A senior leader of the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) was impressed by Canberra's Edgy Air Force Lab in a recent tour of the lab on her visit to the national capital.
RCAF Major-General Jamie Speiser-Blanchet was impressed by the creativity and energy she witnessed in the lab.
"I view innovation as a critical element for us moving forward, ensuring that we have not just the right equipment, but the right capabilities and opportunities for all our aviators in order to accomplish the tasks that we know are ahead of us in the modern environment." Major-General Speiser-Blanchet said.
The Edgy Air Force Program provides resources and support to empower aviators to explore and realise their ideas to help give Air Force a next-generational edge.
Reflecting on the Edgy Air Force Program, Major-General Spenser-Blanchet emphasised that innovation is about an attitude, as much as activities.
"Innovation means different things for aviators in terms of the equipment and technologies we have but I believe that innovation spreads further than that in terms of how we are approaching things differently, developing our mindset - so it is not just about technology but how we think and how we do things," she said.
Edgy Air Force A/Director Wing Commander Mark Dungey said the program is about encouraging bottom-up innovation, based on the belief people who do the job know what needs to be done to fix or make it better.
"The future for Edgy Air Force is to gradually change the culture to encourage everyone in Air Force to be part of the Edgy community," WGCDR Dungey said.
"Everybody thinks of innovation as an option, everybody will one day value intelligent failure because innovation by definition a lot of the time will fail, but the idea is to learn from that this is where innovation comes from."
Australia and Canada have a long history of Defence cooperation. The warm relationship includes engagement across services, and through policy, intelligence and materiel.
"It was fantastic that the Royal Canadian Air Force took the time to visit the Canberra Edgy Lab and learn about the program. It demonstrates that the RCAF value bottom-up innovation as much as we do," WGCDR Dungey said.
"Just to build these connections between our forces is really important and essential to successful collaborative innovation with our coalition partners."
