Inflection Point 2025

Introduction

The Canadian Army is at an inflection point: the Army we have is not the Army we need.

Inflection Point 2025 signals a generational shift in how all elements of the Canadian Army (CA) will be structured, equipped, trained, sustained, and integrated to generate modern land forces for employment in Canada and around the world in competition, crisis, or conflict. This document is a change agenda, consolidating recent modernization gains and defining the steps that will build the ready, resilient, relevant and lethal land component of the joint force. The scale of this modernization effort is large, and the timelines are ambitious – but they must be.

The CA is rapidly modernizing to be ready to detect, deter, defend against, and defeat accelerating threats to Canada and our national interests. Our stretched force, purpose built for employment on “contribution warfare”^{Footnote 1} missions for the last several decades, has resulted in an Army that is currently postured for presence in competition, but challenged for crisis and unprepared for conflict due to the lack of critical enablers, sustainment, depth, and focus.

In an increasingly volatile and unpredictable global security environment, the CA must be prepared to conduct Major Combat Operations (MCO) as a core component of its strategic posture. MCO are large-scale, high-intensity military operations involving joint and combined arms forces engaged in sustained combat against peer or near-peer adversaries, aimed at achieving decisive strategic or operational objectives. While Canada has long contributed to peace support and capacity building missions, recent global conflicts have underscored the enduring relevance of conventional warfare at scale. Readiness for MCO not only deters potential adversaries but also enables the CA to respond rapidly to crises. An Army structured, trained, and equipped for MCO is essential to safeguarding Canada’s interests and contributing meaningfully to global security.

Building upon previous and emerging Government of Canada (GoC), and Department of National Defence/Canadian Armed Forces (DND/CAF) guidance, and prior CA modernization efforts^{Footnote 2}, Inflection Point 2025 is the first step in the process that will deliver the Army’s continuous approach to modernization with a view to delivering a force postured and prepared for MCO. Following in short succession, a Canadian Army Modernization Order (CAMO) will define the lines of effort, objectives, effects, and high-level tasks required to achieve the strategy’s ends. Completing the cycle, Master Implementation Directives will deliver the specific tasks with associated resources, accountabilities, responsibilities, and authorities to execute the changes that will be applied across the Army over the coming years. This strategy and related documents will be updated at regular intervals to ensure the Army adapts to changes in the environment, exploits opportunities to accelerate, and aligns with evolving Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) and Allied concepts in various stages of development.

The Canadian Army must act now—not only to keep pace with the changing environment, but to shape it. As the CAF’s largest element, the Army is our first line of response at home and abroad. It is the most dispersed, the most visible, and the most people-centric—because warfare, for all its advanced systems, remains a deeply human endeavour. Courage, leadership, cohesion, and fighting spirit cannot be outsourced or automated.

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The Case for Change

The Army’s modernization efforts are grounded in a thorough understanding of the evolving global security landscape and a frank assessment of current capability and capacity. The world is shifting—dangerously, rapidly, irreversibly. We are witnessing a moment of strategic disruption. The rules-based international order is under pressure from authoritarian regimes willing to use force. Climate-driven instability is redrawing the map of insecurity. Emerging technologies—autonomy, cyber, quantum, space, and AI—are converging to reshape the character of warfare.

This demands a fundamental shift in how we prepare for and conduct operations. The growing threat of great power conflicts and the re-emergence of persistent state-on-state competition as a dominant trend drive the need for the CA to be ready for MCO.

Canada is facing its most significant risk of entanglement in major international conflict since the end of the Cold War. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought renewed urgency to the threat of large-scale warfare, while persistent instability in regions such as the Middle East continues to pose both direct and indirect challenges to Canadian security and prosperity. In this evolving global context, the CA must be prepared for the possibility of high-intensity conflict in the near to medium term. This demands a focused effort to reduce strategic dependencies and to develop sovereign capabilities that enable the Army to detect, deter, and respond to threats across the full spectrum of conflict.

