La France espère pénétrer le marché canadien de l’aéronautique et de la défense

Sur le même sujet

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  24 septembre 2019 | Local, Aérospatial

  'Shields Up': Defence Department looks for new ways to protect Canada's satellites, with a nod to Star Trek

  Enemy action against satellites could include cyber-attacks, jamming, lasers or missiles, while natural threats could be solar flares or space weather The Defence Department wants to take a page out of Star Trek and has asked researchers to develop ways to protect Canadian satellites from such threats as laser attacks and missiles. Dubbed the “Shields Up” project, the plan would see the development of innovative capabilities that could be incorporated into the design and operation of Canada's space-based systems. The Shields Up terminology is a nod to the sci-fi TV and movie series Star Trek in which the USS Enterprise starship is protected by deflector shields that can be instantly activated in response to a threat. “Satellites are vulnerable to natural and artificial threats as well as, increasingly, threats from adversaries who seek to disrupt or destroy allied space systems,” said Dan Le Bouthillier, a spokesman for the Department of National Defence. Enemy action against satellites could include cyber-attacks, jamming, lasers or missiles, while natural threats could be solar flares, space weather or collisions with debris in space. The Defence Department and the Canadian Forces are the only Canadian entities with the mandate of protecting and defending the country's space capabilities, Le Bouthillier noted. The call for proposals is part of a DND science innovation program. Ideas that are accepted will receive $200,000 to further the proposal over a six-month period. The most promising solutions could receive another $1 million for additional development, Le Bouthillier said. Most satellite services are commercial in nature and defensive measures have not been a primary criteria in their design. But the DND wants that to change. The concepts or designs have to provide a reasonable method to deal with the threat. They also have to take into account Canada's international relations and obligations and the fact that various satellites operate in different orbits, which could influence the type of threats they face. There are 1,950 operational satellites in Earth orbits. Le Bouthillier said militaries are increasingly dependent on space-based systems for communication, surveillance, environmental monitoring and navigation. The DND has a growing interest in keeping Canadian space systems safe. In August the department put out a request to Canadian scientists to try to come up with a way to rid the Earth's orbit of the millions of pieces of space junk that pose a threat to satellites and other spacecraft. But the task is daunting; no other researcher has figured out how to collect the debris, which can be as small as one millimetre. The DND noted that the request at this point is not about funding a system but investigating new ideas to eliminate the space junk. The total number of “debris objects” in orbit is estimated to be about 129 million. That includes 34,000 objects greater than 10 centimetres in size, 900,000 objects one cm to 10 cm, and 128 million objects one mm to one cm, according to the DND. The debris has been created by decades of space travel and operations. In 2007, for instance, China conducted a military test using a missile to destroy one of its satellites. The warhead obliterated the spacecraft, creating an estimated 300,000 pieces of debris. The U.S., Russia and India have conducted similar military experiments. “There are no operational debris removal capabilities in use, globally, and existing prototypes lack important capabilities and have proven ineffective,” the DND noted in its request to researchers. DND is also interested in ways to track some of the smaller pieces of space junk as well as methods to remove multiple pieces of debris of any size. Space surveillance networks regularly track about 22,300 objects in Earth orbits. https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/shields-up-defence-department-looks-for-new-ways-to-protect-canadas-satellites-with-a-nod-to-star-trek

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  8 février 2021 | Local, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  NORAD modernization to dominate agenda of Canada-U.S. defence relations, experts say

