's an active electronically scanned radar. And so it's a much more potent radar. It's all digital and allows you to see smaller things. So that's the key advantage of this jet. And to be honest, we need to keep this jet running all the way through to 02/1932 as we onboard all of our F-thirty five's.
Chris:If we're able to sunset earlier, we will. But I think it's that's pretty accurate. 02/1932 would be the end end of the hornet.
Bryan:Okay. So finally, another project you've worked on was MAZR or Manned Airborne Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance resulting in the acquisition of the CE one forty five C Vigilance, which is a kitted out King Air three fifty ER. Why did we need this aircraft when we already had the Aurora fleet performing ISR?
Chris:Yeah. It's a good question. I will say there's no such thing as too much ISR. And so
Bryan:Yeah, a %.
Chris: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 a very specific need for certain kinds of things on that aircraft that they have invested in. And so it's a bit of a collaboration between CANsoftcom and the air force to get this across the line in concert with ADM Matt to make sure that the airplanes fit for purpose. They purchased three aircraft. They're all based in Trenton, Ontario, and they're flown by 47 Squadron pilots and crews.
Chris:And we've added sensor operators to the mix now. So ASOPs are now flying on aircraft, as well as, you know, the other fleets, legacy fleets that they had flown on. Going to hold much like my discussion in the earlier episode about the level of readiness you need to hold in Kansoff, their expectation is you're going to ask for something and have it occur within minutes or hours as opposed to, you know, half a crew day. And so they needed, their own ability to launch and self serve with that from a domestic point of view. And they can use this obviously internationally, depending on level of level of risk, but a highly digital aircraft that has a lot of data links, lot of radios and has targeting pods on it that allows them to guide and employ weapons if need be.
Chris:So like a really potent little package of an aircraft that we're about to release to service as well. So that's about to be on the books in the next week or two.
Bryan:And so basically the big advantage that that's bringing in is kind of like a quick reaction ISR platform.
Chris:Absolutely. And you think about where I'm concerned right now domestically, I'm concerned about obviously the ten and 02:00 from a Russian long range aviation point of view and the 12:00, but also we have a maritime domain awareness requirement that the Aurora is obviously fulfilling, but we have some acute needs that soft fills. And so it's going to be really important that this airplane is employed in the littorals on the approach to Canada, the eyes and ears.
Bryan:And littoral is essentially being coastal waters, right?
Chris:Coastal, absolutely.
Bryan:Yeah. Okay, Chris, that's gonna wrap up part two of our discussion. I really enjoyed hearing about your time in Mali and honestly, is super exciting to hear about the new things coming down the pipe for the RCAF in terms of airframes and new tech. Thank you again for being here today and I'm really looking forward to, part three of our chat. Thank you.
Chris:Thanks a lot, Ryan. My pleasure.
Bryan:Alright. That wraps up part two of our chat with Major General Chris McKenna about his command positions, his time in Mali as the task force commander, as well as the beginning of our chat on modernization of the RCAF. Tune in to the next episode where we will continue with this chat talking about some of the exciting platforms we're bringing online. We'll talk about a renewed focus on war fighting mentality for the RCAF, as well as take questions from the audience. Do you have any questions or comments about anything you've heard in this show?
Bryan:Would you or someone you know make a great guest, or do you have a great idea for a show? You can reach out to us at the pilotprojectpodcast@Gmail.com or on all social media at at pod pilot project. And be sure to check out that social media for lots of great videos of our RCAF aircraft. As always, we'd like to thank you for tuning in and ask for your help with the big three. That's like and follow us on social media, share with your friends, and follow and rate us five stars wherever you get your podcasts.
Bryan:That's all for now. Thanks for listening. Keep the blue side up. See you.
