December 26, 2019 | Local, Naval
Murray Brewster
Canada's new frigates are being designed with ballistic missile defence in mind, even though successive federal governments have avoided taking part in the U.S. program.
When they slip into the water sometime in the mid- to late-2020s, the new warships probably won't have the direct capability to shoot down incoming intercontinental rockets.
But the decisions made in their design allow them to be converted to that role, should the federal government ever change course.
The warships are based upon the British Type 26 layout and are about to hit the drawing board. Their radar has been chosen and selected missile launchers have been configured to make them easy and cost-effective to upgrade.
Vice-Admiral Art McDonald said the Lockheed Martin-built AN/SPY-7 radar system to be installed on the new frigates is cutting-edge. It's also being used on land now by the U.S. and Japan for detecting ballistic missiles.
"It's a great piece, and that is what we were looking for in terms of specification," McDonald told CBC News in a year-end interview.
Selecting the radar system for the new frigates was seen as one of the more important decisions facing naval planners because it has to stay operational and relevant for decades to come — even as new military threats and technologies emerge.
McDonald said positive feedback from elsewhere in the defence industry convinced federal officials that they had made the right choice.
"Even from those that weren't producing an advanced kind of radar, they said this is the capability you need," he said.
The whole concept of ballistic missile defence (BMD) remains a politically touchy topic.
BMD — "Star Wars," to its critics — lies at the centre of a policy debate the Liberal government has tried to avoid at all costs. In 2017, Canada chose not to join the BMD program. That reluctance to embrace BMD dates back to the political bruising Paul Martin's Liberal government suffered in 2004-05, when the administration of then-U.S. president George W. Bush leaned heavily on Ottawa to join the program.
In the years since, both the House of Commons and Senate defence committees have recommended the federal government relent and sign on to BMD — mostly because of the emerging missile threat posed by rogue nations such as North Korea.
The question of whether to join BMD is expected to form part of the deliberations surrounding the renewal of NORAD — an undertaking the Liberal government has acknowledged but not costed out as part of its 2017 defence policy.
Missile defence continues to be a highly fraught concept within the federal government. Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan made a point of downplaying a CBC News story last summer that revealed how the Canadian and U.S. militaries had laid down markers for what the new NORAD could look like, pending sign-off by both Washington and Ottawa.
Asked about Sajjan's response, a former senior official in the minister's office said it raised the spectre of "Star Wars" — not a topic the Liberal government was anxious to discuss ahead of last fall's election.
The current government may not want to talk about it, but the Canadian navy and other NATO countries are grappling with the technology.
Last spring, a Canadian patrol frigate, operating with 12 other alliance warships, tracked and shot down a supersonic target meant to simulate a ballistic missile. A French frigate also scored a separate hit.
For the last two years, NATO warships have practiced linking up electronically in defensive exercises to shoot down both mock ballistic and cruise missiles. A Canadian frigate in the 2017 iteration of the exercise destroyed a simulated cruise missile.
At the recent Halifax Security Forum, there was a lot of talk about the proliferation of missile technology. One defence expert told the forum Canadian military planners have been paying attention to the issue for a long time.
The frigate design is an important example.
"I think what they've tried to do is keep the door open by some of the decisions they've made, recognizing that missile proliferation is a significant concern," said Dave Perry, of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. "They haven't shut the door on doing that and I think that is smart."
Opponents of BMD, meanwhile, have long argued the fixation by the U.S. and NATO on ballistic missile defence is fuelling instability and giving Russia and China reasons to co-operate in air and missile defence.
Speaking before a Commons committee in 2017, Peggy Mason, president of the foreign and defence policy think-tank Rideau Institute, said the United States's adversaries have concluded that building more offensive systems is cheaper than investing in defensive ones.
"The American BMD system also acts as a catalyst to nuclear weapons modernization, as Russia and China seek not only increased numbers of nuclear weapons but also increased manoeuvrability," said Mason, Canada's ambassador for disarmament from 1989 to 1994, testifying on Sept. 14, 2017.
She also warned that "there would be significant financial costs to Canadian participation" in the U.S. BMD program "given American demands" — even prior to Donald Trump's presidency — "that allies pay their 'fair share' of the collective defence burden."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/frigate-ballistic-missile-defence-canada-1.5407226
December 7, 2021 | Local, Aerospace
The Saskatoon police air support unit can see everything they need to see from 2,500 feet and, most importantly, they're airborne when it matters most.