The Arctic is central to Canada’s defence and sovereignty. It is also a region of increasing geopolitical interest and vulnerability. An increasing number of state actors are expanding their presence in the region, competing for access to emerging trade routes and untapped natural resources while advancing Arctic-capable military capabilities. These developments pose a direct challenge to Canada’s sovereignty and national security. To safeguard our northern territory and broader strategic interests, the CA must modernize and sustain a credible, adaptable, and persistent presence in the Arctic, ensuring it can deter aggression, support interagency partners, and respond effectively to emerging threats.^{Footnote 3}

The CA must be able to project and sustain operations in the Arctic with soldiers trained and equipped for mobility, survivability, lethality, and persistence. As a priority, the CA must be prepared to operate anywhere in Canada no matter how remote, for as long as necessary, to complete assigned tasks, assert sovereignty, and protect national interests.^{Footnote 4}

The CA’s combat capability is currently inadequate for MCO. The CA’s combat force structure progresses from foundational tactical elements to larger, more complex formations, each with distinct scale, capabilities, and limitations. At the most fundamental level, the combat team is a sub-unit-sized force of approximately 180 soldiers, ideally comprising mechanized infantry and tanks, crucial for developing basic combat proficiency. However, these small elements are insufficient for high value war fighting roles (HVWR)^{Footnote 5} due to inherent limitations in mass, firepower, protection, manoeuvre, and pan-domain integration in the contemporary operating environment.

Building on these, the battle group (BG) is a task-tailored unit sized combination of combat, combat support, and combat service support (CSS) organizations, augmented by specialists from other elements, designed to provide essential combat functions including firepower, mobility, protection, sustainment, and command and control for specific objectives. BGs are in the order of 1,000 personnel and, despite their utility, are no longer sufficient for HVWR, as they lack the scale needed for modern pan-domain integration and concentrated effects. This is the level that the CA is currently resourced for and independently capable of fielding.

The core fighting formation for the contemporary battlespace is the brigade (Bde). Typically consisting of approximately 5,000 soldiers, the Bde is organized into as many as eight major units, including artillery, armoured, infantry, engineer, signal, and CSS elements. This echelon is considered the "lowest level of headquarters capable of integrating and synchronizing joint effects in pan-domain operations”^{Footnote 6} and is the primary level at which the CA must be able to fight. Though some emerging capability has recently been generated for Bde command and control (C2) and enablement, the CA is currently unable to deploy and sustain a fully capable independent Bde for any length of time.

Sustaining a Bde fight in MCO requires the depth, reach, protection, and firepower of the division (Div) level. The Div is typically a large, self-sustaining formation, in the order of 15,000 soldiers, capable of conducting independent or semi-independent combined arms operations over extended periods and across broad areas of operations.

As the demand for modern military capabilities grows, the CA can no longer rely on allies to provide critical combat enablers such as ground-based air defence (GBAD), self propelled artillery, long-range sensors, precision fires, and sustainment at scale. These decisive Bde and Div level capabilities are fielded in limited quantity by our allies due to their cost and complexity yet remain critical requirements for contemporary operations.

The pace of modern threats creates an advantage for militaries that are deployed early, at the right scale and with the right capabilities. The CA cannot afford to wait until the outbreak of armed conflict to begin scaling up and building modern capabilities to fight. The CA must prepare for MCO at the Div level, where the full range of modern tactical capabilities are best organized and synchronized.^{Footnote 7}

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The Army We Have

The Army’s current force structure is organized around static regional boundaries, with four Div headquarter organizations responsible for the entire remit of functions within their areas, and a training command. This model, while effective for managing administrative responsibilities and tasks, breeds inefficiencies, blurs accountability, and limits operational agility, posing significant challenges to the CA’s ability to force generate for domestic, expeditionary, and contingency operations.

The Army of 2025 faces critical challenges across the Personnel, Equipment, Training, and Sustainment (PETS) system. Decades of optimizing for counterinsurgency and peace support operations have left gaps in heavy combined arms capability, long-range fires, and sustainment. Infantry battalions remain understaffed, artillery regiments are overmatched and rely on aging towed systems, our remaining armoured regiment has a single squadron of serviceable and aging tanks, engineers lack key breaching and gap crossing equipment, and there are very limited quantities of key force multipliers like anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM), loitering munitions (LM), drones and counter-drone capabilities. The span of command, geographic dispersion of forces, and sustainment stockpiles are not optimized for operations.

The Army’s Reserve Forces (ARes) largely operate on parallel systems and terms of service that at best limit effective integration and at worst create a rift with their Regular Force (RegF) peers. Attempts to design an ARes capable of delivering at the Tactical, Operational and Strategic levels means they are not optimised for any of the three. ARes readiness is hard to quantify and fluctuates based on task and season, thereby making predictable force generation decisions difficult. Despite numerous force generation models being trialled over the course of the last few decades, examples exist of RegF and ARes inefficiency where one party or the other has not had their expectations met in full. Further, the lack of investment over preceding decades has led to ARes capability atrophy, leaving units to train and operate with minimal equipment.

