NORAD asked Canada to review cybersecurity around civilian infrastructure and army bases

On the same subject

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  December 18, 2018 | Local, Aerospace

  Feds going ahead with plan to buy used jets, says Defence minister

  By Charlie Pinkerton Nothing will make the government reconsider its controversial plan to buy 25 second-hand, 30-year-old fighter jets as a temporary stopgap for its fleet, says Canada's minister of National Defence. “For us, (cancelling the purchase is) not even in the picture at all, because it would be absolutely irresponsible if we don't try to fill this capability gap,” Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan told iPolitics in an interview. “We have to invest.” When they came to power, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberals deferred a plan to buy 65 F-35 fighter jets, deciding instead to buy a much smaller number in the interim. They first sought to purchase 18 new Super Hornet jets built by American manufacturer Boeing, before canning that plan about a year ago as trade tensions between the countries boiled over. An announcement followed that Canada was buying 18 used F-18s from Australia to supplement its existing CF-18 fleet, which dates from the early 1980s, and was due for replacement after about 20 years. Over the summer, the government announced it would buy seven jets from Australia for parts. The Liberals had set aside $500 million for this purchase, but the final cost is still unclear. Since the announcement to purchase Australia's old planes, Sajjan has faced harsh criticism from opposition members who call the plan unacceptable, especially after a damning report from the auditor general of Canada less than a month ago. Yet when asked if the purchase could be stopped, Sajjan replied, “Why would you want to stop it?” One answer to that — cherrypicked from the auditor general's report — is that under the current plan, Canada will not meet its commitment to NORAD and NATO, which government officials, including Sajjan and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, have cited as a major reason for the government's decision to buy the planes. The auditor general also casts doubt on the viability of the government's interim fleet because of a shortage of technicians and pilots capable of maintaining and flying the jets. “National Defence expects to spend almost $3 billion, over and above existing budgets, without a plan to deal with its biggest obstacles to meeting the new operational requirement,” says the report. “We know it's going to take time,” Sajjan said, “but at least we're investing in the problem so we can finally get rid of it.” National Defence doubled down on its current plan following the auditor general's report, saying it's seeking approval of “a number” of upgrades to keep Canada's CF-18 fleet in the air until 2032. It also says it will increase the number of technicians and pilots in the fighter force, even though it identified the shortage as far back as 2016. The first jets to replace the existing CF-18s, and those the government is buying from Australia, will arrive in 2025. A yet-to-be-chosen future fleet of 88 fighter aircraft are supposed to be fully operational by 2031, and last until the year 2060. https://ipolitics.ca/2018/12/17/feds-going-ahead-with-plan-to-buy-used-jets-says-defence-minister/

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  March 12, 2019 | Local, Aerospace

  Simulating the ‘SuperScooper’

  by Lisa Gordon The Viking CL-415 “SuperScooper” is more akin to a pick-up truck than a sports car. It's a hardworking, amphibious turboprop that was built to fight wildfires. It flies low, battling blistering heat and blinding smoke, before releasing 13,500 pounds of water in six seconds – and then returning to a nearby lake where it skims the surface to reload. Introduced in 1993 by Bombardier, the CL-415 was essentially a turboprop version of its predecessor, the piston-powered CL-215. Today, there are close to 170 CL-215/415 aircraft in operation, mostly in Europe and North America. They are now supported by Viking Air, which acquired the program from Bombardier in 2016. Pilot training in the CL-415 has historically been done in the aircraft, but TRU Simulation + Training says that due to the unique mission it performs, those training flights can be dangerous. The South Carolina-headquartered company is a division of industry giant Textron Inc., and was formed following the amalgamation of several specialty flight simulation and pilot training companies, including former Montreal-based Mechtronix. About two years ago, TRU's commercial aviation division in Montreal began designing the world's first CL-415 full flight simulator (FFS) with the capability to replicate operations not only in the air, but also on the water. The company was able to draw on its recent experience of successfully building a Series 400 Twin Otter FFS for Canada's Pacific Sky Aviation in Calgary, Alta. – the world's first seaplane simulator with water-handling capabilities. “Before the Twin Otter project, hydrodynamic modelling is something we hadn't done before,” acknowledged Thom Allen, TRU's vice-president of Technology and Innovation. “It's like a boat simulator because you're modelling the buoyancy of the floats or the fuselage in the water. Interestingly, our engineers working on the Twin Otter program actually went to the library and researched how boats work on the water. Mixing the boat sim with the aerodynamic sim is the whole package.” He said the CL-415 experience took things one step further by adding the mission component – scooping the water – to the Twin Otter build. “From a safety point of view, the types of missions you do in a waterbomber are quite a bit different from a commercial aircraft. When you're scooping water and dropping it over a fire, training in those conditions is very dangerous. The tradeoff has always been between the quality of the training and the danger of doing that sort of training.” TRU's CL-415 FFS was delivered to Ansett Aviation Training in Milan, Italy, in September 2018 and certified by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) in December to Level D standards. Although training courses have yet to be completed in the simulator, the hope is that both initial and recurrent pilot training will be done exclusively in the device. Allen said the operational characteristics of a CL-415 are complex and unique. “When you're flying over a very hot fire, you drop your water and the mass of the aircraft is cut in half. The turbulence effect is quite significant when you hit the updraft. The fire is creating turbulence, smoke, reduced visibility – and pilots are dropping every five or 10 minutes repeatedly, usually in rugged terrain at low altitudes. This is the part that made this project something new.” To gather accurate performance data, TRU rented a CL-415 and equipped it with flight test instrumentation. “We weren't doing fire drops with our engineers on board, but we did all the manoeuvres around that, and we brought in a number of senior CL-415 pilots to evaluate our work.” The result is the world's first high fidelity CL-415 simulator with the capability of replicating not just air and water operations, but various types and intensities of forest fires and changes in related environmental conditions. The cockpit noise level is accurately reproduced by a secondary audio system that – like the real aircraft – requires crewmembers to wear a noise-cancelling headset. Full article: https://www.skiesmag.com/news/simulating-the-superscooper

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  August 31, 2023 | Local, Naval

  Fourth Arctic and Offshore Patrol Vessel delivered to The Royal Canadian Navy

  Today, the Royal Canadian Navy’s (RCN) fourth Arctic and Offshore Patrol Vessel (AOPV), His Majesty’s Canadian Ship (HMCS) William Hall, was delivered to the fleet.