August 8, 2022 | Local, Aerospace
Le CP-140 Aurora survolera le Grand Prix de Trois-Rivières
Un CP-140 Aurora de la 14e Escadre Greenwood effectuera un survol dans le cadre du Grand Prix de Trois-Rivières, le dimanche 7 août.
December 7, 2022 | Local, Naval
CCGS Hudson to be responsibly deconstructed
Dartmouth, Nova Scotia - Following an illustrious 59 years of service supporting ocean science work in Canada and around the world, the CCGS Hudson is taking its final voyage and is set for deconstruction and environmentally-responsible disposal.
On November 28, 2022, after an open competitive process, Public Services and Procurement Canada, on behalf of the Canadian Coast Guard (CCG), awarded the contract for the vessel’s deconstruction to Antigonish-based marine contracting company R.J. MacIsaac Construction Ltd (RJMI). The cost for this environmentally-responsible disposal contract is $1.6 million.
In the coming weeks, the Canadian Coast Guard will sign over the care and custody of the decommissioned vessel to RJMI. The vessel will then be towed from the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia to a temporary storage site in Halifax Harbour for a few months.
In Spring 2023, RJMI will tow the vessel to their Sheet Harbour facility where the hazardous material remediation and disposal process will be performed. By Fall 2023, the vessel will be removed from water and the hull and superstructure will be disassembled. The overall project is expected to be completed by the end of Fall 2023.
RJMI will ensure that any steel, stainless steel, aluminum, or other recyclable materials onboard the vessel are recycled while non-recyclable materials are disposed of in an environmentally-responsible manner, in compliance with federal, provincial, and municipal regulations. As well, the contractor will salvage and return the CCGS Hudson’s hull transducers and propellers to the CCG.
Quotes
“Today is a bittersweet day as the Canadian Coast Guard responsibly disposes of the CCGS Hudson, a trailblazing vessel that has served Canadians and Canadian scientists for nearly 60 years. The Canadian Coast Guard taking this step serves as a reminder to all vessel owners across the country to have a plan to dispose of their ships in an environmentally responsible way to protect our lands and oceans.”
The Honourable Joyce Murray, Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard
"For over half a century, the CCGS Hudson has proudly served our country. As this vessel retires, I’m thrilled to see a local company in Sheet Harbour receive the contract to deconstruct the vessel which will create jobs in Sheet Harbour and support the local economy."
The Honourable Sean Fraser, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship
“As we mark the final chapter of CCGS Hudson’s illustrious history, I’m reminded of all of the Canadian Coast Guard personnel that sailed on the ship and left their mark on Canadian ocean science. I am particularly proud that some of the CCGS Hudson’s history will be preserved as a reminder to celebrate the past as we navigate the future in oceanographic science missions.”
Mario Pelletier, Commissioner of the Canadian Coast Guard
Quick facts
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Prior to the handover of the ship to R.J. MacIsaac Construction Ltd., Canadian Coast Guard personnel removed a number of items including the ship’s bell, the wheel, chronometer, anchors, and photographs from the CCGS Hudson which are currently being safely stored. The historic items will be archived or donated to maritime museums, installed on the future Offshore Oceanographic Science Vessel currently under construction at Seaspan’s Vancouver Shipyard, installed on other CCG vessels where appropriate, or placed as historical decorative pieces at departmental sites.
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The CCGS Hudson was a key platform for Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s oceanographic science program. The yet to be named Offshore Oceanographic and Science Vessel, isn’t expected to be delivered until 2025. The Canadian Coast Guard continues to work closely with Fisheries and Oceans Canada to mitigate the impacts on science programming.
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The future Offshore Oceanographic and Science Vessel is being built as part of the Government of Canada’s National Shipbuilding Strategy (NSS).
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The Offshore Oceanographic Science Vessel (OOSV), the second class of Canadian Coast Guard vessels being built by Seaspan’s Vancouver Shipyards, is a critical step in the renewal of the Coast Guard Fleet. The OOSV will support the Government of Canada’s next 30 plus years of cutting edge scientific research that will help inform decisions about protecting our fisheries, oceans and coastal areas.
