The high-low mix identified in the United Kingdom’s Strategic Defence Review is an approach Canada can learn from and adapt to our needs.
Canada is rearming.
The federal government plans to hit the 2% NATO target by the end of the current fiscal year.
In announcing the plan, the government emphasized a focus on both procuring new equipment and ramping up domestic military production. Here are three of the measures the government promised:
“New aircraft, armed vehicles, and ammunition, as well as support for projects currently underway.”
“Developing new drones and sensors to monitor the seafloor and the Arctic.”
“Bolstering Canada’s defence industrial capacity.”
Online, I’ve noticed some who feel these measures are mutually exclusive. A binary choice is presented, one in which we can either exclusively buy high-quality foreign equipment, or exclusively buy Canadian equipment that is (in the minds of those who prefer Canada eschews a defence industrial strategy), lower quality.
However, I believe this is a false choice.
Starting (almost) from scratch
Canada has underfunded our military for so long that we are almost starting from scratch in terms of equipment.
We possess very few fighter jets, ships, submarines, and tanks, and almost no combat drones or counter-UAS capabilities (though some are on the way).
In this environment, Canada needs a lot of equipment, and we need it ASAP. Much of what we need is not currently produced by Canadian firms, and the choice is thus which foreign provider to purchase from.
For example, no Canadian company produces fighter jets, and there is no prospect of a Canadian company doing so in a short timeframe. As a result, the government will have to decide whether to go ahead with our full F-35 order, reduce the order and supplement it with other planes such as the Saab Gripen, or cancel the F-35 order entirely and go with European-made planes (perhaps a mix of the Gripen and Eurofighter).
The same is true of tanks and submarines. While Canada should strive to produce those systems domestically in the long run, the short-term goal should be to source them from reliable allies and sign deals that shift production to Canada. For example, Germany’s Rheinmetall has many factories outside Germany, and producing tanks and/or air defence systems in Canada would create Canadian jobs and help our workforce build important technical expertise that could be leveraged in future.
Drone production
If we are sourcing expensive crewed systems from allies, where does that leave domestic production?
This is where adapting to the future of warfare becomes paramount. As the world has witnessed in Ukraine, drones are an increasingly integral part of success on the battlefield, and – along with AI advancements – nations have a national defence imperative to master unmanned and autonomous warfare.
This is where Canadian domestic production should be focused. Rather than purchasing drones from other countries, the Canadian government should invest in Canadian-owned drone producers like ARA Robotics and Aeromao, alongside integrating the expertise of Canadian UAVs to rapidly build out the Canadian drone industry.
The benefit of domestic drone production is that it can be rapidly scaled up. Ukraine has set a goal of producing 4.5 million drones this year, up from around 1 million last year and a negligible amount before the Russian invasion.
Given Canada’s higher per capita GDP, the fact that we are not facing the severe pressure of a brutal invasion, and the fact that we can benefit from Ukrainian innovation by working with Ukrainian drone producers, there is no reason Canada can’t quickly scale up a substantial drone industry if we set our minds to it and put adequate resources behind it.
High-low force mix
Heading in this direction – purchasing legacy equipment from allies while building drone and autonomous warfare capability domestically – would be in pursuit of what the United Kingdom’s Strategic Defence Review referred to as a “high-low mix of capabilities”:
“An immediate priority for force transformation should be a shift towards greater use of autonomy and Artificial Intelligence (AI) within the UK’s conventional forces. As in Ukraine, this would provide greater accuracy, lethality, and cheaper capabilities—changing the economics of Defence. This shift should be facilitated by the parallel development of a common digital foundation and digital targeting web (Chapter 4.1), as well as protected investment in AI research and development. Uncrewed and autonomous systems should be incorporated into the Integrated Force in high numbers over the next five years. They should be networked with crewed fifth- and sixth-generation assets as part of a ‘high-low’ mix of capabilities, while these systems’ design must be tailored to the conditions in which they will operate—whether undersea, at sea, on land, or in the air. Having taken a generational leap forward, Defence must then stay at the cutting-edge of drone technologies using the principles of the innovation cycle outlined in Chapter 4.”
We can see how this could work in the Army, RCN, and RCAF.
In the Army, expensive and advanced tanks and crewed armoured air defence units built by our allies could be part of a force featuring Canadian-made armoured vehicles, Canadian-made aerial drones, and Canadian-made counter-unmanned aerial systems.
In the Royal Canadian Navy, foreign-produced attack submarines could supplement Canadian-built (UK-designed) ships like the River-Class and mass-produced naval drones constructed in Canada.
In the Royal Canadian Air Force, foreign-built fighter jets could be supplemented by Canadian-made loyal wingman drones, recon drones, tactical bomber drones, strategic bomber drones, and, in the long run, hypersonic drones.
We should also build up domestic rocket launch capacity, with Canadian-made rockets launching from Canadian spaceports, ensuring we can launch our own rockets and satellites into orbit without relying on other nations.
With this approach of importing high-quality legacy equipment while nurturing our domestic defence industry, Canada can simultaneously prepare for the modern & future battlefield, while rapidly recapitalizing the CAF with quality weapons.
Spencer Fernando
Image – YouTube
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