The Perpetual Search for Efficiency: The Canadian Approach to the RMA and Military Transformation

Abstract

Since 1945 Canadian defense policy has continuously been shaped by a set of interrelated deterministic variables: geography, alliances, the public favoring of social programs, and budgets.1 The country’s political, bureaucratic, and even military leadership, have long since sought ways to get more “bang for the defense buck” through the adoption of measures that ostensibly would generate greater efficiencies and efficacy in the Canadian Forces (CF) without undermining the military’s ability to fulfill North American and European alliance obligations. One such approach was the 1968 unification of the three armed services — navy, army, and air force — into one CF. Another effort, and the one being analyzed in this chapter, was the adoption of the concepts and platforms affiliated with the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) and its close cousin, Transformation, particularly during the period of 200511, at the height of Canada’s combat operations in Afghanistan. But, as this chapter will emphasize, the CF’s approach to both the RMA and Transformation produced mixed results as plans were undermined by the deterministic constraints typical of defense policy-making in Canada, inter-service tensions found at the executive level within the CF, and, of course, the challenges and costs of combatting an insurgency in Afghanistan.