The Army struggles with agility in force projection, limiting its ability to rapidly deploy scalable formations tailored to specific operational needs. The lack of pre-positioned stocks, strategic and theatre airlift, and scalable reserve mobilization pathways further constrains responsiveness to crises. Training pipelines, while effective for individual soldier development, do not fully align with the demands of multi-domain operations, leaving gaps in electronic warfare (EW)/signals intelligence/cyber integration, and joint all-domain command and control. We rely on foreign courses and exercises for much of our higher echelon training, and for many soldiers a live combat team attack is the pinnacle of their collective training.

Finally, structural inefficiencies hinder operational effectiveness. The current mix of light, medium, and heavy forces lacks clear role differentiation, leading to redundant capabilities in some areas and gaps in others. Logistical resilience is another concern, with existing sustainment models reliant on just-in-time delivery and contracted solutions that may not be viable in prolonged high-intensity conflict. Without deliberate reforms to force structure, equipment procurement, and sustainment planning, the Army risks failing to be able to meet domestic and expeditionary obligations.

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The Army We Need

The CA must be ready to lead or enable full-spectrum operations, integrating seamlessly from the land domain across all others; capable of transitioning effectively from competition to crisis to conflict; and operating cohesively with joint, allied, and partner forces, as well as with Other Government Departments (OGD) and Government of Canada (GoC) partners at home.

To transition from a “contribution warfare” model to an adaptive organization that excels in HVWR,^{Footnote 8} the CA’s Regular Force Bdes must be ruthlessly focused on generating modern warfighting systems and competence at the Div level. This undertaking requires the Army to generate forces capable of both domestic and expeditionary operations, and the centralization of institutional support and training functions to create the capacity for change and the needed concentration of resources.

To achieve the needed scalability and persistence for MCO, a significant focus must be placed on readiness and mobilisation. Brigades must be capable of sustaining high-intensity combat, supported by a responsive Defence Supply Chain and backed up by a robust ARes mobilisation framework.

The CA must grow the ability to sustain a Div in contact, which requires a revitalisation of sustainment at this scale, an examination and optimization of the entire echelon system, and revised CSS tactics for the modern battlefield. The CA needs to assume a greater role in enabling its operational support. Sustainment must become more automated and autonomous. Commanders must be enabled by leveraging technological advancements that reduce reliance on outdated, inefficient, and easily detectable processes, support predictive demand modeling, and provide sustainment delivery at the scale required by MCO.

The CA must also develop ARes self-sufficiency in terms of training, operations, and sustainment to accomplish the needed capacity to support modernization efforts. Acknowledging the challenge in meeting universal standards of proficiency, a more tailored and imaginative approach to reserve training and sustainment will be undertaken. Specific requirements may necessitate unique tactics, training, equipment, and even new trades to enable the ARes mandate.

CA sensors must be networked to facilitate intelligence fusion, analysis, and rapid dissemination to enable real-time decision-making and enhance lethality, which demands optimally linked sense and strike capabilities and responsive engagement authorities. AI-enabled targeting processes must be developed and employed, and CA fire control systems must be fully able to integrate with Joint and Allied forces.

Command, Control, Computers, Communications, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Targeting (C5ISRT) interoperability with allies, joint forces, and Whole of Government elements must be achieved. CA Formations must be interoperable with NATO and other potential coalitions at both the Bde and Div levels, ensuring seamless communication and networked effects. This interoperability must extend to OGDs and GoC partners to enable seamless operations in Defence of Canada.

The CA must be able to shield itself through all operational phases. GBAD systems will enhance survivability and enable lethality. In addition, an integrated and layered approach to counter uncrewed vehicle (UxV) threats is needed. Blended electronic sense and attack capabilities, alongside integrated Cyber/ Signals Intelligence, must protect CA communications and sensing, while denying the same to adversaries. Cyber mission assurance within Brigades will enable the defence of networks and control systems, while robust offensive and defensive EW capabilities will mask friendly manoeuvre and deny adversarial communications and targeting.

Modern conflicts are rapidly evolving, with new technologies and tactics emerging, making it essential that doctrine is based on current battlefield observations to ensure relevance and effectiveness. A top-down approach will enable faster implementation and experimentation, ensuring the Army adapts quickly. Doctrine aligned with strategic objectives and current operational needs will promote a unified vision across the Army, enhancing coordination and effectiveness in operations. A centralized, responsive, and robust experimentation and lessons learned process will inform doctrine development and ensure our tactics address modern threats and challenges.

