The Future of Warfare Conflict The Consequence to CanadaLGen (retd) D. Michael Day

Western Democracies are gradually learning and accepting that intervention has to be comprehensive in scope and generational in duration. The Future will be even messier. Exit Strategies discussions will remain pure Political Rhetoric.

Climate Change and rapidly changing Demographics will have far more impact than Policy Decisions in determining the future operating environment.The Changes have already occurred. The consequences are yet to be faced. (1 / 2)

Map this concentration against median age, income, personal freedom and security and climate change effectsThe Changes have already occurred. The consequences are yet to be faced. ( 2 / 2)

Distinguishing between Discretionary and Non Discretionary will become harder. It will increasingly be a false choice to engage or not. The only choices will be “how and with what”

Addressing Threats earlier will become harder because the difficulty of understanding and responding to their complexity will remain proportionately correlated to Political Reluctance, Industrial Capacity and Military willingness to address them until too late to develop capabilities to respond. The need to have in place adaptive agile capabilities will be core to effect options for Policy Consideration.

Few Countries, Canada included, can or want be able to “afford” all the capabilities needed to play all roles in all theatres. Accepting the need for niche capabilities will benefit not penalize Canada.

Future War• VUCA: Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Chaotic, Ambiguous and Asymmetric.• Waged by a ill defined combination of State and Non State Actors who are both declared and undeclared. • Highly leveraged through Technology to target Populations both directly through Influence Operations and indirectly through increasingly near perfect, but misleading, Domain Awareness. • Increasingly reverting to a combination of kinetic, social, and economic tools.

So What for CanadaRecapitalization and the Canadian Forces• Stay Focused on Capability Based Planning. • Privilege Capabilities that Inform, in priority: Awareness; Policy Option Development; and Political Decisions

• Whole of Government Intelligence, Space, Cyber and HALE / MALE UAV• For Non Discretionary Immutable Security (Defence of Canada) Stop pretending Expeditionary Like Platforms

provide same capabilities as Domestic Focused Platforms because…..they don’t.• Re-Align Tech Capabilities to privilege the Domestic Arena of 2030 forward. • Accept this constrains where and how we conduct discretionary tasks.

• Increase Strategic Lift Capabilities• Privilege a Significantly Smaller Higher Readiness Force that is quickly Adaptable

• Personnel + Equipment + Infrastructure + Training = Capability + Readiness • Empower the Multi Lateral Organizations that are capable of massing the Capabilities needed.

Look, we’re here. We might as well clash