June 11, 2018 | Local, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR
Murray Brewster
National Defence fell $2.3 billion short in its plan to re-equip the military in the past year — a failing that one defence analyst says guarantees many important decisions on warplanes, ships and vehicles will be pushed beyond next year's election.
Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan revealed the figure Wednesday as he launched the department's long-anticipated investment plan at a major defence industry trade show in Ottawa.
The plan is the Liberal government's spending roadmap for its defence policy, released a year ago, which pledged $6.2 billion in new capital spending in the first year.
New figures show $3.9 billion was spent.
Later in the day, the chair of the Liberal government's council of economic advisers underscored the importance of investment in the defence sector and how it will drive innovation in other sectors.
"If we want to grow — and we can in Canada, and we want to grow more significantly — the defence sector is going to play an essential part in doing that," Dominic Barton said.
Leading-edge military technology and the possibilities for its commercialization can transform the broader economy, he added.
However, the investment plan presented by the Liberals on Wednesday leans heavily on refurbishing existing technology and equipment — mostly aircraft — in the coming decade.
The Defence Capabilities Blue Print will see the air force's CF-18 fighter jets, C-140 Aurora surveillance planes, C-144 Challenger executive jets, C-150 Polaris refuellers and transports, CT-114 Tutor trainers and demonstration jets, C-149 search and rescue helicopters and CH-146 Griffons all given life extensions and upgrades.
New aircraft, including drones, won't be introduced until the mid-2020s — or later.
A defence analyst said that's no surprise since many major decisions will be pushed past the 2019 election. That means it will be up to the next government to make the tough decisions on how much to buy and how much to spend.
"Unless we see an extremely busy June with a lot of announcements on milestone projects, a lot of the work is going to be left until later," said Dave Perry, an expert in procurement at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.
"They're not moving ahead as quickly as they suggested in the defence policy."
The government could leave even more money on the table this year. Figures compiled by Perry, using the federal government's own budget documents and records, suggest as much as $3 billion could go unspent on military equipment in the current fiscal period.
The former Conservative government was repeatedly criticized for promising the military big things in terms of equipment, but rarely delivering and allowing allocated funds to lapse.
That cash was eventually kicked back to the federal treasury and used for deficit reduction.
Sajjan said defence spending is now guaranteed in the fiscal framework, the government's long-term financial plan.
That means National Defence gets to keep the money and spend it later.
"We always know we might not need the extra funds, but they have to be there just in case," Sajjan said. "Rest assured, the unspent $2.3 billion dollars is protected. Those funds remain available when we need them."
He defended the spending "delta," saying that 30 per cent of it comes because projects came in under budget. Another 42 per cent was because of delays by defence contractors.
Approximately one-third, though, relates to the department's inability to make a decision — or develop specifications on time.
Sajjan took a shot at the government of former prime minister Stephen Harper, which used to regularly publish its defence spending plans, but never had specific funding attached to individual projects.
Conservative defence critic James Bezan said there is a disconnect between the government's defence policy and its spending plans as outlined in federal budget documents.
"Nothing seems to match," said Bezan, who treats the federal budget as the last word in spending.
There was no mention of National Defence in Finance Minister Bill Morneau's latest fiscal, presented in February. Defence officials insist that is because the department's spending is already accounted for in the fiscal framework.
The federal Treasury Board, however, must approve funding on a project-by-project basis — and Bezan said that hasn't been done.
"There's no money to do the things Sajjan is out there talking about," he said. "We are still dealing with the problems of getting procurement done in a timely manner and getting it done on budget."
The head of a defence industry group — Sajjan's audience as he made the announcement — said the government does deserve credit for consulting more about projects ahead of time, but there are obvious shortcomings.
"Any time funding moves to the right, it is a predictability problem for us. We want as as predictable and as stable funding as we can get," said Christyn Cianfarani, the president and CEO of the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries.
"I still think, systemically, there is a problem and if we don't turn it upside down and shake it — the whole procurement system — and do things differently ... many, many things differently, we'll still see sluggishness in the procurement system."
He said the Liberal investment plan is not "aspirational" and states clearly where the cash is coming from.
The Conservative guidebook in the end "did not deliver for the men and women in uniform," Sajjan told the audience of defence contractors.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/sajjan-dnd-equipment-funds-1.4683606
February 11, 2022 | Local, Aerospace
The Canadian Multi-Mission Aircraft project will replace the Royal Canadian Air Force fleet of CP-140 Aurora aircraft and enhance its anti-submarine warfare and ISR capabilities.
December 18, 2018 | Local, Aerospace, C4ISR
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
November 5, 2019 | Local, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security
DAVID PUGLIESE, OTTAWA CITIZEN Troy Crosby has been appointed Assistant Deputy Minister of Materiel at the Department of National Defence. His appointment is effective Nov. 11. The ADM Materiel position opened up in August when Pat Finn decided to retire. At that time, Crosby (pictured above) assumed the role of Acting ADM(Materiel). In addition, Rear Admiral Simon Page will retire from the Royal Canadian Navy and will be appointed Chief of Staff Materiel. Page will start in that position starting Dec. 16th. https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/troy-crosby-named-new-assistant-deputy-minister-of-materiel-at-dnd