Army transformation: punching above our weight.

Army Transformation is an exciting and fast moving opportunity that will touch every soldier (I use the term to cover all of us in the Land Force who wear our nation's uniform) and civilian in the Land Force team. It is a change that will see the implementation of the Army Vision and Army Strategy and the development of an immensely capable Land Force component of the Canadian Forces. Army Transformation will lead to a Land Force of which Canadians can be fiercely proud (they already have pride in it-we want them to have more) and one which is visibly relevant to them and to our country. The transformed Land Force will be credible with our friends and allies and capable of being overwhelmingly successful, no matter the mission given it, while reducing the risk to those soldiers actually executing the operation.

Army Transformation flows directly from the Army Strategy issued last year and is a long and well thought-out process. It sets out how we will build sustainable combat forces by bringing in new capabilities, updating some legacy capabilities and using others "as is," while merging them all as a "system of systems" to give a value greater than the sum of the individual parts. Transformation is our means of implementing our strategy, and soldiers will see concrete evidence that we are moving forward-with real, state-of-the-art kit and real, positive change.

Some parts of Army Transformation, such as the Whole Fleet Management System, are driven by the need to manage our resources better in order to be able to do all the individual and collective training necessary while continuing to conduct operations. The most important force driving transformation, though, is the changing nature of the very real threats to stability throughout the world, to Canada itself and to any land component units deployed on missions. What was in previous …