Chatting with the Commander

Change seems to be the only constant within the ranks of the Royal Canadian Air Force—except maybe for aircraft, with which the RCAF sets longevity records. It’s a paradigm LGen Yvan Blondin inherited when he assumed command in September 2012, and one which he now passes on to his successor, LGen Mike Hood , who officially became RCAF Commander on July 9, 2015.

Blondin, a veteran fighter pilot, has handed the RCAF Standard to Hood, whose promotion was announced by the Department of National Defence in February, and whose career track as an air combat systems officer included a stint as the RCAF’s deputy commander. Hood’s most recent assignment was director of staff, strategic joint staff, which determines training needs and priorities across the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), potentially positioning him to turn the corner on some of the RCAF’s aging but busy assets.

“I was lucky to be here in a period of high operational tempo,” Blondin told Skies on the eve of his retirement from a 35-year career. “We became something else: not an Air Force in training, but an Air Force in operation.” He said that came with a new recognition of, and confidence in, the entire CAF role at home and abroad.

“I was glad to be here for that,” he said. “All of us in the Air Force kind of love this. We’re something that we were not 10 years ago, and we’re very proud of that. Mike is coming in at a time when I don’t see him doing a lot of changes. He is being pushed into an operational mode; he needs to maintain this—and he will. He has a lot of experience in NDHQ, in the system, and I think he’s going to bring a good influence to how we mature.”

During Blondin’s three-year tenure, which is about normal in duration, the RCAF has enhanced some of its capabilities with the acquisition of new CH-147F Chinook heavy-lift helicopters and a CC-177 Globemaster III strategic airlifter, both Boeing platforms, and has extensively upgraded its Lockheed CP-140 Aurora intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft with the goal of keeping that fleet in service until 2030.

But, Blondin acknowledged, “there are still programs that we need to push.” The RCAF took delivery of six Sikorsky CH-148 Cyclone maritime helicopters on June 19, 2015. While the Cyclones are set to replace the fleet of 50-year- old CH-124 Sea Kings, the RCAF now is looking ahead to other priorities. They include replacements for its Boeing CF-188 Hornet fighters, its BAE Systems CT-155 Hawk lead- in trainers, and possibly its Airbus CC-150 Polaris tankers.

Then, there is the life extension of the RCAF’s fleet of AgustaWestland CH-149 Cormorant search and rescue helicopters (along with a potential fleet expansion through the conversion of VH-71 Kestrel variants purchased as spares from the United States Marine Corps), not to mention replacements for both the Bell CH-146 Griffon multi-use helicopters which entered service in the mid- 1990s, and the 50-year-old de Havilland Canada CC-115 Buffalo fixed-wing search and rescue (FWSAR) aircraft.

The need for Griffon replacements was highlighted by the fact that even stripped out, they were inadequate for “hot and high” operations in Afghanistan. “We flew a lot of hours . . . in an airplane that was not designed for that environment,” Blondin admitted. “It was tough on the helicopters and
when they came back there was a lot of broken stuff.” Bell Helicopter Textron Canada is now in the early stages of a refit program to keep the Griffons flying until 2030.

“And fixed-wing SAR is not out of the woods,” Blondin said, with a request for proposals posted earlier this year for industry response by late September. “And, the next fighter needs to come in!” he said. “We’re all waiting for that because I need a new trainer. I can reduce a lot of training on the next fighter if I have the right trainer. I need the decision and then I need to acquire that new airplane for training.

I need to get that new refueller, but I need a decision, and
I need to sequence everything else. So, there are a lot of challenges on the acquisition side. Mike is probably ideally suited to come in and put a lot of effort into all this, because I think the operational side is going to carry on.”

