Back to news

May 12, 2021 | Local, Naval, C4ISR

U.S. government announces Canada will spend more than $2 billion on warship radars

The Liberal government has approved the purchase of a U.S. radar system for installation in the Royal Canadian Navy’s new fleet of warships.

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/u-s-government-announces-canada-will-spend-more-than-2-billion-on-warship-radars

On the same subject

  • Xtract Technologies Secures $975,000 DND Contract

    February 6, 2020 | Local, C4ISR

    Xtract Technologies Secures $975,000 DND Contract

    Xtract Technologies, a subsidiary of Patriot One Technologies, has secured a $975,000CAD Contract with Canada's Department of National Defense through the Public Works and Government Services Canada Division. The contract is for a project related to improving situational awareness for the Canadian Armed Forces and security personnel using video analytics, artificial intelligence and augmented reality. This project will continue previous work completed by Xtract.ai for the CAF to develop technology solutions to augment the situational awareness of their soldiers and address the following challenges: detect, recognize, and identify persons or objects of interest in a physical environment, and/or track identified persons and objects of interest using seamless information sharing across a decision network. Work will proceed in multiple phases, including the design, development and deployment of advanced machine learning models, proprietary data sets and integration with advanced visualization hardware. “We're very excited to leverage the Xtract.ai team's expertise in video analytics, object detection and artificial intelligence with the Canadian Department of National Defense,” expresses Martin Cronin, CEO of Patriot One Technologies. “With the work Xtract.ai has be doing with several clients, as well as on Patriot One's PATSCAN Multi-Sensor Covert Threat Detection Platform, the team brings tremendous experience in video analytics and threat object detection and look forward to delivering a high-performing solution that we hope will augment our military personnel in their service to our country.” http://www.canadiandefencereview.com/news?news/2796

  • PropWorks: Sustained growth over 2 decades

    December 18, 2019 | Local, Aerospace

    PropWorks: Sustained growth over 2 decades

    by Ken Pole Ever since French engineer Henri Giffard flew a hydrogen-filled dirigible 27 kilometres from Paris to Elancourt in September 1852, the propeller was for nearly a century the only way to sustain powered flight. It would be another 51 years before Orville and Wilbur Wright used this “airscrew” technology in the first flight of a powered fixed-wing aircraft at Kitty Hawk, N.C. The Wright brothers also came up with the idea of adding a twist to each blade, giving a more consistent angle of attack. Despite the advent and evolution of jets since the early 1940s, propellers have remained the preferred option for smaller aircraft. But, as with all things mechanical, they require maintenance and repair. That has enabled Winnipeg-based PropWorks Propeller Systems Inc. to become the largest company of its kind in Western Canada. “Winnipeg is where we started, on the fringe of James Richardson International Airport,” company president Jim Ross, one of the founding investors, told Skies. “The company was incorporated in October 1999 and we moved into our building in December 1999.” Winnipeg is home to about two-thirds of the total staff of 30 with the rest at its shop in Edmonton. PropWorks is now privately held by Ross along with a pair of Calgary-based investors, Lorne Gray, who owns the Aircraft Canada sales and appraisal firm, and AvMax Group Inc. “I'm the only constant,” he laughed, quickly adding that some of his employees also are long-term. Before the company was founded, Ross spent 15 years with Cessna Aircraft Co., doing finance and some marketing until it shut down its Winnipeg facility in 1992. So he began marketing for several aviation-related companies, one of which was Western Propeller. When Western decided to close the Winnipeg facility seven years later, to focus on their Edmonton and Vancouver centres, Ross and an original group of investors bought the equipment, moved it into a leased 6,500-square-foot building and began operations with just five employees. It relocated to a new 12,000-square-foot building in April 2015. The Edmonton shop, which opened in December 2006, was moved in December 2017 to a 14,000-square-foot building at Villeneuve Airport, the area's main general aviation and flight training hub. PropWorks' employees, whose experience tallies up to more than 150 years, provide services which “meet or exceed” original equipment manufacturers' specifications. “Sometimes we'll go an extra step with such things with non-destructive testing that we feel gives our customers a bit of added comfort,” Ross explained. “We have a dedicated non-destructive testing room” where blades, hubs and related components are tested before propellers are reassembled and balanced. NDT procedures include magnetic particle inspection, liquid penetrants, eddy current and ultrasonic inspection. In addition to being an Avia Propeller Service Centre, PropWorks overhauls and repairs most models of Hamilton Standard, Hamilton Sundstrand, McCauley, Dowty, MT, Sensenich and Hartzell propellers. (On a historical note, Ohio-based Hartzell dates to 1917 when Robert Hartzell, a pilot whose family owned a hardwood lumber factory and who had noticed a high failure rate in wood propellers, began producing hand-carved walnut units at the suggestion of longtime friend Orville Wright.) To this day, Hartzell prizes and cultivates customer loyalty in having built its global reputation, and so does PropWorks, which has customers in Canada, the U.S. and around the world. Ross said that as with most businesses, “it's about the people as much as the product.” One of his people is director of maintenance Mike Hudec, who had been with Western Propeller and now is his longest-term employee. Cliff Arntson, manager in Edmonton and Mike Wagner, assistant manager in Edmonton have a combined 84 years experience with propellers. Much of the U.S. business is with customers in the border markets of Minnesota and the Dakotas. PropWorks has three trucks which pick up the propellers for work in Winnipeg and Edmonton. “Our customers like that service,” said Ross. His most distant customer is AvMax, which has a base in Nairobi, Kenya, and he has other large customers primarily Canada and U.S. based. PropWorks draws on a variety of sources for its employees, including the Stevenson Campus of Red River College in Winnipeg. They come out of the aviation maintenance engineer (AME) stream but are not certified AMEs because they haven't gone through the requisite apprentice program when they join PropWorks. “They can't do that in a propeller shop because that wouldn't give them a broad enough base to qualify as AMEs,” said Ross. “There's no AME licence for propellers; there was at one time but not for many years now.” The general preference is “somebody with a good mechanical aptitude who we can put in our own training program,” he added. “It takes one to two years for them to become proficient.” Asked to explain the difference between overhaul and repair, Ross said the former involves disassembly, discarding parts mandated for replacement, installing new ones and then putting the entire assembly through NDT before it's painted, reassembled and balanced. That means it's a “zero time” propeller when it leaves the shop. Repairs, on the other hand, can involve a range of things such as dealing with blade nicks or leaking hub seals. If that's all that is done, the propeller leaves the shop as “time continued.” Like everything in aviation, propellers have long since evolved since those early fixed wood two-bladed configurations. “The simple ones nowadays are the fixed-pitch propellers that you'd see on your most basic flight training airplane,” said Ross, who is part-owner of a Cessna 172 and has about 1,000 hours logged. “Then it goes all the way up, through two-bladed constant-speed propellers to three-, four- and even five-bladed propellers.” The most complex ones are Hamilton Sundstrand propellers on the Dash 8 twin turboprop introduced by de Havilland Canada in 1984 and last built by Bombardier Aerospace in 2005. “They simply take more time,” said Ross. Then there are some which can justifiably called vintage, such as the Hamilton Standard three-bladed propellers on Second World War-era Douglas DC-3s but these are “fairly standard.” Ross noted that PropWorks donated one for the equally old North American Harvard Mark II in the Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum in Brandon, Man. The company is doing more composites, a capacity which required “a substantial investment” in equipment, including an autoclave to heat the laminates. Asked what the future might hold, Ross replied that while “we've just had our best year ever,” he hesitated to predict the “hectic” growth of the past 10 years would continue. “The key to growth is not necessarily going out to find new customers. It's adding to our capabilities – that way more customers are likely to send their work to us.” While he could only guess at the number of corporate or private propeller-driven aircraft in Canada, he did venture that “it's not a dying market” which bodes well for the future. https://www.skiesmag.com/news/propworks-sustained-growth-over-2-decads

