Page 96 - North Atlantic and Nordic Defense

North European and North Atlantic Defense: The Challenges Return

These are very different skill sets.

This must pose a challenge for training as well?

Lt. Col. Baker: “It does and we are facing manpower shortages as well in our area of competence.

"We need to wring out the capabilities we already have in Block 3.

"We haven't been able to develop the best way to tactically employ those new toys we got in ASW in
part because of the focus on overland ISR.

“The Block Three airplane is still being operated as a Block Two because we haven't had a chance to really
develop the new tactics, which would allow us to exploit it to its full potential.”

FIGURE 32 A CP140 TAXIS TO A HALT 14 WING GREENWOOD, NOVA SCOTIA, CANADA. PHOTO: MCPL RORY WILSON, 14 WING IMAGING

Question: When you deploy an Aurora, how many people are involved in supporting the deployment?

Lt. Col. Baker: “If we deploy two crews, two airplanes that is roughly eighty people. That's once you add the
maintenance and the staff to run what we call a detachment.”

Question: There is a new framework underway, which the US Navy calls the kill web, in which the
ability to reachback to various assets in the coalition allows one to enhance the reach in terms of the
effect of one’s platform. It is also about the evolving sensor-shooter relationship in the distributed
environment. What is your sense of this change and how it affects the RCAF?

Lt. Col. Baker: “We will always operate in a coalition or allied environment where you need to have those
efficiencies by being able to integrate fully with each other.

"And we seek to maximize synergy.

“The older ASW approach was to operate alone and unafraid. The anti-submarine warfare platform was a
fire-and-forget platform. You were given a mission, you took off, comms silent, did your job, and come back
after eight hours.

“That is not the emerging approach.

"We have reachback, and we have command and control that is much more involved in operational and
tactical operations.

Second Line of Defense

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