Operations has been Blondin’s forte. He was among the first RCAF pilots to fly the new CF-188 Hornet with 433 Tactical Fighter Squadron (TFS) in Bagotville, Que., in 1988. He assumed command of 425 TFS at Bagotville in 2000, a role which saw him flying in support of Allied forces in the former Yugoslavia. From there, he became a member of
the Canadian staff at NORAD headquarters in 2002, and Commander of 3 Wing Bagotville in 2004, before being deployed to Afghanistan as director of staff at the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, and then returning home to become deputy commander force generation at 1 Canadian Air Division (1 CAD) in Winnipeg in 2007. Between then and his promotion to RCAF commander, he became commander of 1 CAD and assistant chief of the air staff.

It’s been a “roller-coaster” of “high tempo followed by reductions,” he said of the last six or seven years, citing Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan, various “security events” at home such as multinational economic summits and the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, as well as disaster relief missions to Haiti after the latest earthquake and Southeast Asia after destructive storms and a tsunami. More recently, fighters and support personnel were deployed to Eastern Europe and back to the Middle East, this time flying missions over Iraq from a base in Kuwait.

All of this evidently made the RCAF realize it needed to emphasize operations over training. “When Afghanistan and Libya were over, the reduction in tempo coincided with a reduction in budget, so of course we reduced the flying,” Blondin said. “But that didn’t last. Europe came up with Ukraine and then there were the crises in Iraq and Syria,
so the uptempo came back. But, we were a lot more ready than five years before. It was kind of tight, but it was a pleasant surprise to see that we could do this. The uptempo is much easier to sustain right now because we’ve been preparing for this and changing the way we do business. I’m very, happily, comfortable.”

With all that going on, could the RCAF have handled another tasking? “Right now, with the operations we’ve got, sustaining the operations in the Middle East and what we’ve got in Canada, I told them that if there’s another tsunami somewhere, the government could count on us,” Blondin replied. “It depends on which machine is going to be asked. If we need to sustain another fighter operation, an armed operation, then it becomes more difficult because now it’s a logistics chain of maintaining everything. But if it’s a different fleet, it wouldn’t be a problem.”

The yearly flying rate (YFR) for RCAF pilots has gone up and down like a Snowbirds demonstration team flight plan over the years, as various governments’ budget priorities shifted. There are no complaints today, even though in
the post-Afghanistan years, the government began driving down its annual deficit. With no operational uptempo foreseen in the immediate future, the RCAF agreed at the time that it could reduce its YFR while maintaining its force generation capability.

“But if it (the government) needed to use the capability, more money would be needed to get the flying hours,” Blondin pointed out. “It was a challenge, but it didn’t
last long. The first year we went to the reduction mode, probably halfway through, we started getting tasked to do more operations. This year, the YFR is back to where it was three years ago, so there are no complaints.”

Fighter-bomber missions such as the latest one in Iraq involve something no other fleet has: significant munitions costs. Blondin said those are managed by Canadian Joint Operations Command (CJOC), whose commanding officer, LGen Jonathan Vance, an Army careerist, has just been made chief of the defence staff (CDS), replacing LGen Tom Lawson.

“CJOC takes care of operations, but usually there’s a reserve that we need to maintain to ensure that we’ve got enough to start an operation,” Blondin explained. “When we start an operation, we estimate how much we’re going to consume and we count on CJOC to ensure contracts are in place and we buy whatever we need.”

The RCAF boss said he has no issues with a former infantry officer as CDS. “Jon certainly has a lot
of experience through the Army side and through Afghanistan, but in the last couple of years, with the air operation we’ve had, he’s become an expert. He’s had
so many briefings on what we can do and can’t do and the subtleties of how you push a machine in Ukraine or around Europe. And CAOC (the Combined Air Operations Centre for the Denmark-based NATO air policing mission) has worked so well, Jon Vance has become a great joint commander and I certainly have no concerns about what he’s going to be doing with the Air Force.”

Blondin said he was unaware of any negative impact on RCAF operations due to the government’s budget constraints (a promised increase to three per cent from two per cent in DND’s budget won’t kick in until the 2017-2018 fiscal year). “There is always some pressure, to ensure that people are taking care of it,” he replied. But I haven’t heard of any problem, of having to slow down because we don’t have munitions.” He agreed that having given the RCAF the job, the government pretty well had to give it what it needed to do it this time.
“I remember some issues during Libya, when we went in so quickly that the reserves were low and the guys had to scramble to find enough weapons to sustain the operations,” he said.

