Defence Capability Development, the Comprehensive Approach and Constraints of the Policy Environment in Canada

Defence Capability Development, the Comprehensive Approach and Constraints of the Policy Environment in Canada Robert Addinall, Al Dizboni In this paper we briefly analyze two Canadian military procurements: the armoured vehicle acquisition process from the late 1990s through to the late 2000s, and the Next Generation Fighter Plane program between 2010 and 2012. While these two processes took place in somewhat differing circumstances, both shared the characteristics that the original planning and procurement process, based on the ideal of efficient interaction between several different branches of the federal government, was completely altered by the constraints of the policy environment. Although beyond the scope of this paper, our research indicates that this same type of difficulty is shared by other defence procurement projects as well. We identify three major types of constraints in the policy environment, with each level of government organization having its own rationality. First, each government department involved in a procurement has an organizational culture and standard operating procedures which may not mesh well with those of other departments. Second, driving personalities in government departments may also alter the manner in which standard procurement process rules are applied. These two types of constraint have been described as “bureaucratic politics” in a range of political science and history analysis since the 1960s, especially in studies of United States government programs.1 Third, the rationality of the elected government to win the next election may override the benefits it perceives in following idealized policy statements to the letter. This type of political rationality is often examined using public choice theory methodology. 1 For example, one of the best-known works on bureaucratic politics is: Graham Allison and Philip Zelikov, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: Longman, an imprint of Addison Wesley Longman Educational Publishers, 1999), as well as its earlier edition written by Allison and a different co-author and published in the late 1960s. 1 Methodological Framework: Problems and Variables Our methodology here uses elements of both the bureaucratic politics and public choice approaches. To borrow a phrase from military history, each of the three constraints noted above introduces a form of friction to the policy environment. This means that the ideal functioning of the government as a single rational actor, as embodied in the whole-of-government or comprehensive approach, is not realized. Policies based on the assumption that each step in a complex procurement process can be implemented with little difficulty will fail. Instead policy should be founded on thorough analysis of the sources of friction and be designed to manage rather than to unrealistically eliminate constraints. Using a management-centric approach would prevent future programs from being badly derailed when perceptions of a sudden crisis arise. In the case of armoured vehicles, the impetus to procure a replacement for Canada’s Leopard 1 main battle tanks (MBTs) emerged in the late 1990s. The Leopard 1s, acquired in the late 1970s, were wearing out, while ideas of a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) then current in the United States suggested that the future lay with new, lighter weight armoured vehicle designs under 35 tons, rather than 45 to 70 ton MBTs. It was thought that lighter vehicles could be more rapidly deployable around the globe, increasing what NATO armies call operational mobility, while technological advances in networked command, control, communications, computing, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems and new precision munitions would make lighter vehicles as or more effective in combat than heavier designs.2 2 RMA ideas made the transition from studies to official U.S. Army policy in October 1999, when then-Secretary of the U.S. Army Louis Caldera and then-Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army Eric K. Shinseki “unveiled a vision of a more strategically responsive U.S. Army.” It was stated that: “The Army intends to begin immediately to develop a force that is deployable, agile, versatile, lethal, survivable, sustainable and dominant at every point along the spectrum of operations… The vision statement establishes a goal to deploy a combat brigade anywhere in the world within 96 hours after liftoff, a warfighting division on the ground in 120 hours, and five divisions within thirty days.” See: 2 Also around this time a perception emerged within at least some elements of the Canadian Army bureaucracy that the elected Liberal government of the day would not be willing to fund the purchase of a new generation of tanks. As a result a plan came together to develop a new family of medium weight, wheeled armoured vehicles based on the same Light Armoured Vehicle III (LAV-III) chassis as the LAV-III infantry carrier/infantry support vehicles that Canada acquired for the infantry branch of its army in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This family of vehicles was called the Direct Fire Unit (DFU), a phrase which essentially describes the combat role that it would have taken over from MBTs. Such vehicles engage opposing forces with powerful direct line of sight weapons or indirect fire weapons that can achieve the same effects. The Canadian DFU was, at least in theory, intended to be interoperable with planned U.S. developments and less expensive than purchasing new MBTs. Based on extensive review of documents obtained under the Canadian access to information act, plans for it also appear to have skirted detailed analysis of Canadian Industrial Regional Benefit (IRB) requirements by being based on systems that were already produced in Canada. Key decisions were made in 2003 in the apparent absence of competitive evaluation of different direct fire armoured vehicle designs. United States Army, Army Announces Vision for the Future, press release (Washington, D.C.: October 12, 1999). Archived by the Federation of American Scientists: http://www.fas.org/man/dod- 101/army/unit/docs/r19991015vision095.htm (accessed March 27, 2008). Shinseki stated that: “There are many ways to increase survivability while lowering the weight of your weapons platforms… including the survivability that you give to a platform because you are not expecting to take a direct hit.” See: Louis Caldera and Eric K. Shinseki, statements made during press conference, October 12, 1999. Transcript publication information: Association of the United States Army, Press Conference Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera and Chief of Staff of the Army General Eric K. Shinseki (Washington, D.C.: Association of the United States Army, 1999). Archived by the Federation of American Scientists: http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/army/unit/docs/r19991014ausapress.htm (accessed March 27, 2008). In a follow-up press conference, representatives of the U.S. Army Training And Doctrine Command (TRADOC) stated that: “In today’s heavy force, we enjoy tremendous overmatch… That allows us to make a mistake… [light forces] may not recover from a mistake… They make up for it with the close fight using internetted combined arms.” See: Joseph Rodriguez and Michael Mahaffey, comments made during press conference, Washington D.C., December 16, 1999. Transcript publication information: U.S. Training and Doctrine Command, Transcript of the Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) Press Briefing, Status of Brigade Combat Team Development at Fort Lewis and Planned Performance Demonstration at Fort Knox (Washington, D.C.: TRADOC, 1999). Archived the Federation of American Scientists: http://www.fas.org/man/dod- 101/army/unit/docs/991216-briefing_tradoc_press.htm (accessed March 27, 2008). 3 Between 2003, when the DFU program was officially announced, and 2006, when it was cancelled, considerable resistance to the idea developed within four sub-branches inside the Army. Inter-service rivalry between the army, air force and navy is a well-known challenge in many countries, and frequently entails bureaucratic politics aspect when the three services bargain against each other for limited government funds. What happened within the Canadian Army might be termed intra-service rivalry; a form of inter-arm or inter-branch rivalry within a service. The DFU was perceived by some as an attempt by Army leadership to keep the Armoured Corps branch of the Army in existence while removing capabilities form the Artillery and Infantry branches. This created resistance in the two latter organizations. However, some Armoured Corps personnel also had doubts about the DFU, seeing it as a cost-cutting exercise and as inferior to purchase of new MBTs. Also in terms of internal resistance to the project, a significant amount of Canadian Army capability development analysis suggested that the DFU would not work as planned. This was primarily because the first part of the plan, procurement of the Mobile Gun System (MGS) variant of the DFU vehicle family, was announced in fall 2003 prior to thorough analysis, with a Statement of Operational Requirement (SOR) being completed afterwards, in early 2004. Finally, unexpected cost increases appeared, both because it became apparent that the MGS was more complex to develop than expected, and because features such as bilingual software for the vehicles (rather than English-only software) had not been included in early budgeting, although cost issues did not become widely politicized in the Canadian Parliament and media in

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