Finally, the CA must undergo a significant cultural evolution to meet the demands of a rapidly changing and complex future operating environment characterized by intense competition and the threat of major conflict:

• An Adaptive and Innovative Mindset: The CA must learn faster and actively promote initiative by accepting the risk of experimentation and rewarding innovation.
• An Operational Focus: The CA must prioritize the ability to project, employ, and sustain land power in support of pan-domain operations. It must focus on operational readiness, emphasize agile strategic planning and integrated effects. This means processes, structures, and institutions exist primarily to enable land operations.
• Digital Excellence and Data Harnessing: The CA must harness data and embrace a digital culture that benefits from new technologies. Operational success demands adaptation beyond just systems, to include a culture driven by leaders.
• One Army Integration: The CA must fully embrace the One Army concept, where Regular Force, Army Reserve, Canadian Rangers, Defence Team civilians operate together seamlessly.
• A Culture of Fitness, Resilience, and Discipline: The CA must reinforce a culture that values physical fitness, resilience, and discipline to prepare soldiers for MCO and to incentivise readiness.
• Openness to Change: The culture must actively counter resistance to change, with leaders and soldiers dedicated to advancing modernization initiatives vital for the future.

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The Canadian Army Modernization Framework

The Modernization Framework lays the foundation for continuous transformation of how the Army lives, trains, operates, fights, and mobilizes. The paragraphs that follow offer an ends, ways, means model of how the Army will deliver a modernized force.

Ends

The goal of CA modernization is to deliver the force required to fight and win in competition, crisis, and conflict. The conditions-based end states that follow, aligned with programmed equipment investments, define success through overlapping periods of thematic modernization that focus land force development, integration, and generation. Throughout, the Army will continue to seek opportunities for acceleration and never lose sight of the requirement to be prepared for a high intensity fight at any moment.^{Footnote 9}

Enhanced Fighting Forces - Now: Building upon ongoing modernization initiatives, the CA is scaling up the integration to Enhance Fighting Force capabilities. We must become harder to detect, target, and destroy both physically and in the electromagnetic spectrum, and more lethal through the distribution of disruptive beyond line-of-sight sense and strike capabilities. Advanced networks, signature management, active and passive protection systems, dispersion tactics, robust close-combat capabilities, and accelerated adaptation cycle, at pace, are critical aspects of this end. Globally deployable light forces will expand their ability to rapidly project and operate in contested environments. Bdes will have the protection, firepower, and logistics necessary to survive and prevail in MCO. Arctic presence, awareness, and effectiveness will be assured, and the CA will maintain its readiness to protect Canadians through the implementation of optimized force structures ready to respond to national threats and emergencies.

Lethality at Range - Emerging: The CA will deploy a superior sense, make-sense, decide, act cycle,^{Footnote 10} providing Lethality at Range. This will be achieved through the integration of long-range precision fires, deep reconnaissance, multi-domain targeting networks, and Arctic-capable Anti-Access/Area Denial^{Footnote 11} systems. We will deliver an effective long-range sense/strike complex, ensuring our forces can disrupt and destroy enemy formations before they are within striking distance. The ability to contest and deny key terrain in the Arctic, and protect critical national infrastructure are vital aspects of this end.

Persistence at Scale - Enduring: The CA is building the depth, endurance, and mass to sustain prolonged operations at the Div level, enabling Persistence at Scale. This will require a mental and physical shift from the comfort zone of Combat Team and BG tactics to building the skills to fight as a Bde within a Canadian and Allied Div construct. We will shift from episodic readiness to persistent, scalable force generation, ensuring an MCO posture and the logistics to sustain the fight. A capable warfighting division enables the CA to conduct decisive operations, while strategic depth, supported by credible echelons, provides the reserves and resilience needed to absorb attrition, regenerate combat power, sustain operations, and maintain operational momentum.

Ways

Modernizing the CA entails more than just acquiring new capabilities: we must also structure, equip, train and sustain our forces in a way that delivers operational advantage. The following ways define how we will apply our means to create the force that fights and wins in competition, crisis, and conflict.

A Change in Focus: Modern warfare demands an army that thinks, acts, and adapts faster than its adversaries, whether operating at home or abroad. To maintain operational superiority, we must integrate real-time intelligence, expanded electronic warfare capabilities, layered sensor networks, and multi-domain decision support into every level of command. This integration must be seamless across national operations, where agility and responsiveness are critical, and expeditionary missions, where interoperability and adaptability are paramount.

We must close the lethality gap between our current force and those of potential adversaries by accelerating the integration of new equipment, evolving tactics, and fostering a culture of continuous adaptation. These reforms must also prioritize enhanced soldier fitness, mental resilience, and readiness to operate in diverse environments, from urban centres and remote northern regions to complex international theatres. Only through this comprehensive transformation can we ensure mission success and safeguard national interests across all domains.