Finding and training pilots to fly those operations can be a challenge. Blondin recalled briefing LGen Angus Watt, his 2007 to 2009 predecessor. “I told him, ‘Boss, we’re in big trouble; when you look at the age spread, there are so many people who are going to be retiring in the next five to 10 years, and we need to get so many young people in, a lot more than we did before, and you’re going to lose a lot more than you did before.”

The spread between low and high experience was set to shift, requiring Watt and his senior staff, including Blondin, to reassess how the RCAF handled aircrew recruitment and retention. “We needed to get back to basics, to ensure training was done well, and we needed to slow down,” Blondin recalled advising Watt. “That was just before the peak with Afghanistan, Haiti, Libya and all that. All of a sudden, the operational tempo goes through the roof and we start flying with a bunch of new kids. It’s been like that for the last five years; a gradual reduction in average age and experience as operations increased exponentially.”

But, he apparently needn’t have worried. “When I look at the flight safety side and I look at the last three or four years, they have been the best years in our history,” he said, ‘touching wood’ on his table. “It’s been safe, it’s been efficient, every operation is successful and I’m not losing people.” His attrition rate through retirements is sitting below six per cent, compared with more like eight per cent CAF-wide.

“My production rate is where I wanted to have it, compared to four years ago when we couldn’t produce enough pilots. We’ve been getting back online, gradually increasing the number in the last few years. So I don’t have an attrition problem. Nor is retention a big issue or a problem, but it’s certainly something we stay focused on.”

Increased use of simulators has been a key to building skills, even though Blondin admitted that he was not “a fan” at the outset. Time in a simulator meant less time in a real aircraft. “But certainly, as the commander—and that started in Winnipeg—I began to appreciate the cost and the time you need for training.”

Then, there’s the fact that every hour an aircraft flies reduces its eventual operational life. But Blondin didn’t have the infrastructure at 1 CAD, or a budget to address the shortcoming. “I remember doing briefings on needing more simulators; and then, getting to Ottawa, saying we need to get more into this business.”

The case was self-evident, and the RCAF began developing long-range goals which have already yielded full simulator programs at the Chinook and Hercules bases in Petawawa and Trenton, Ont., respectively. “You look
at where you are, where you need to be, and whether the end-state is for every fleet to have the right simulators.” Those could range from full-motion units from CAE Inc. to software on laptop computers. “Time is a factor in what we want to do, and depending on whether we can get the investment early enough, it make sense. Then you put all that in the bureaucracy and hope you can get the stuff.

“Every new fleet that we buy includes a simulator,” continued Blondin. If we’ve got a good blueprint right from the start, you can influence what and how it’s going to be implemented in your simulation network.” It’s easier with new aircraft. “I have more of a problem with the older fleets to say ‘that simulator, that contract, does not speak the same technological language as this one,’” he said. “So, I need to modify it and make a decision about how much it’s going to cost. There’s a new fighter coming in, whether it’s the F-35 or something else, and it’s going to come with the simulation and we’re already prepared to say ‘this is what’s required.’”

It hasn’t all been smooth flying with simulator proposals. There has been pushback because simulators apparently were not seen by budget planners as “an investment, which I find too bad,” Blondin said. “If I had my own business and somebody came up with a plan to reduce my overhead, I’d see this as an investment.” By extending the operational life of actual fleets, he reiterated, the RCAF will save money in the long run. That being said, the installations at Petawawa and Trenton signalled a shift in attitude.

But Blondin indicated that he was still frustrated by lingering bureaucratic inertia. “I find it difficult, but then I’ve always been impatient,” he laughed, when it was suggested that fighter pilots are genetically impatient. “Nothing gets done fast enough for me. If I find something that’s good, I want it now.”