  Levon Sevunts, Radio Canada International The modernization of the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) will dominate the agenda of Canada-U.S. defence relations as the Biden administration gears up to repair relations with old allies and face emerging threats from resurgent Russia and ascending China, Canadian defence experts say. The continued modernization of the binational command created in 1957 was on the agenda of the first phone call between President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last month, and during the first calls of Canadiand and U.S. defence ministers, said Andrea Charron, head of the Centre for Defence and Security Studies at the University of Manitoba. “This is at the highest levels. When the U.S. is concerned about the homeland defence and they feel vulnerable, it's something that Canada has to take very-very seriously and I think that is what's happening,” Charron told Eye on the Arctic. Canadian defence expert Nancy Teeple said she expects the Biden administration to ask Canada to contribute more to continental defence. “It opens up the question of whether Canada will participate in missile defence, it's going to push Canada towards that new fighter capability,” said Teeple, who teaches at the Royal Military College of Canada and is Postdoctoral Fellow at the North American Defence and Security Network (NAADSN). The need for NORAD modernization is driven by changes in the strategic and the global geopolitical environment, Charron said. “Where as before the primary threat during the Cold War was one peer competitor, who wasn't using greyzone tactics, or at least not to the same extent as now, we now have two peer competitors to the U.S. – China and Russia – and they are using greyzone tactics, and they're developing more sophisticated weapons like hypersonic glide vehicle weapons,” Charron said. A new generation of threats The urgency of the NORAD modernization and the paths towards that goal were outlined last fall in a paper written for the Wilson Center's Canada Institute by the former U.S. NORAD commander, retired Gen. Terrence O'Shaughnessy, and U.S. Air Force Brig.-Gen. Peter Fesler, the current deputy director of operations at the U.S. air defence headquarters. In the paper, titled Hardening the Shield: A Credible Deterrent & Capable Defense for North America, O'Shaughnessy and Fesler argue that “with innovations in long range missiles and foreign missile defense systems as well as a changing Arctic landscape, threats to U.S. national security are closer and less deterred than ever from attacking the U.S. Homeland.” O'Shaughnessy and Fesler argue that both China and Russia have developed capabilities to target North America with a new generation of long-range and high-precision conventional weapons. They say that while the U.S. has invested billions of dollars into building ballistic missile defences to protect against strikes by rogue nations such as North Korea, Washington and Ottawa have neglected investments and upgrades of the continental defensive systems “designed to defend against the range of threats presented by peer competitors.” Moreover, the various systems in place in many cases simply can't automatically share information, they say. “The radars used by NORAD to warn of Russian or Chinese ballistic missile attack, for example, are not integrated with those used by Northern Command to engage missiles launched by North Korea,” O'Shaughnessy and Fesler write. “Even if the ballistic missile defense architecture were to detect a launch from China, it would not directly share that information with NORAD's missile warning systems. “The watch standers in the consolidated NORAD and Northern Command headquarters are forced to verbally pass information displayed on independent systems.” Putting up a SHIELD O'Shaughnessy and Fesler call for a “more holistic modernization effort” for NORAD. Northern Command and NORAD have collectively developed a modernization strategy for defence referred to as the Strategic Homeland Integrated Ecosystem for Layered Defence, or SHIELD, they write. “SHIELD is not a system, or even a system of systems, it is an ecosystem,” O'Shaughnessy and Fesler write. “It is a fundamentally new approach to defending North America.” SHIELD takes advantage of the data provided by traditional and non-traditional sources to provide a layered ability to detect any threat approaching the continent, from the seafloor to on orbit, in what NORAD and Northern Command refer to as “all domain awareness,” they write. “It pools this data and fuses it into a common operational picture. Then, using the latest advances in machine learning and data analysis, it scans the data for patterns that are not visible to human eyes, helping decision-makers understand adversary potential courses of action before they are executed.” ‘It's many things and they are already happening' Experts say figuring out Canada's role in this new “ecosystem” will be tricky politically and likely to come at a steep financial cost just as both Ottawa and Washington are deep in the red because of the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. “It's everything from, for example, the runways at Inuvik being extended because right now only the CF-18 Hornets can land there and we need to make it longer,” Charron said. “It's things like better communication in the Arctic because there seems to be the potential for more activity there.” Or it could be something like coming up with a new Combined Forces Air Component Commander to change the command and control structure and allow the NORAD commander to think more strategically rather than to be bogged down by the day-to-day tasks, Charron said. In addition, upgrades to NORAD capabilities also have to be guided by the need for information dominance, Charron said. “So it's many things and they are already happening,” Charron said. “For example there is a new program called Pathfinder, which is helping feeds from the North Warning System through artificial intelligence to glean more information that the North Warning System is actually picking up but current algorithms and analysts aren't able to see.” Teeple said Canada can also benefit from Washington's interest in developing continental defence, including the Arctic by developing infrastructure that has dual military-civilian use. “This provides incredible benefits if Canada can collaborate,” Teeple said. “And those benefits would be obviously involving collaboration, involving input from Northern Indigenous communities and developing systems that can enhance things like communications and other types of infrastructure in the North that would enhance their quality of life.” Canadian policy-makers should also think about some of the niche areas where Canada can contribute to the NORAD modernization and the continental defence, Teeple said. “So enhancing its sensor capabilities for early warning, obviously that involves the upgrading of the North Warning System,” Teeple said. Other roles for Canada could include non-kinetic disruptive capabilities, such as cyber capabilities, Teeple said. This could give Canada a more offensive role in the new SHIELD ecosystem that would be more palatable politically than hosting ballistic missile interceptors on its territory, she added. https://www.rcinet.ca/eye-on-the-arctic/2021/02/05/norad-modernization-to-dominate-agenda-of-canada-u-s-defence-relations-experts-say/

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  23 novembre 2024 | Local, C4ISR

  No plans to buy first-person drones for Canadian Armed Forces

  The drone systems are currently being widely used in the Russia-Ukraine war as well as in fighting in Gaza and Lebanon.