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This podcast is for and about soldiers of the Canadian Army.
Its primary goal is to provide them with useful information through thoughtful and open discussions that reflect their mutual interests and concerns.
Though soldiers are our primary audience, the topics covered on this podcast should be relevant to anyone who supports our soldiers or who has an interest in Canadian military matters.
Where do we need to go to help address the challenges of the future security environment? What are the threats that will be emerging, and how can we apply our expertise and our scientific knowledge to find solutions to those?
Capt Orton:Hi. I'm Captain Adam Orton with the Canadian Army Podcast. Defence Research and Development Canada or DRDC is the brains behind a lot of the innovation that happens in the Canadian Armed Forces, solving problems and coming up with interesting technologies for use in soldiers' day to day lives. Here Here to talk to us about that is Jean-François Morel, who is the director general, research and development, science and engineering at DRDC. Welcome to the Podcast!
J-F Morel:Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Capt Orton:So here's a big question to start off. Why does science matter in warfare?
J-F Morel:Well, science matters in warfare for many reasons. If you think about this over the course of history, warfare has always been a place for innovation where new techniques or new technologies are introduced in the battlefield all the time. There's many, many examples. So you can think of the introduction of airplanes during World War I or precision guided munitions and weapons during the Gulf War. Or more recently, as we look at what's going on in Ukraine right now, the massive use of drones was really changing how the soldiers are operating in the battlefield.
J-F Morel:So looking at the science and at the research and development is really critical on many levels. It's to ensure that Canada can stay current in the face of the evolving threat that we see in the security environment. It's also essential to anticipate and prepare for the future threats and challenge that Canada will face while deploying on operational missions. And finally, it's also extremely important for Canada to remain on par and interoperable with allies.
Capt Orton:And so how does DRDC do that for the Army?
J-F Morel:So DRDC has various ways of conducting research and development. So right from the get go, I would say there's nothing that we do alone. DRDC is an organization that is really involved with partners all along the way. It starts first and foremost with the Canadian military, where we work with, our military colleagues to, understand their requirements in terms of research and development. And then with our staff of experts, of scientists, we try to transform these requirements into key scientific questions, key scientific problems that we can tackle and address to help resolve problems that the military may face or questions that they may have.
J-F Morel:So our role is really to tap into our vast networks of partnerships that we have both nationally with industry, academia and Canada, but also with partners within the 5 Eyes, for example, or within NATO or in many other bilateral or multilateral partnerships agreements that we have. And really the goal that, what we're trying to achieve by doing this is trying to find the best solutions through our scientific work, through the the R&D work that we conduct to help resolve these, problems.
Capt Orton:If I understand correctly from what you said, in a way, DRDC is an interface between the military and the world at large in terms of fighting solutions, for lack of better term, battlefield problems.
J-F Morel:Absolutely. So really, the military will understand the problems that they face. It can be through an exercise. It can be through being deployed in theater. And then it will come to us saying, okay, we face this problem right now.
J-F Morel:We have this challenge. Can you help? But defining the problem is actually pretty important because having the right line of inquiries is essential for any scientist to be able to find the right answers. So the role of DRDC is really to be the science integrators into all of this, is trying to channel all the knowledge that exist both internally within our own research centers that we have at DRDC, as well as tapping into the vast amount of knowledge that exists, you know, in the civilian society. So universities, academia, industry in Canada, or within our partners as well and try to bring this back to find the best solutions for the Canadian Armed Forces.
Capt Orton:Can you explain why the military does this research internally?
J-F Morel:It really requires a lot of expertise to be able to do this. Just to give you an example, when we hire scientists at DRDC and we have about 700 scientists and more science workers even because we also have engineers that work with us, very experienced technologists as well and many other science workers. But when we hire scientists at DRDC, we always say we hire scientists and then we develop them into defense scientists because it's really to transfer the knowledge that someone can acquire in university, in academia, for example, by earning a PhD or a postdoctoral degree. And then really trying to apply that knowledge to very, very specific defense problems. And just to give you one case in point, we have scientists at DRDC who work in the area of, chemical and biological defense.
J-F Morel:As you can imagine, this is not something that you can learn in school. Even in the best university in Canada or in our allies, you know chemical and biological warfare is not a subject of study of inquiry necessarily. So this is something really that needs to be developed internally. It's an area of expertise really that is extremely specialized and also governed by very very strict regulations and laws even in Canada with a lot of oversight. So we need to do that correctly.
