Biographies
Canadian Army – MGen Stephen Cadden, Commander Canadian Army Doctrine and Training Centre.
Major-General Stephen Cadden joined the Canadian Armed Forces in 1984, and attended the Royal Military College Saint-Jean (RMC) Saint-Jean, graduating in 1989. He served with the 8th Canadian Hussars (Princess Louise’s) in Lahr, Germany, serving as both a tank and reconnaissance troop leader, and with The Royal Canadian Dragoons as a squadron commander, Commanding Officer, and Regimental Colonel. He has been employed internationally in Germany and Jamaica, and deployed operationally to Afghanistan (ISAF liaison to CJTF 76) and Haiti (Chief of Staff, MINUSTAH military component). Domestically, he has participated in Canadian Armed Forces relief efforts during the 1998 Ice Storm, the 2010 G8/G20 Summits, and a number of domestic operations in Ontario.
Major-General Cadden is qualified to command Leopard C1 and C2 main battle tanks, as well as Lynx, M113, LAV and Coyote reconnaissance vehicle. His extra-Regimental employment includes tours as the Canadian Forces Base Petawawa Base Personnel Administration Officer, squadron commander at the Royal Military College of Canada (RMC) Kingston, Chief of Staff of 4th Canadian Division, Commander Canadian Forces Base Kingston, and twice as Canadian Army HQ Staff (Director Land Strategic Plans 4 and COS Army Strategy). He has served as the Director of the Royal Canadian Armour Corps, and currently holds the position of Senior Army Armour Officer, and as Senior Serving Dragoon. Major-General Cadden was Commander 4th Canadian Division in Toronto from 2016-2018, where he oversaw 4 Div units and formations through both enhanced training and deployment cycles of the Managed Readiness Plan, military support to the 2017 INVICTUS GAMES, and a number of domestic operations. He assumed command of the Canadian Army Doctrine and Training Centre on 6 July 2018.
Major-General Cadden has earned a Bachelor of Arts in Military and Strategic Studies, a Masters of Defence Studies and a Masters of Arts degree in Military Security and Defence Policy. In 2009, he completed the National Security Programme at the Canadian Forces College in Toronto.
UK LXC
The Lesson Exploitation Centre (LXC – 28 pers) is a department within the British Army’s Land Warfare Centre, a 2* command within the Field Army with the mission to ‘cohere and drive agile adaptation of the Field Army in order to deliver success on current and future operations.’ The LXC is responsible for providing coherence pan-Army to the exploitation and assurance of lessons from operations, trade and collective training and from history, set within an understanding of the operating context, in order to provide credible evidence to support agile adaptation within the Field Army. This includes the analysis of: our own and allies’ activity; current and emerging threats, including those arising from ‘watching war’; and the broader activities of potential adversaries. The output of the Lessons Process is the provision of credible evidence to support the continuous improvement, and agile adaptation, of the Field Army. Since early March the LXC has been focussed on supporting the Army’s response to COVID-19 (Op RESCRIPT). Initially, this involved identifying Lessons Learned from historic case studies to aid planning for Op RESCRIPT. Subsequently, this has taken two forms: firstly, providing a “back office” analysis function to the 3* HQ in command of Defence’s response; secondly, the analysis and exploitation (sharing) of Lessons, observations and good practice from Op RESCRIPT itself and the delivery of training under COVID-19 restrictions. The latter has enabled a weekly “quick lesson loop” response for optimising our behaviours. We are hugely grateful for the significant contributions that you have made in informing our efforts to improve our response.
