In this article for the CDA Institute’s Voices of the CDA series, Lieutenant-Colonel Andrew L. Brown, PhD, and Colonel Howard G. Coombs, PhD, argue that the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) must overhaul its approach to military intelligence to survive future multi-domain conflicts. Drawing on lessons from the war in Ukraine, they highlight that modern, sensor-soaked battlefields generate an overwhelming flood of data that can cause debilitating confusion without disciplined direction. As the CAF modernizes its capabilities across land, air, sea, cyber, and space, the authors warn that the military faces a critical gap in institutional intelligence literacy. To turn raw data into a decisive operational advantage, they assert that intelligence must stop being treated as an isolated specialist function and instead be integrated into professional military education as a core command responsibility for leaders at all echelons.