J-F Morel:So when we hire scientists and science workers, really they spend years in developing the level of expertise that they need to be able to do the integration of science for the Canadian Armed Forces. Understanding the problems, understanding the military life, what it is also to be deployed in operations, and then applying the scientific knowledge to try to solve these problems.
Capt Orton:You said that, you have roughly 700 scientists. How is DRDC divided and how big is it in general?
J-F Morel:So DRDC writ large is an organization of about 1500 personnel. Most of our scientists work in our research centers. So I'm responsible in my, day to day role for the management of 6 of our 7th research centers at DRDC. So we have research centers in Halifax, Then in, Valcartier in Quebec City, we have 2 research centers located here in the national capital region in Ottawa. We have one in Toronto and we have one in, Suffield.
J-F Morel:On top of that, we have also a research center called the Center For Security Science that is dedicating its resources mainly to help with the National Safety and Security Departments. And it's also located here, in Ottawa. So most of our scientific workforce is, working out of these research centers.
Capt Orton:So with all this horsepower, what projects are you working on right now that are interesting?
J-F Morel:Oh, there's so many. There's so many. Perfect. But I would say there's several areas of studies right now that we are doing that are particularly interesting and stimulating. I would say, for example, we are investing significantly right now in better understanding autonomous weapon system and how they could be applied in the military, in the Canadian Armed Forces.
J-F Morel:So both in terms of what types of capabilities that we need, but also how to defend against the threat that they may present. We are doing research as well in many areas related to, quantum research is something that not only us here in Canada, but many of our allies are quite interested in because quantum science, essentially the the advancement in quantum physics have really opened up the door to, many new applications that can greatly increase, the capabilities that, we currently have. It can be in terms of sensing, in terms of computing that will allow for potentially a revolution in terms of, of defense capabilities. There's many other problems as well in terms of, supporting ongoing capital acquisition projects. And our role in this is really providing the scientific advice to the project team.
J-F Morel:So making sure, for example, that the requirements are well defined, they are based on the most recent advance in in science, our most, refined understanding of the technologies. From time to time playing the, honest broker role with industry as well, testing industry claims, making sure that they are on par with, what they're claiming, to be. Once again, to ensure that the capabilities that will be acquired by the Canadian Armed Forces is what it needs essentially. So that's a very, very important role that we play. And also we are doing many research that help essentially with the decision making of the Canadian Armed Forces and of the Department of National Defense.
J-F Morel:Just to give you an example, in the context of the army, for instance, think about any major defense acquisition projects that the army is currently running. Buying new, armored combat vehicles, for example, or or trucks to support the troops. So defining the right fleet mix can become a very, very challenging problem Based on the number of personnel that will be using it, the location of the base where these, platforms will be located, the maintenance schedules, all of that combined with the budget that is available, it becomes a real optimization problem. And we have specialists who can come in and provide the best advice by running various studies to inform the project teams on, the the best fleet mix.
Capt Orton:How does the science side of the house interact with the troops on the ground to develop these requirements?
Capt Orton:Does the commander show up and say, I want a truck that does this, make it happen. Or is it more like approach from your side where you come up with ideas and then present them and there's an interaction there? How do these two things connect together?
J-F Morel:The process is fairly well established now and the way it's run is each and every year we go back to, let's say the Canadian Army or any other organization within National Defense or the Canadian Armed Forces and ask for their list of requirements. And they engage us, and it's a discussion really. So it's not just a list of requirements, it's really a discussion so we understand how we can best respond to the problems that are identified. Because at times, we simply don't have either the resources or the capacity to address some of the problems. Or it may simply be more rapid for, let's say, the army to get an answer directly by engaging industry than going to an R&D organization like ours.
J-F Morel:So it's an ongoing discussions that we have, mainly with the force development community to try to refine the problems that we will tackle. And then we develop the various R&D initiatives that we need to put in place to answer these questions.
Capt Orton:So basically, you'll sit down and be like, okay. This is fairly straightforward. Not a lot of science required to solve the problem of we need fuel trucks, so we just maybe engage industry and get the fuel trucks or whatever. But on another hand, it's like development of counter drone weaponry. It's like, okay, we can't just go out and buy that off the shelf.
