MCG said:
Like your proposal, I had previously drawn my HQ over joint regional commands (and a few other force options below) but switched it to the cloud to keep discussion on the HQ.
I see you have three environmental chiefs of staff (Naval, General and Air) in your CFHQ with no command responsibility. I envisioned force development (DOTMLPF) as the role in the structure that I drew, but you have placed your ECSs higher in the structure. What do they do; is it more than I describe?
Why have you chosen the military side as opposed to the civilian side for Public Affairs?
Sorry,
MCG, I was away for a couple of days, not dodging your good questions ...
It seems to me that if you have a fully functional
joint structure then there is no need, indeed no role for commanders of the RCN, CA and RCAF. But I still see a need for professional heads of service to deal with single service doctrine, training and requirements. I am conscious that we need a
higher (in the pecking order)
joint doctrine and requirements staff and I see there being a ACOS Plans on the Joint Staff (under the COS O&I (Ops & Int)) (Plans really means, mostly, joint doctrine and joint requirements) and I would expect that COS O&I, who is chief of the joint staff (ops supremacy and all that) would pass joint doctrine and requirements to the VCDS (the "general manager" of DND) who would, in his/her turn,
direct the single service doctrine and requirements folks (through the service chiefs who report to him/her) to develop their single service doctrine and requirements in such a way as to take full account of the joint staff's
direction. I appreciate this is a wee bit cumbersome but HQs can afford a bit of that. I'm looking for clarity in the chain of
command, I'll accept a few "dotted lines" on the
control (staff) side of the C2 superstructure.
As to public affairs. I'm afraid I'm :deadhorse: again ...
I would like to see a
triad in the public affairs/communications/public information business:
The MND has a
public relations staff which aims to tell Canadians what a great job the government of the day is doing at National Defence. This is, broadly, a
partisan function with a high
political content.
The DM has a
communications staff that tells Canadians, especially Canadian
opinion makers about defence policy. There is a fair bit of advocacy here ... in essence government departments have to lobby the
political centre
(PCO, Finance and TB) to get the resources they need and they use
opinion leaders, including in the media, to "sell" their programmes to PCO and cabinet. We might wish things were different but they aren't ~ at least they
weren't in the 1990s, when I served, or in the early 2000s when I dealt, extensively with governments in my second career dealing with technical standards.
The CDS needs, in my opinion, a
public information staff that does not do advocacy. Rather it
informs: it tells Canadians what the CF is doing, where and, to some degree how.
The three are not isolated, one from the other. Lets consider the "war" against IS**. In my model the MND's staff (maybe following the PMO) would announce, to much fanfare, that the CF is sending fighters to bomb IS**. The press release might even take a swipe at one or more opposition parties for being
wishy-washy in dealing with terrorists. The DM's
communications staff would have their own press briefing, explaining how they, based on information from the CF, PCO and Foreign Affairs, after receiving general guidance from the government, presented cabinet with a range of military (hard power) options, including costs and risks. Cabinet, in its wisdom, chose the bomber option. The DM's
communications staff would explain that the mission's costs will come out of DND's hide for the first 90s days but, the official would say, DND will go to the policy
centre (PCO, Finance and TB) seeking more resources if the mission lasts longer than 90 days. The CDS'
public information office woulds, in turn, explain that the CF is deploying
n CF-18s from 4
nn squadron and
n pilots and
nnn support personnnel, mostly from
n Wing in __
base__, all under the command of Col
Howsyourfather. The
cycle is
partisan spin, advocacy/policy explanation, and
information ... repeat as necessary.