On the same subject
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December 18, 2018 | Local, Aerospace, C4ISR
Government of Canada announces contract awards aimed at improving space-based earth observation capabilities
Backgrounder December 14, 2018 – Ottawa, Ontario – National Defence/Canadian Armed Forces Already a leader in civilian radar earth observation as a result of the launch of RADARSAT-2 in 2007, Canada will soon launch the three-satellite RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM). This mission will carry a multi-mode synthetic aperture radar and an automatic identification system to enable enhanced ship tracking and provide greater awareness of Canada's territories as well as other areas of interest around the world where DND and its Allies operate. In order to enhance Canada's current and future earth observation capabilities, research and development is required to generate new approaches and tools to simplify and accelerate the tasking, collection, processing, exploitation and dissemination (TCPED) cycle. This cycle ensures that end-users have timely, relevant, accurate and actionable information products, such as maps and reports to support intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) applications. This type of Canadian investment in cutting-edge science and technology (S&T) innovations will guide the design of new advanced earth observation satellites that will eventually replace the RCM. The All Domain Situational Awareness (ADSA) S&T Program has funded several calls for proposals to support innovation including in the area of compressing TCPED cycle for earth observing satellites in support of applications in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. A recent ADSA call was undertaken through the Defence Innovation Research Program (DIRP) and resulted in the Government of Canada investing $6.7 million into 12 projects aimed at improving the TCPED cycle. Structured as 50/50 cost-shared contracts with funding shared equally between government and industry, the DIRP model promotes joint ventures between Canada's innovation industry and the Government of Canada, bringing the total public and private investment under this call for proposals to $13.2 million. The following are the contracts awarded under the second DIRP call for proposals for the TCPED initiative. Title Complementary Electro-Optic/Infrared (EO/IR) payload to RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM) follow-on Supplier ABB Location Quebec, Quebec Project Type Study Federal contribution $305,000 (Total: $610,000) This project aims to help define mission objectives, requirements, and concepts for a secondary electro-optic/infrared payload for the RCM follow-on mission. It will also help identify critical technologies and risks. The combination of different types of remote sensing sensors on the same spacecraft has the potential to greatly enhance situational awareness capabilities especially with respect to maritime traffic monitoring. Title Project Arviq Supplier AstroCom Associates Inc. Location Ottawa, Ontario Project Type Study Federal contribution $165,000 (Total: $330,000) Project Arviq will investigate the feasibility of a proposed capability to detect ocean waves in sea ice. Arviq builds upon recent results that show centimetre-scale ice waves can be imaged directly using synthetic aperture radar interferometry technology. Title Multi-satellite data integration for operational ship detection, identification and tracking Supplier C-CORE Location St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador Project Type Study Federal contribution $775,000 (Total: $1,550,000) This study will investigate and develop a multi-satellite data classifying approach to enhance the capacity to discriminate ships from icebergs. Efficiently and rapidly classifying detected objects of interest in or over water is a key area of interest to the maritime domain situational awareness community. Title Modelling the geospatial intelligence capability to support Canadian surveillance and sovereignty Supplier C-CORE Location St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador Project Type Study Federal contribution $940,000 (Total: $1,880,000) This project will evaluate the spatio-temporal aspects of acquiring, downlinking and analyzing imagery for the generation of geographical intelligence products in support of land and maritime monitoring. It will investigate and develop a multi-satellite data classifier to better characterize ship and non-ship targets. Title Electro-Optic/Infrared data analytics for enhanced maritime surveillance Supplier Complex System Inc. Location Calgary, Alberta Project Type Study and prototype development Federal contribution $200,000 (Total: $400,000) This project will develop an on-board video processing system which will be used together with space-based radar and ship dectection sensors to enhance near-real time vessel detection, tracking and identification. Complex Systems Inc. will develop a new data analytics system by leveraging leading edge computer vision and machine learning technologies and deliver a suite of advanced processing tools enabling enhancing maritime surveillance capabilities. Title RADARSAT thematic exploitation platform demonstrator Supplier CubeWerx Inc. Location Gatineau, QC Project Type Study Federal contribution $485,000 (Total: $970,000) This project will study complementary Big Data and Cloud computing approaches to support scalability, agility, and on-demand availability of earth observation data products. CubeWerx will develop a RADARSAT thematic exploitation platform and demonstrate a working environment where users can package their applications and upload them to a Cloud environment that supports the processing of users algorithms at scale, avoiding the need to download and store large volumes of images locally. Title Real-time processing of large-volume space-based multimodal data Supplier General Dynamics Mission Systems Location Ottawa, Ontario Project Type Study and prototype development Federal contribution $75,000 ($150,000) This project will develop new approaches using emerging graphics processing unit architectures and the latest algorithms to process large volumes of satellite remote sensing data from multiple sources and types such as multiband radar, electro-optical and infrared sensors. Title Augmenting Canada's maritime surveillance capability with complementary electro-optic/infrared information products Supplier MDA Systems Ltd. Location Richmond, British Columbia Project Type Study and prototype development Federal contribution $1,000,000 (Total: $2,000,000) This project will demonstrate how incorporating various types of space remote sensing satellite data elements can augment maritime surveillance capabilities with additional detections and improve classification, identification, and tracking. Title Application of Big Data analytics techniques to extracting GEOINT from synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery Supplier MDA Geospatial Services Inc. Location Richmond, British Columbia Project Type Study Federal contribution $500,000 (Total: $1,000,000) This project will investigate Big Data analytics and automatization techniques to better exploit the large and growing data archives of RADARSAT-2 and the upcoming RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM). It proposes to understand and demonstrate how Big Data analytics, in particular deep learning, can be applied to large archives of synthetic aperture radar imagery to extract relevant geospatial intelligence. Title Persistent multi-sensor land surveillance and change monitoring Supplier MDA Systems Ltd. Location Richmond, British Columbia Project Type Study Federal contribution $750,000 (Total: $1,500,000) This project will explore how wide-area automated change monitoring techniques can be enhanced by using a combination of earth observing data types such as RADARSAT and electro-optical data. The expected benefits include more persistent, more operational, all-weather monitoring capabilities combined with very high change classification accuracy. The project will leverage deep learning and exploit the availability of large satellite image archives. Title Architecture innovations for analytics-ready data Supplier UrtheCast Corp. Location Vancouver, British Columbia Project Type Study and prototype development Federal contribution $1,000,000 (Total: $2,000,000) This project will demonstrate scalable warehousing and on-demand processing of analytics-ready space remote sensing data from multiple types of earth obervation systems, to enable emerging techniques including artificial intelligence to be used for the production of geographical information products. Title Complementary sensor exploitation Supplier UrtheCast Corp. Location Vancouver, British Columbia Project Type Study and prototype development Federal contribution $499,000 (Total: $999,000) This project will develop, implement and demonstrate a new system to deliver thematic maps derived from complementary satellite earth observation data sources in support of CAF land operations. https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/news/2018/12/government-of-canada-announces-contract-awards-aimed-at-improving-space-based-earth-observation-capabilities.html
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July 17, 2024 | Local, Aerospace, Security
Ottawa looking at retiring some older military equipment — including the Snowbird jets | CBC News
The Department of National Defence is actively considering whether to retire some older ships, planes and other items of equipment that have become too difficult and costly to maintain — including the aircraft belonging to the iconic Snowbird demonstration squadron.