  • Costs of hearing-related health claims on the rise in Canadian military

    June 22, 2018 | Local, Land

    Costs of hearing-related health claims on the rise in Canadian military

    Safety and situational awareness cited among reasons to not use hearing protection The cost of health claims related to hearing loss among members of Canada's military is rising, due in part to the reluctance of members to wear protective equipment and because the most suitable devices aren't always provided. Explosions, gunfire, engine noise and alarms all contribute to hearing loss among military members. Almost a third of them have chronic hearing problems by the time they retire, according to surveys by Veterans Affairs. A 2016 study obtained by Radio-Canada looked at how to better protect the hearing of members with pre-existing hearing loss, and found that military personnel were reluctant to wear hearing protection. Some of the reasons were: Discomfort. Incompatibility with other head gear. The feeling of isolation that comes with sound dampening. But the biggest reason was that earplugs or whatever other protection device used would impair situational awareness, safety and "interfere with successful completion of the mission," wrote Dr. Sharon Abel, a senior scientist at Defence Research and Development Canada. That has led to increased health costs for the military. The Canadian Forces Health Services Group spent about $890,000 in 2013-14 on health costs related to hearing loss, followed by $937,000 in 2014-2015. In 2015-16, the last year for which data is available, it was close to $1.1 million. Different soldiers, different needs Richard Blanchette, a retired major-general who suffered hearing loss during his years of service, said the Department of National Defence does everything in its power to protect members and it's the responsibility of the members to do their part. Nobody else can do it for them, he told Radio-Canada. Different military members, however, have different issues. Abel's study found while earplugs may reduce the risk of hearing loss for people with normal hearing, they would increase impairment for people with pre-existing hearing loss. Those people would be better served by more specialized protection, she wrote. "Insufficient consideration is given to the selection of devices that will support the auditory tasks being carried out or suit the hearing status of the user." The military has set up an awareness program for its members about hearing loss, said Pierre Lamontagne with Canadian Forces Health Services​. But soldiers remain reluctant to use some of the equipment they may need because it adds to the considerable weight they may already be carrying in the field, he said. Health consequences Lamontagne said he makes recommendations to commanders of the units, but it's the commanders who make the purchases. While about one in five soldiers needs specialized protection for hearing loss, the devices may be purchased based on general rather than individual needs, he said. The consequences of hearing problems are not always recognized because they are invisible, according to Chantal Laroche, a professor of audiology at the University of Ottawa. However, the side-effects — persistent ringing in the ear, for example, or an inability to communicate with others — can cause other serious health problems, including mental health issues, she said. Laroche said that in general, specialized hearing protections can be expensive, but the military should weigh those costs against the amount they are spending on health costs and disability claims. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/military-hearing-loss-members-reluctant-to-wear-protection-1.4711517

All news