Is quick-in, quick-out going to be the next Canadian Forces mission? With Afghanistan all but done, "rapid deployment" is on the lips of top brass. By Carl Meyer Published March 10, 2010

View story Email Comments To the Editor

Less than 48 hours after an earthquake devastated Haiti, Canadian soldiers were en route to help provide security, humanitarian aid and other assistance.

The speed of the response—a sharp contrast to previous Canadian military endeavours—did not pass without notice.

In fact, the government went out of its way in last week's Throne Speech to note that "in Haiti, the Canadian Forces have taken the lessons learned in Afghanistan and put them to use in very different circumstances. Their speed and effectiveness in deployment were and are unsurpassed in the world."

The same day the speech was being delivered in the Senate, military officers were mixing with professors, lobbyists, contractors, politicians and defence watchers at the nearby Chateau Laurier. On more than a few lips was were the words "rapid deployment."

With the Afghanistan mission winding down, the military's heavy equipment battered from years in the Kandahar desert, and no large post-2011 operation on the horizon, the notion that the Canadian military could best be used as first responders to hot spots appears to be emerging as a viable option.

In an overview of required capabilities for force projection, Vice-Admiral Dean McFadden, the head of the Canadian Navy, as well as the other chiefs of staff, pointed to rapid deployment as one of their preferred policies during a presentation at the Conference of Defence Associations. Vice-Admiral McFadden, who talked optimistically about the idea, said it such deployments are a clear example of "what we do."

Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie, chief of the land staff, told the conference that while the army now expects to maintain a 2,500- to 3,000-person force on missions, it will need to be able to deploy "at the drop of a hat."

Lt.-Gen. Leslie noted that some mid-sized and heavy equipment fleets in Afghanistan, "quite frankly, have been battered" but that the light to mid-sized still have good capacity.

The army is looking at a longer period of retooling for its heavier equipment, Lt.-Gen. Leslie said, but the lighter fleets—which would presumably be used more often in rapid deployments—would be in a better position to be used post-Afghanistan.

And Lt.-Gen. André Deschamps, outlining new acquisitions such as the Hercules transport aircraft, focused on the air force's "agility" and "reach" and how these abilities could translate into rapid deployment capabilities.

Lt.-Col. George Petrolekas, who represented Canada at NATO's operational headquarters in Kabul from 2003 to 2007, suggested that the notion of rapid deployment is tied to foreign policy flexibility.

Rapid deployment "increases the options available to a government, which is in turn related to its foreign policy and development positions in the world," he said in an email.

"If you can't deploy rapidly, you give the government no option to respond rapidly to a disaster such as Haiti."

He said he didn't see a shift toward this policy as a forerunner, but there was "an increased realization" that "if the military is to provide effective options," a flexible military structure is necessary.

David Bercuson, director of the University of Calgary's Centre for Military and Strategic Studies, agreed with Lt.-Col. Petrolekas's argument that the military had not picked rapid deployment as its preferred choice, but that if planning went into it, it would be "feasible."

"It seems to me that all the energy that the army's got these days is going into preparing the battle groups to go [to Afghanistan], and dealing with the aftermath of the problems and lessons learned," said Mr. Bercuson.

He said that the rapid deployment Canada experienced in Haiti was "fortuitous circumstances." The light battalion sent into Haiti was possible to mobilize, he said, because it had not yet proceeded deeper into its training for Afghanistan.

Retired lieutenant-general James Soligan, deputy chief of staff for NATO's Allied Command Transformation, said that NATO's future success depended in part on realizing that it cannot "stovepipe" its forces, but that it must, in American football parlance, use "special teams."

NATO is considering using the type of multinational tactical units it is currently using in Afghanistan in its future deployments. This allows the Alliance to deploy rapidly and use lighter equipment.

With budget constraints now looming in many NATO allies, it is increasingly harder to convince the public to keep parting with their tax dollars and to sustain NATO campaigns, Mr. Soligan said.

With this in mind, NATO intends to get better at smaller joint ops, which Mr. Soligan said the alliance was worse at executing than its more well-known major joint ops, like the ISAF force in Afghanistan.

cmeyer@embassymag.ca