Capt Orton:Research is required. We need some informed decisions on how to do this. R&D help us out, and then we can solve the problem.
J-F Morel:Absolutely. Frankly, if you think about this, the role that we play is really divided in different type of research. So there's the research that is essentially to address some quick hits. It can be a problem that is faced in an operational theater and then we receive a request saying, hey, can you help us address this problem? Or we've seen this challenge with an existing capability, for instance, can DRDC look into this and try to map out the solution?
J-F Morel:We receive these requests fairly often, and they can result from, you know, the introduction of a new capability in the Canadian Armed Forces, and then there's things that needs to be fixed, let's say with these new capabilities. And then we work very closely with industry to, to try to find solutions. Or it can be that through deployment there's something new that arise that was not foreseen and we need to figure out a way of addressing some new problems. And so these requests we receive very often and they are common. So those are the the quick hits.
J-F Morel:Then they are the most important research of course that we do is turning to the future. What are the future threats? What are the future challenges that the Canadian Armed Forces will face? And this is where we are investing most of our efforts. We are the organization at National Defense that is really focusing on the future and trying to define where do we need to go to help address the challenges of the future security environment.
J-F Morel:What are the threats that will be emerging and how can we apply our expertise and our scientific knowledge to find solutions to those.
J-F Morel:And solutions can come in various ways. It can go from simple adjustments to tactics and procedures and concepts, new way of training. So it's not necessarily a technological response all the time. So that's at one end of the spectrum.
J-F Morel:And at the other end of the spectrum, it's completely different and it will be the development of a full prototype that can be tested and hopefully transferred into a full operational capability for the Canadian Armed Forces.
Capt Orton:When you're looking at the future, there's popular technologies that are popping up all over the place that surely drive your research. Like, for example, AI or 3D printing, which is popular technologies that are emergent. How do you handle those and how does that figure into your R&D plan? Do you have a section that's basically dedicated to keeping an eye on emergent technologies and be like, we gotta get on top of this right now.
J-F Morel:So our scientists are really the best place to assess the field of science and where it's going. So we have really, really deep expert in many areas. We are keeping an eye on all of these new technologies that you identified and many, many others. We also have a small cell within DRDC that is doing the technological and scientific forecast. So not only what we are seeing now in the marketplace, but those that are really looking as science fiction for us now.
J-F Morel:But potentially in 20 or 30 years, we'll be very real in terms of applications. So we are keeping an eye on all of this. And once again, this is not applications. So we are keeping an eye on all of this. And once again, this is not work that we are doing alone.
J-F Morel:We are doing this at all time in close partnerships, not only with our allies, Five Eyes, NATO, but also by keeping a good network of partners within academia and elsewhere. We are also using and benefiting from the input of the intelligence community on this, because lots of research that we do at DRDC, and this goes back to one question that you were asking before, why do we need to do that internally? It's also because lots of research that we do is classified. Because it is applied to military problems, we need to be quite careful about what we share externally, and we need to be able to conduct the research and secure facilities that we have at DRDC. So we do research at the secret and even top secret level that, cannot be widely shared, in the open.
J-F Morel:So that's also very important.
Capt Orton:What is the most secret thing you can talk about on this podcast?
J-F Morel:No. Just check it. I'm not gonna talk about that.
Capt Orton:That would have been a good one though. Yep. Alright. Maybe a little bit of an easy opening question at the beginning there is what role does science play? Because everybody knows arms race.
Capt Orton:Like, somebody comes up with a better piece of armor, so somebody comes up with a better, you know, rifle or whatever, and it's just ongoing escalations. But something that we learned about in a previous podcast on human performance is that research and science doesn't have to be limited to technological arms race items. What other subjects are you looking at outside of that technological weapon spectrum and equipment and vehicles and stuff?
J-F Morel:You're absolutely right, our expertise is not only related to technological advancements. So for example at our Toronto Research Centre it is a centre that has a wide array of expertise in human domains. So we have psychologists that work there, political scientists, people that are really looking at how the various military technologies are influenced by the operators, by the human behind the technology as well. So just to give you an example, when you think about a new command and control system that would be very complex and integrating lots of data and you have an operator that is receiving this massive amount of data and information. So how is the operator reacting?
J-F Morel:And how can we ensure from a human perspective that the person is capable of managing that level of information. Yeah. And using it in the most effective manner. So we have research in these domains to help maximize, the impact. So that's one example.