Operational readiness must be measured by our ability to deploy and sustain lethal forces within relevant timelines. Mobilization pathways to rapidly grow the ARes must be designed, tested, and refined. This, in turn, will deter potential adversaries from challenging us directly and reassure Allies and partners of our resolve.

A Change in Organization: No army can be everything and everywhere; this only leads to reduced readiness across the PETS system and degraded operational effectiveness. The CA must be designed around and assessed against mission-first and effect-driven principles.

Achieving the necessary independence, persistence, and depth for MCO, the CA must produce enabled Bdes that operate in a Div context.^{Footnote 12} To build this capability and capacity, the CA will regroup its RegF units into a single Div structure and continue to grow the needed soldiers, units and functions for this level of conflict.

Concurrently, the CA must maintain high readiness forces to service emerging missions, contingencies, and reinforce operations. Light forces will be centralized to assure readiness for rapid crisis response, headquarters will be restructured to increase command agility, and re-energized ARes forces will be aligned with the operational outputs for which they are best suited.

A second Div with a Canadian focus, grouping the ARes and Canadian Rangers with a cadre of full-time leadership and staff, will maintain readiness for support to domestic contingency, presence, domain awareness, and security operations, while force generating tactical augmentation and operational reinforcement for expeditionary operations. In MCO, this formation will also serve as the framework for mobilization in alignment with the planned expansion of the Primary and Supplementary Reserves.

A Change in Equipment: The war in Ukraine and other recent conflicts have shown that success requires the ability to rapidly adapt and sustain the fight over time. The CA will optimize its capability management processes, recapitalize worn-out platforms, and create depth in sustainment capacity to ensure it has the combat power, resilience, and endurance to fight and win.

We will use a continuous modernization model that provides timely lethality at scale and speed. We will capitalize on opportunities to leverage our advanced national capabilities through partnerships with industry to support the delivery of technological superiority.

Technological Integration for Decision Advantage: To safeguard Canada’s sovereignty, maintain seamless interoperability with Allies and partners, and stay ahead of evolving threats, the Canadian Army must accelerate its digital transformation. This entails evolving into a data-driven organization capable of processing, integrating, and exploiting vast volumes of digitized information from diverse sources. Achieving information advantage requires persistent, resilient networks that connect soldiers, sensors, platforms, and commanders, enabling seamless C2 through advanced technologies such as cloud computing.

Key to this transformation is the integration of emerging technologies, including AI, machine learning, robotics, autonomous and uncrewed systems. These capabilities will support a wide range of functions, from intelligence analysis and predictive modeling to targeting and operational execution.

Integration will support operations across the pan-domain battlespace, transitioning from linear, single-domain kill chains to a dynamic, multi-domain kill web. Ultimately, technological integration will accelerate the decision-action cycle, enhance operational effectiveness, and deliver decisive military edge.

Means

The Army requires the right people, equipment, training, sustainment and structures to succeed. Addressing these in isolation has limited the scale of previous modernization efforts.

Growing a Ready, Resilient, and Relevant Lethal Force. We must harness the streamlined capacity of our RegF and ARes recruitment pipelines to more rapidly integrate trained soldiers into units of the field force. Once in the field force, we need to provide them compelling careers that inspire and challenge with demanding and relevant training and equip them with technology of their generation.

Investing in Next-Generation Capability. Modern conflicts are defined by technological superiority, speed of adaptation, secure information networks, and a balance of massed fires and precision lethality. We will prioritize investment in enablers critical for mobility, survivability, and sustainment, while looking to emerging battlefield technologies such as UxVs, autonomous systems, modernized decision support tools, counter-precision strike systems, modern indirect fire, Long Range Precision Strike (LRPS) systems, and joint integration to ensure our forces remain relevant, lethal, and survivable in the fight. This effort will be closely aligned with the Canadian Defence Industrial Strategy to accelerate delivery, strengthen sovereign defence production capacity, and ensure Canada’s defence sector can support the modernization and sustainment of a combat-credible land force.

Increased Sustainment Capacity. Wars are won by those who can sustain the fight. The CA must be focused on more than simply commodities at scale; it must shape operational sustainment including the ability to project forces, provide health support at the appropriate scale, rapidly reconstitute capabilities, adapt to fluid support demands, fight in contested environments, and enable the force to win. The CA must grow the sustainment required of a division in contact. This requires a revitalisation of sustainment at this scale, an examination and optimization of the entire echelon system, and a revision of CSS tactics.

