The art of acquiring science: Risk managing the Army’s capital program
By Chris Thatcher On a corner of Brigadier-General Steve Kelsey’s desk sits a marked-up copy of Strong, Secure, Engaged. Coloured tabs stick out from the well-thumbed pages of the new defence policy, placeholders for current and future capability investments that will...
Combat training: Army growth plans put a premium on quality instructors
By Chris Thatcher The federal government’s 2017 defence policy proposed to increase the Regular Force by 3,500 to 71,500 and the primary Reserve Force by 1,500 to 30,000, and to expand the roles and responsibilities of the Reserves to include combat capabilities such...
High demand: Artillery and engineering support units are a different kind of busy
By Steven Fouchard, Army Public Affairs Captain Matt Bernhardt has a good mental snapshot to illustrate the pace of life within his unit, 4 Artillery Regiment (General Support) Royal Canadian Artillery [4 Regt (GS)]: “Between July and December of last year, I was...
New vision for night vision
By Allan Joyner We own the night. It’s a mantra of many Western militaries and certainly one to which the Canadian Army subscribes. But as the technology associated with night vision systems improves, the Army’s edge might be slipping. Investment has not kept pace...
Airspace deconfliction
By Ian Coutts “There's no such thing as a crowded battlefield.” The words are Alfred M. Gray’s. The former commandant of the United States Marine Corps, Gray was speaking metaphorically (the next words in the quote are, “Battlefields are lonely places”). In fact,...
MSTAR migration: Reduced silhouette means better fit, more function for OPV radar
By Chris Thatcher The Canadian Army will migrate its Man-portable Surveillance and Target Acquisition Radar (MSTAR) from Version 3 to Version 4, swapping out some hardware and software in an effort to make the system lighter and smaller. While an improvement in...