J-F Morel:Other example is as simple as, you know, clothing. We have lots of research to support Arctic missions. So what is the best arctic cloning that, soldiers can have? There's technological developments in gear that are happening all the time. But how do we test and how do we ensure that these new materials, these new jackets, for example, are better and will be better suited for operating into an arctic environment, for instance, while maintaining also other key requirements that military must have.
J-F Morel:And it ranged from camouflage to the the capacity to, evolve in various, situation, mobility, all of this. So those are the type of research that we are also doing.
Capt Orton:So with all the things that we've kinda talked about up to this point, what are some of the army priorities that you're looking at right now?
J-F Morel:In terms of, the army right now, our focus is very much supporting ongoing major defense acquisition projects. We are providing scientific advice, for example, to, the Joint Fires Modernization Project in particular and several other command and control projects that are led by the Canadian Army. We've been fully involved as well in trying to define other type of capabilities that may be required in assisting in, projects related to night vision, for instance, is one. And, there are many others. I mean, the level of, effort that we are doing is quite varied and it ranges from supporting the Canadian military and addressing issues related to mild traumatic brain injury to defining high end technological capabilities that will be required in the future.
Capt Orton:Can you explain a little bit what the Joint Fires Project is a little bit?
J-F Morel:So the Joint Fires Modernization Project is, a command and control project that is led by the Canadian Army to really fuse and integrate a whole range of various information to provide a picture of the operating environment when joint fires need to be used. And the role of DRDC in this has been to develop several prototypes that help with the visualization essentially of data that can come from the battlefield and try to test how they can be best integrated together once again so that operators can use that information the most efficiently possible.
Capt Orton:I get it. I'm gonna throw back a little bit to one of our previous podcasts, which is the Command and Control podcast. If you wanna pause here and go and listen to that and come back to this, but the army speaking to the air force, to getting bombs in a certain location, and then getting the artillery involved, and you got machine guns and troops on the ground and all of that. That's a lot of moving parts, and it's hard to get everybody doing the same thing at the same time. Even if you have radios and digital networks and all this stuff, putting all that information together, which I think is commonly known as targeting in the army environment, is a lot of work.
Capt Orton:Dozens of people sitting around maps and stuff, figuring it all out with notebooks. So having that in software and having access to that in remote environments, it's gotta be a challenge to get that all moving. So that's what that is basically, if I
J-F Morel:understand correctly. That's the goal of the project. And the role of DRDC into this is once again trying to help the project team define how this can be done. So we can apply scientific knowledge that is quite varied. Once again, it includes people with a background in computer science and engineering, political science and various other domains as well.
J-F Morel:Trying to understand how this information can be put together and then take into account all this variety of data that can be collected so you have at the end of it the most efficient decision.
Capt Orton:User accessibility is something that can't be overrated because a lot of soldiers spend a lot of time learning all sorts of things, how to drive vehicles, how to do maintenance on turrets, weapon maintenance, drill, leadership, personnel administration, coordinating attacks, and all of the stuff. And there's only so much time in your day that you can spend becoming a subject matter expert on some software or whatever, so it has to be user accessible. You can't spend weeks weeks weeks training on something because there's other things happening. Becoming a subject matter expert in command line interfaces is not something you can just do. So having somebody present you with a piece of equipment that's easy to use, that you can just look at and immediately, you know, k.
Capt Orton:This is the range for my artillery. This is my range for my tanks. This is my range for this. Everything displaying on one page could be really handy. But, otherwise, it's markers and, like, hours and hours of drawing and figuring it all out.
Capt Orton:So having access to that and then handy dandy little tablet or whatever can really make a difference between spending 17 hours figuring something out in 27 minutes.
J-F Morel:Yeah. You're absolutely right there. And we often are able also to provide that type of advice by, supporting exercise in various ways by sending scientists, for example, to be, observers in exercise and providing some advice as to how we can get the most out of it in the future and how to, help design the most efficient synthetic training environment. So this is also key in terms of the the scientific advice that we can provide.
Capt Orton:You know, I feel like one of the challenges of doing this podcast in particular is there's a lot of things that are being worked on that we can't necessarily talk about because they're classified at different levels.
Capt Orton:But are there any interesting things that soldiers would be interested in now that you're working on that you can talk about?