A Force Structured for a Full-Spectrum Fight. A one-size-fits-all approach does not work for the spectrum of tasks the Army faces. Our symmetrical Army has led to challenges in matching our force structure to many of our assigned missions. Likewise, the debate between Heavy and Light forces is not binary, as the Army must be ready to operate across the spectrum of conflict. The CA will establish a focused divisional structure, fielding Light, Medium, and Heavy forces to ensure we have the agility for rapid crisis response, the endurance for prolonged operations, and the firepower to contest peer adversaries. This force design will provide agility and scalability for all our commitments, most importantly in Defence of Canada or supporting Allies and partners throughout Europe and the Indo-Pacific.

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Strategic Dependencies

Army modernization is nested within and dependent upon the broader strategic direction, institutional capacity, and functional processes of the CAF and the Department of National Defence (DND). The pace and scale of this modernization are dependent on areas largely outside the CA’s direct control, including:

• Military Personnel Command initiatives for personnel management, recruitment, and retention.
• The capacity and efficiency of DND/CAF centralized procurement and life cycle management processes.
• The need for integration with the capacity of CAF joint sustainment, logistics, and health services systems, noting the urgent need for growth in these functions.^{Footnote 13}
• Infrastructure investment and maintenance across DND commensurate with growth.
• The imperative for seamless interoperability and integration across all CAF domains for effective joint operations.
• The overall institutional capacity within and outside of Defence to acquire, sustain, manage, and employ new capabilities.

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Assumptions

Inflection Point 25 is based on several key assumptions:

• Additional major capital will be invested to close the lethality gap as soon as possible through project acceleration, and the procurement of additional platforms and capabilities that will be identified over the coming years.
• The CA’s National Procurement (NP) funding will be sufficient to enable equipment serviceability and sustainment goals and will be stabilized to ensure growth in executable demand with industry partners.
• The Strategic Intake Plan (SIP) will continue to be met with personnel growth to 8,500 or more additional Regular Force and 8,500 or more additional ARes Personnel by 2040. The CA’s new structure must be able to support up to an additional 10,000 post 2040 to achieve NATO Defence Planning Process targets. Newly directed capabilities or national mobilization will necessitate greater expansion.
• Identified growth for additional Regular and Reserve personnel by 2040 will see commensurate funding for infrastructure growth and modernization.
• Op LENTUS deployments will continue and may grow in frequency due to climate change related emergencies.

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Capability Resourcing

The CA is undertaking its most comprehensive equipment modernization effort in the past 20 years, with 49 major capital projects currently underway to achieve this objective. These projects align with the Army’s Capability Investment Priorities, as outlined in Annex A.

Digital Transformation. Integrated Command and Control System Modernization encompasses a suite of hardware and software based on interoperability standards that enable C2 and dramatically increase lethality, decision making and connectivity at the tactical edge. This includes CA digital transformation for warfighting Decision/Action capabilities, and is essential to enable a rapid, sense-make sense-decide-act cycle.

Ground Based Air Defence. Investment in tactical air defence capabilities across three batteries of capability for continental and expeditionary defence and deterrence. This is essential to provide Very Short-Range Air Defence (VSHORAD) and Short-Range Air Defence (SHORAD) protection for our Combat Bdes.

Indirect Fires Modernization. A complete capability re-development of indirect fires as our existing capabilities reach end-of-life. This investment will provide the right mix of self-propelled artillery systems, mortars, sustainment vehicles, munitions, and infrastructure to operate and support mechanized Bdes.

Long Range Precision Strike-Land (LRPS(L)). Long range rocket artillery will increase lethality of the force for deployed forces and continental defence. This will deliver platforms with associated infrastructure, munitions and support. This will be the keystone of division deep fires, add credibility to our NATO commitments, and enable us to conduct area denial in the Arctic or Indo-Pacific.

Domestic Arctic Mobility Enhancement (DAME). Reinvigorating CAF capabilities in a harsh climate and unforgiving terrain, the DAME project will provide a medium over snow and complex amphibious terrain platform that renews our access and ability to operate in the harshest of Canadian environments. This project will see the delivery of up to 170 platforms for the CAF. This will transform our tactical mobility in the Arctic and enable force projection, mobility, and survivability into austere regions.

Soldier Operational Clothing and Equipment Modernization (SOCEM). An integrated suite of modernized operational clothing, load carriage, and combat PPE that focuses on improving performance and comfort of the soldier, SOCEM will advance the fit, form, and function of operational clothing and equipment to better meet the operational needs of CAF members. This includes the delivery of next generation night vision and small arms to properly equip our soldiers for the future operating environment.