October 20, 2017 | Local, Aerospace, C4ISR
October 20, 2017 – Ottawa The All Domain Situational Awareness (ADSA) Science & Technology program will support the development of options, over a period of five years, for enhanced domain awareness of air, maritime surface and sub-surface approaches to Canada, in particular those in the Arctic. Surveillance solutions explored and selected through the ADSA Science & Technology program will strengthen the Government of Canada's ability to exercise sovereignty in the North, and will provide a greater awareness of safety and security issues, as well as transportation and commercial activity in Canada's Arctic. Canada's contributions to regional Arctic security also form a core part of the Canada-United States defence relationship. Nowhere is this more apparent than in joint efforts to renew the North Warning System (NWS) and modernize elements of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). As the security dynamics in the Arctic evolve, Canada and the United States will continue to work side by side to secure our shared northern air and maritime approaches. The NWS is a chain of unmanned radar stations in Canada's Arctic that provides aerospace surveillance of Canadian and United States northern approaches. While the current NWS is approaching the end of its life expectancy from a technological and functional perspective, the range of potential threats to the continent, such as those posed by cruise missiles, has become more complex and increasingly difficult to detect. To this end, Canada and the United States have already launched bilateral collaboration to seek innovative technological solutions to continental defence challenges including early warning. Studies are ongoing to determine how best to replace this important capability as part of the overall modernization of NORAD. The ADSA Science & Technology program is part of this bilateral collaboration. The following are the successful proposals from the first Call for Proposals: Title: Acoustic Source for Ocean Propagation Experimentation Supplier: GeoSpectrum Technologies Inc Location: Dartmouth, Nova Scotia Domain: Sub-Surface Surveillance Project Type: Technology Demonstration Funding: $4,953,038 (until 31 March 2020) GeoSpectrum Technologies Inc has been awarded a contract to develop, design, build and test an acoustic source which will support scientific experiments in underwater sound propagation. Such a device may form part of future systems capable of providing long distance underwater communications to support, for example, an unmanned underwater vehicle engaged in open ocean or under ice survey work. Title: Acoustic Array for Persistent Under-Ice Vehicles Supplier: GeoSpectrum Technologies Inc Location: Dartmouth, Nova Scotia Domain: Sub-Surface Surveillance Project Type: Research and Development Funding: $1,944,175 (until 20 September 2019) The objective of this project is to design and build a sensor array suitable for towing from an unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV). The innovative design, employing a fishing line-like cable with acoustic sensors, may be suitable for year-round underwater and under-ice operations, in environmentally hostile Arctic waters. Title: Development of the Canadian High Arctic Ionospheric Models (CHAIM) Supplier: University of New Brunswick Location: Fredericton, New Brunswick Domain: Air Surveillance Project Type: Research and Development Funding: $1,165,143 (until 31 March 2020) Current ionospheric models, used for prediction of radio wave propagation for communications and other applications, have significant shortcomings in Arctic regions. This is due to inaccuracies and limited local ionospheric observations. This project aims to improve this by producing high latitude electron density models at altitudes between 100 and 3,000 kilometres. Title: Bistatic High Elevation Long Endurance (HALE) Unmanned Air System (UAS) Scenario Study Supplier: C-CORE Location: Ottawa, Ontario Domain: Surface Surveillance Project Type: Study Funding: $221,000 (until 31 July 2018) This project is for the study of the potential capabilities of using a high altitude long endurance (HALE) unmanned air system (UAS) as a receiver in a bistatic configuration with commercial synthetic aperture radar (SAR) missions, both current and future. The study will look at how various configurations of transmitters and HALE UAS-mounted receivers can augment current detection and discrimination capabilities, while providing a highly mobile, persistent, all weather surveillance asset that currently does not exist. https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/news/2017/10/government_of_canadaannouncessuccessfulproposalsforalldomainsitu.html
September 16, 2022 | Local, Aerospace
Bombardier's Defense division, along with its U.S. subsidiary Learjet Inc., delivered a Global 6000 aircraft in special mission configuration to the U.S. Air Force Battlefield Airborne Communications Node program.