Canada Needs IMD Now

By Dan Doran and Alex Clarke

The Department of National Defence (DND) is currently faced with a multitude of major transformative capital projects. These include but are not limited to the Future Fighter Capability, Remotely Piloted Aircraft System and Canadian Surface Combatant programs to name a few.

These projects will feature far more advanced digital capabilities, such as onboard data fusion, next-generation jamming and cooperative target engagement, that will require new skills, training, and higher-tech tools. The degree of success in operationalizing this digital transformation will define to what extent the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) will remain interoperable and relevant to its Allies in the 21^st century battlespace; many of whom are much further along on their respective digital transformation journeys.

Information warfare centres are employing technology and communication to outsmart opponents. It has become vital ground in the national defence and security space. The table stakes required for the CAF to have any chance of successfully leveraging fifth-generation capabilities is to possess a mastery of sensors and systems on these advanced platforms, specifically the high-fidelity mission data. These are captured collectively under the umbrella of Intelligence Mission Data (IMD).

IMD is a collection of platform-agnostic intelligence about a given system, which when employed together, help define that system’s location, emissions, performance, behavior, and function (i.e., early warning radar for a surface-to-air missile).

IMD is used throughout the Five Eyes (FVEY) community to underpin functions such as platform reprogramming, modelling, mission planning, and targeting.

Without authoritative IMD, the ability to reprogram platforms (i.e., re-interpret IMD into a platform-specific format) is severely diminished. This can reduce a force’s ability to locate, identify and act on these systems, risking either a failure to detect a threat, or worse.

While functionally interrelated, IMD is frequently represented by five distinct pillars of electronic warfare: i) Electronic Warfare Integrated Reprogramming (EWIR); ii) Characteristics & Performance (C&P); iii) Order of Battle (OOB); iv) Signatures; and v) Geospatial Intelligence (GeoInt).

Succinctly, EWIR gives a fighting force information about potential enemy electromagnetic emissions, providing much-needed data for commanders to exploit enemy systems – in essence, forming a combat identification (combat ID) through their electromagnetic fingerprint. OOB generates information about expected force composition, strength disposition and kill chains. GeoInt provides topological and geo-political information as well as imagery to help understand the battlespace. Signatures allow a force to understand how to protect assets, as well as exploit those of the adversary. And finally, C&P provides information such as maneuvering envelopes and typical platform engagement ranges to gain and maintain the tactical advantage.

Across the Five Eyes, it is estimated that EWIR production accounts for approximately 70 per cent of all IMD production effort, with the remaining four pillars making up the other 30 per cent. This is primarily due to EWIR’s critical importance as a primary contributor to combat ID – a key component of sensor fusion.

While some sensors help to establish where something is, EWIR is used to establish what something is. On board sensors can successfully detect most emissions in the battlespace, but unless you have the data to help classify those emissions, you cannot build a combat ID.

In addition to this, is the sheer volume of platforms that require EWIR models (military ships, commercial vessels, fishing boats, aircraft, ground-based radar, etc.). Finally, the time and complexity required to produce radar models requires very specialized skillsets that take many years to develop and become fully competent.

Unlike legacy intelligence production, IMD production is not linear, but a cyclic process of production and maintenance.

Sometimes, models and intelligence products need to be created if they do not yet exist within FVEY intelligence databases.

But often, IMD needs to be re-analyzed and updated to make use of more up-to-date parametric information, fill in data gaps or to change/add behavioral aspects.

To ensure DND/CAF possesses the advantage in information warfare, intelligence collections and intercepts must be analyzed at the speed of relevance to ensure the most up-to-date information available.

This is where the current challenge resides with DND/CAF. How can it extract, blend and process data from multiple actors, across environments at different security classifications while maintaining governance, control and assurance over the data?

Further, how can it leverage emerging and disruptive technologies such as AI and machine learning to sift through unimaginable reams of data, sifting the known from the unknown and mission critical from the immaterial?

The pressing need for IMD production, governance, analysis and maintenance, is a concept fairly new to Canada. But it is a fundamental requirement our allies know all too well.

With a world that is increasingly unstable and multipolar, compounded with the DND/CAF struggling to recruit, retain, procure and modernize, the moment to act in a timely manner to operationalize and integrate IMD is very much upon us.

Dan Doran is the Canadian Defence and Security Sector Leader at KPMG in Canada and a CAF veteran. Alex Clarke is the Electronic Warfare Subject Matter Expert at SRC Can Ltd. and recently retired from the RAF where he spent his last five years establishing UK capability at the F35 reprogramming centre. For more information, visit, www.kpmg.ca. The views expressed here are their own and do not necessarily reflect a CDR editorial position.