In June 2024, Calian welcomed Roch Pelletier as Regional Vice-President of Defence for Europe, the UK and NATO. With an extensive background in defence and security, Roch brings deep expertise in multinational military cooperation and training. He is responsible for Calian in Europe, and seeks to expand Calian’s presence across NATO markets, ensuring that armed forces and their partners can access the innovative training, simulation, and readiness solutions that Calian is known for. He will be moving to Europe permanently this winter.

Roch and other leaders from Calian will be attending the 19th NATO CA2X2 Forum, hosted by the NATO Modelling and Simulation Centre of Excellence. The event brings together military users, industry and academia to explore modelling and simulation (M&S) across exercises, experimentation, wargaming, analysis, standards and interoperability. This year’s theme, “Enabling Multi-Domain Operations through Modelling & Simulation,” directly aligns with Calian’s mission to support NATO’s evolving priorities.

The experts from Calian supporting Roch will be Eric Norton, Director of Emerging Technologies. Eric will be presenting on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) for military training in his talk “Fusing Expertise and AI: Delivering Operational Assessment Capabilities to JFC Brunssum.” Daniel Turcotte, Senior Director of the Operational and Training Technology team, will be presenting on Calian’s system-agnostic approach to delivering interoperability for military training and operations in his talk “The Interoperability Framework: Advancing Military Innovation through the Cross-Fertilisation of Proven Technology and Capabilities that Support Multi-Domain Training and Operations.” The Calian Europe Managing Director, John Cullen, will also be in attendance. John is a leading expert with more than a decade of experience supporting NATO training with multi-domain stakeholders.

As we prepare for CA2X2, Roch shares insights into his career journey, his new role, and how Calian is supporting NATO and its member nations to meet evolving challenges.

Please tell us about your background and career path to date, and how you landed at Calian?

I spent 36 years in the Canadian Army, and recently jointed Calian with a focus on Europe and NATO programs. When the opportunity arose to join Calian, I was drawn to the company’s reputation in training and simulation and its strong track record of supporting NATO and allied forces.

Can you tell us about your role at Calian?

As Regional Vice-President of Defence for Europe, the UK and NATO, I’m responsible for strengthening our relationships with customers, industry partners and NATO stakeholders in this region. My role is to ensure that Calian’s capabilities — from advanced military training to simulation and exercise support — are aligned with the evolving needs of NATO nations and their forces.

How does your role support NATO and NATO members?

My role is about connecting Calian’s proven expertise with NATO’s operational requirements. That means working closely with NATO bodies and member nations to ensure we deliver solutions that enhance readiness, interoperability and effectiveness. This multi-domain operations concept is a big driver to everything we are doing for NATO customers. Whether it’s through large-scale exercises, tailored training programs, or technology-enabled simulation, my focus is on enabling mission success for NATO forces.

What are the key military training capabilities that Calian offers in the NATO market?

Calian has a long history of delivering end-to-end training solutions. This includes collective training, command and staff training, as well as live, virtual and constructive simulation. We are currently integrating AI-enabled solutions to accelerate the pace of training development, and to make training development more agile. With AI-enabled solutions, we can develop training faster, make changes faster, and do faster after-action analysis based on the data captured during the exercise.

What is the Calian advantage in the NATO market?

Our advantage is three-fold: scale, adaptability and proven performance. Calian is trusted to deliver dozens of training events every year, training thousands of military members. This gives us unmatched experience. We’re also highly flexible, able to tailor training solutions to the specific needs of each NATO nation or mission set. Our systems-agnostic approach means we connect the right tools to meet training objectives. With a focus on interoperability, different simulation and command-and-control tools can be integrated into a common synthetic training environment, including the tools and systems will use in real operations.

The Calian approach delivers a real “train-as-you-fight” approach. Finally, our track record speaks for itself: we have almost 30 years of experience delivering training for the Canadian Army, and have also been a long-standing partner to NATO, consistently delivering results that improve readiness and interoperability. Our expertise in developing adaptable training frameworks allows NATO nations to prepare for everything from conventional operations to multi-domain scenarios.

From your perspective based in Europe, what are the unique opportunities and challenges you see for Calian in the European market?

Europe is a highly dynamic defence environment, with NATO nations investing significantly in readiness, modernisation, and interoperability. That creates great opportunities for Calian to expand its support across the region. With different NATO nations using different systems, our system-agnostic approach to interoperability reduces the barriers to collaboration across NATO. The challenge is to stay agile and responsive, because NATO requirements evolve quickly. Being on the ground in Europe allows us to engage directly with stakeholders and adapt our solutions to their immediate and long-term priorities.

How does Calian collaborate with NATO allies, industry partners and local organisations to strengthen defence training and readiness?

Collaboration is central to our approach. We work alongside NATO commands, national defence ministries, and industry partners to design and deliver training that is integrated and interoperable. We start with our military customers’ training objectives, and tailor our approach to meet those objectives. That might mean partnering with local firms to bring specific expertise or coordinating with NATO centres of excellence to align training with best practices. Our goal is always to strengthen collective readiness through cooperation.

Looking ahead, what trends in military training and readiness do you think will shape NATO’s priorities and how is Calian positioned to address them?

I see three key trends: 1) the shift toward multi-domain operations, 2) the increasing use of digital technologies in training, including AI-enabled tools, and 3) the need for faster, more adaptive training cycles — with a clear role for interoperability to provide the necessary flexibility. NATO is placing greater emphasis on preparing forces to operate seamlessly across land, air, sea, cyber and space. Calian is already delivering integrated simulation and training solutions that enable this. We are developing digital tools, data analytics, and agile training methods to ensure NATO forces can respond to emerging threats effectively.

What are the key messages Calian will be sharing with the community at the Forum, and how does Calian contribute to enabling multi-domain operations through modelling and simulation?

At CA2X2 we will be talking about how AI-enabled solutions accelerate the pace of training development, and the value of interoperability between simulation and command-and-control toolsets. Calian has extensive experience in military training in Canada and NATO, and we understand the value of simulation for training for multi-domain operation. Our overall message is that Calian delivers the enabling technologies and has the depth of experience to be a training partner for NATO today and into the future. We can give NATO forces the confidence and competence they need to succeed in complex, rapidly evolving operational environments.