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Additional Critical Areas for Investment

By 2040, a more lethal, hardened, interoperable and digitally enhanced CA will be significantly improved through key modernization projects.

• UxVs with multi-domain capabilities, including direct fire, surveillance, EW, cyber operations, and communications relay capability. Enhanced target acquisition for indirect fire, and advanced protection systems will improve lethality and survivability.
• Next-generation heavy direct fire capability, encompassing tank replacement with integrated assault breaching, bridging, and recovery vehicles, could provide a modern and versatile platform.
• Enhanced Beyond Line of Sight (BLOS) lethality, encompassing a much wider distribution of LM swarms, and longer range ATGMs paired with UxVs across the fighting echelons will provide enhanced precision firepower at lower levels, in turn lowering the probability of direct force on force engagements, limiting our exposure to adversarial strike capabilities, lowering the risk calculus of unmasking indirect fire capability, and increasing battlefield manoeuverability.
• LAV replacement will provide a medium common fleet for infantry fighting, engineering, and artillery fire observation while next-generation Cavalry medium direct fire capability, encompassing RCAC Coyote, TAPV and LAV 6 replacement, will fuse sense and strike in the deep reconnaissance battle. These fleets will increasingly be uncrewed and/or optionally crewed.
• Engineer modernisation will focus on advanced mobility and counter mobility methods with increasingly optionally crewed and autonomous systems. This includes bridging, mechanical and explosive breaching, scatterable gap closure systems, and anti-tank mine modernization.
• Next-generation soldier systems will equip individual soldiers with advanced protection, load carriage, night vision, small arms, and sensors. This will be increasingly complemented by augmented reality capability that could provide enhanced C2, and technical reach-back support for maintenance and medical technicians.

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Internal Risks

The CA faces several internal risks that could impede the progress of modernization. These risks span the force readiness system and include financial stability, technological advancement, and culture.

A significant internal risk lies in the CA’s current readiness state, compounded by insufficient spares and ammunition stocks as well as challenges to its training capacity to overcome attrition and meet growth targets. The need to manage concurrent operations and sustained surge requirements places significant pressure on personnel that could lead to increased attrition and distract from the focus on the creation of Div level warfighting capability. A restructured army that consolidates a functional split between expeditionary and continental force generation and employment, and the centralization of institutional and training functions, serves as a method to increase efficiency and lower this risk.

The reliance on aging and insufficient stocks of equipment that soldiers may not fully trust on deployments presents a considerable operational risk. Lengthy procurement timelines and drawn-out project approaches frequently contribute to gaps between the obsolescence of current systems and the introduction of new ones, which in the past has led to the use of Urgent Operational Requirements as an interim measure. The often-insufficient numbers of systems procured further exacerbates equipment shortages. Accelerated equipment delivery with built in options for additional systems, adequate NP resourcing, fleet rationalization, and ruthless divestment planning are required.

The CA is vulnerable to global supply chain disruptions and experiences material shortages in essential areas such as ammunition, spare parts, and service contracts. The ability to sustain operations both domestically and abroad without significant reliance on contracted services remains a challenge. Increasing integral support capacity, capability, and logistic stocks can lower this concern.

Current CA infrastructure faces many challenges and limits the locations and the way the CA conducts force generation and force sustainment activities, particularly in our Ranges and Training Areas. It also limits how the CA conducts national operations and supports expeditionary operations in Defence of Canada and our national objectives.

Financial constraints pose a substantial internal risk. The CA faces an endemic NP shortage, estimated at approximately 50% of assessed requirements over the previous decade. Moreover, the current allocation of NP funding is heavily committed to digital modernisation and the LAV fleet, leaving limited flexibility. While as of June 2025 the NP funding has substantially increased, stable funding levels are required year over year to mitigate this systematic risk and grow executable demand with industry over time.

The CA has fallen behind its allies technologically and must move quickly to remain relevant in critical areas of AI and Cyber/ Signals Intelligence/ EW capabilities. The CA is pursuing technological and system integration, which will require technically skilled soldiers and the ability to continuously upgrade or implement new systems at the pace of threat and allied advancement. Opportunity exists in the Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy; AI development is a national strength that can be leveraged to create real operational advantage.

Finally, organisational and institutional factors present risks. Capability trade-offs and structural decisions must be void of cultural and symbolic underpinnings, otherwise we risk undermining modernization efforts. They must also be thoroughly grounded in a deep and unbiased understanding of the causal factors of the erosion of CA readiness. Regimental, corps, and branch affiliations and associated loyalties must not create obstacles to modernizing the Army.