J-F Morel:Oh, there's lots of things that, I would like to to talk about more, but I can on a podcast setting. But one capability in one area of research that, we are involved in that is really pretty interesting in terms of, applications and pretty important is high energy weapons, essentially lasers that, will help address a whole range of issues. So we are working on right now the application of lasers for counter improvised explosive devices, for example, using lasers to detonate explosives in a more efficient manner. It's also a key application that we can see to address the counter UAS threat. It's not easy to shoot down these drones that you see everywhere that are coming up.
J-F Morel:They they can be very small, very mobile, very rapid, and it might be one of the key application is having, high energy weapons as a way of defeating this threat. So this is an area of inquiry that we are absolutely pursuing within DRDC. So the science is well understood now. The issue is one of how do you transform this into an operational capability.
Capt Orton:Yeah. The first challenge is to figure out how to do it. Then the second challenge is to figure out how to build it.
J-F Morel:Exactly. So you need high power sources, lots of power, and you need also some very refined optics as well to build your systems. So all of this needs to be put together in the right way to have the effect that you need on the battlefield.
Capt Orton:I've also heard some pretty cool innovations in the space of night vision where things like augmented reality are coming into place to highlight items and things like that. For those that don't know, I guess, augmented reality is kind of an overlay, like you see almost in science fiction where it identifies things and tells you what they are or whatever. I imagine that's also happening somewhere deep in a lab somewhere.
J-F Morel:Absolutely. This is something that we are involved in as well. And just to understand it, think about any virtual reality headsets that you can buy just for fun right now, right? To play video games or or all of this. So it's a little bit the same and apply these same principles essentially to night vision for the battlefield.
J-F Morel:But then there's the technological aspect that goes into it that is very interesting and very important but soon after there's also how the operator will react with this capability. So we are also doing studies on okay can you wear this for a long time? Is it something that will create for example sickness?
Capt Orton:Ah yeah motion sickness.
J-F Morel:Motion sickness or other limiting factors frankly for an operator in theater. If you put something that gives you wonderful 3D pictures and and all of that, but you can only wear it five minutes at a time, it's not an advantage.
Capt Orton:Well, there's also the size piece. I mean, I I think pretty much any soldiers use a night vision monocular at some point in time was walking through the bushes and almost have their head taken off because the thing sticks out and it gets caught on everything. So there's design and dimensions that also need to be taken into account. Absolutely. Can't just be walking around with a giant VR headset on all the time.
J-F Morel:Exactly. So our role is essentially trying to prove the concept, developing the the prototypes that can then be further developed by industry.
Capt Orton:So, you know, the ballast space is pretty big, pretty complex. There's a lot of different technologies that are coming out. What direction should we be looking in in order to make sure that we have the best gear to fight for the future?
J-F Morel:Yeah. There's many areas of science that are actually attracting a lot of attention, not only from us at DRDC, but also from many of our allies. One area that I would suggest we need to invest in and look into for the future is synthetic biology. This is really to simplify the design and the building of biological elements that do not exist in nature. And the engineering power and new development in biology now allow us to really create biological systems and elements that can really have a game changing effect on on capabilities.
J-F Morel:You can think about, for example, new biological elements that would greatly enhance or provide new ways of sensing, threats in the environment. Plants that can change color, as an example, if toxic gas is released or things of that nature. This is an area that many of our allies are considering as absolutely essential to look into for, defense capabilities in an area that I'm convinced we need to invest in as well.
Capt Orton:Yeah. I heard about, plants that, change color when there's land mines underneath them and things like that, which is pretty interesting. Indeed. Yeah. And pretty useful especially given the big challenges of battlefield cleanup which that's the thing that's always ongoing.
J-F Morel:That's an area of research that will be by all account massive in the next few decades and that really are promising a lot in terms of, defense capabilities.
Capt Orton:That's very cool. Science is booming.
J-F Morel:Yes, indeed.
Capt Orton:Thanks for, coming on the Podcast.
J-F Morel:Thank you. It was a real pleasure to be with you today.
Capt Orton:I appreciate your time.
J-F Morel:Thanks.
J-F Morel:Alright.
Capt Orton:Well, that was Jean Francois Maurel, who's the director general research and development, science and engineering at DRDC. And I'm Captain Adam Orton for the Canadian Army Podcast.
Capt Orton:Orton out.