No title found

On the same subject

• 

  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

• 

  May 8, 2019 | Local, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security, Other Defence

  Scheer rolls out an ambitious defence agenda, but critics ask: Where's the money?

  Murray Brewster · CBC News A little joke used to make its way around the Harper Conservative government every time National Defence presented Andrew Scheer's former boss with the bills for new equipment — about how Stephen Harper would emit an audible 'gulp' of alarm when they crossed his desk. Scheer, in the first of a series of election-framing speeches for the Conservatives, pledged yesterday to wrap his arms around Canada's allies, take the politics out of defence procurement, buy new submarines, join the U.S. ballistic missile defence program and expand the current military mission in Ukraine in an undefined way. What was absent from the Conservative leader's speech — a greatest-hits medley of road-tested Conservative policy favourites, blended with jabs at the Trudeau government's record — was an answer to the first question his supporters usually ask on these occasions: How are you going to pay for it? Deficit hawk or defence hawk? The Liberals have set the federal government on course to increase defence spending by 70 per cent by 2027. The cost of what Scheer is proposing — submarines and missile defence — would have to be shoehorned into that framework somehow. Either that, or he'd have to radically redesign the current defence spending program. Scheer's speech was greeted with raised eyebrows by more than one defence sector observer. "When he starts talking about deficits, you can kiss all that goodbye," said Stephen Saideman, a professor of international affairs at Carleton University. "In other speeches, he talked about being a deficit hawk. That would have real implications for the defence stuff." The Harper government increased defence spending during the Afghan war and made a series of promises to revitalize the military, but ended up cutting its budget and postponing projects in order to eliminate the deficit. 'Harper all over again' Saideman said Scheer's speech did not offer an ironclad guarantee that he'd avoid doing the same thing, and was even inaccurate in its characterization of the Liberals' record on defence spending. A full half to two-thirds of the defence and foreign policy vision Scheer laid out, he said, was "Harper all over again" — but with some surprising differences. His embrace of allies was much warmer than it was with the previous Conservative crowd, which tended to look upon NATO with a jaundiced eye. "I will reinvigorate Canada's role in the alliances we share with our democratic allies. This includes existing alliances like NORAD, NATO, the Commonwealth, La Francophonie and the Five Eyes, but it will also include overtures to India and Japan," Scheer said. He also pledged a Conservative government would do more in Eastern Europe. "This will include expanding upon the current missions to support Ukraine and providing Ukraine's military with the equipment they need to defend their borders," said the Conservative leader. Scheer didn't say in his speech what he wants Canada to do in Eastern Europe that it isn't doing now — short of putting combat troops on the front line of Ukraine's breakaway eastern districts, or selling offensive weapons to Kiev. Scheer did promise to take the lead on a potential United Nations peacekeeping mission, a proposal that has been out there in the international community for months and has largely gone nowhere. Other ideas that often go nowhere filled out the rest of Scheer's speech — like the promise of a fix for the Canadian military's complex, cumbersome system for buying equipment. Politicians are to blame, Scheer said. "Military procurement in Canada is hyper-politicized, to our detriment," he said. "By playing politics with these matters, governments have diminished the important responsibility to adequately and expediently equip the Armed Forces." To accept that argument, one must set aside his party's favourite rallying cry during the politically blistering F-35 debate of half a dozen years ago: If you don't support the plane, you don't support the troops. Politics-free procurement? Michael Byers, a University of British Columbia defence policy expert, said removing politics from procurement decisions would be a fantastic step forward, one that could save taxpayers boatloads of money by doing away with pet projects and regional interests. "It's an admirable goal, but he would be the first prime minister ever to take the politics out of defence procurement," he said. "So, I'm skeptical about whether he would actually do so ... I take that statement with a very large grain of salt." The absence of a clear fiscal pledge also troubles Byers, who noted that replacing Canada's Victoria-class submarines with either German or Swedish-built boats would be expensive. So would participation in ballistic missile defence, which has various levels of participation from research and development all the way up to anti-missile radar and batteries. It is, he said, all about the dollars. "I think that when we talk about defence spending and defence budgets, we have to talk about real money going out the door in terms of signed contracts," said Byers. "And neither the Conservatives nor the Liberals have been able to deliver much in the way of signed contracts for the last 20 years." https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/scheer-rolls-out-an-ambitious-defence-agenda-but-critics-ask-where-s-the-money-1.5127028

• 

  June 2, 2022 | Local, Aerospace

  Griffon : le choix de Bell confirmé - Les Ailes du Québec

  C’est donc un total 76 Griffon qui seront mis à niveau ailleurs qu’à Mirabel. La livraison des appareils mis à niveau devrait s’échelonner