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Conclusion

The CA is modernizing to defend Canada, its people, and its sovereignty. Inflection Point 2025 paves the way for delivery of a ready, resilient, and relevant lethal land force capable of detecting, deterring, and defeating threats to Canada focused on North America and its approaches, and through the Arctic, Euro-Atlantic, and Indo-Pacific regions. It outlines a modernization framework that lays the foundation, defines the strategic environment, identifies gaps in our current force, describes the future force and strategic dependencies, provides key assumptions, lists resourcing priorities, and consolidates risks and mitigations. To modernize we must change our mindset, sharpen our focus, and move with a sense of urgency.

The modernized Canadian Army will defend Canada – at home and abroad. The inflection point is now.

M.C. Wright
Lieutenant-General
Commander Canadian Army

Annexes:

• Annex A - Canadian Army Priorities Funding Status
• Annex B - References
• Annex C - Acronyms and Abbreviations

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Annex A - Canadian Army Priorities Projects Status

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Annex B - References

1. Commander Canadian Army’s Planning Guidance for CA Modernization, Nov 2024
2. Strong, Secure, Engaged, 2017
3. Our North, Strong and Free: A Renewed Vision for Canada’s Defence, Apr 2024
4. CDS and DM Directive for the Delivery of Ready, Resilient Relevant Force, Mar 2025
5. The Pan-Domain Force Employment Concept, Oct 2023
6. The Pan-Domian Command and Control Paper, Dec 2024
7. CAF Concept of the Future Force 2.0, Mar 25
8. Canadian Army Modernization Strategy, Dec 2020
9. Canadian Army Capstone Concept 2040 – May 2025
10. NATO Capability Targets 2025 – Canada – V2 (Level 2)
11. Canadian Army Digital Strategy, June 2022
12. Canadian Armed Forces Digital Campaign Plan, 10 Jun 2022
13. Threat Assessment - International and Domestic Artic Assessment: Canada’s Artic Threat and Vulnerability, Nov 2024
14. DND/CAF Data Strategy, May 2021
15. CDS/DM Directive 002 – CAF Reconstitution, Oct 2024
16. Future Fighting Concept (Level 2) - Draft, 2024
17. B-GL-321-003/FP-001 Brigade Tactics, 20 Jan 2017
18. Operational Sustainment Modernization Strategy, Feb 2023
19. Health Services Modernization Strategy, May 2024
20. Joint Logistics Modernization Campaign Plan, Jul 2024
21. Enabling Full-Time Capability Through Part-Time Serve: A New Vision for the Reserve Force, 2023
22. Army Modernization Team Wargame: Post Event Report, May 2025

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Annex C - Acronyms and Abbreviations

AI

Artificial Intelligence

ARes

Army Reserves

ATGM

Anti-Tank Guided Missile

Bdes

Brigades

BG

Battle Group

BLOS

Beyond Line of Sight

C2

Command and Control

C5ISRT

Command, Control, Computers, Communications, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Targeting

CA

Canadian Army

CAF

Canadian Armed Forces

CAMO

Canadian Army Modernization Order

CDS

Chief of the Defence Staff

COS Strat

Chief of Staff Strategic (CA Headquarters)

Div

Division

DND

Department of National Defence

DM

Deputy Minister

EW

Electronic Warfare

GBAD

Ground Based Air Defence

GoC

Government of Canada

HVWR

High Value War Fighting Roles

LAV

Light Armoured Vehicle

LM

Loitering Munitions

LRPS(L)

Long Range Precision Strike-Land

MCO

Major Combat Operations

NATO

North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NP

National Procurement

ONSAF

Our North Strong and Free

PETS

Personnel, Equipment, Training, and Sustainment

PFEC

Pan-Domain Force Employment Concept

RCAC

Royal Canadian Armoured Corps

RegF

Regular Force

SHORAD

Short Range Air Defence

SIP

Strategic Intake Plan

SOCEM

Soldier Operational Clothing and Equipment Modernization

TAPV

Tactical Armoured Patrol Vehicle

UxV

Uncrewed x Vehicles (“x” is a placeholder representing different domains or types of platforms). Common Variants: UAV - Uncrewed Aerial Vehicle; UGV - Uncrewed Ground Vehicle; USV - Uncrewed Surface Vehicle; and UUV - Uncrewed Underwater Vehicle

VSHORAD

Very Short-Range Air Defence

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