Norad asked Canada to 'identify and mitigate' cyber threats to critical civilian sites

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  5 mars 2019 | Local, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité, Autre défense

  Feds to invest billions less in new military equipment, may fall short on NATO spending target

  By Lee Berthiaume The Canadian Press The federal government will invest billions of dollars less in new military equipment than promised this year, raising concerns about the readiness of the Canadian Forces and the prospect that Canada will fall short on another NATO spending target. The Trudeau government in 2017 released a defence policy that included dramatic increases in the amount of money to be spent on new aircraft, ships, armoured vehicles and other military equipment each year for the next two decades. The investments are considered vital to replacing the Canadian Forces' aging fighter jets, ships and other equipment with state-of-the-art kit. Yet while the government is on track to invest more in new equipment for the second year in a row, budget documents show the Defence Department will still fall short more than $2 billion on the government's plan to spend $6.5 billion. The government spent $2.3 billion less than planned last year, largely because of delays in projects such as the government's huge plan to buy new warships, though also because some things ended up costing less than expected. The department's top civil servant, deputy minister Jody Thomas, told a House of Commons committee last week that about $700 million was because some projects came in under budget and other “efficiencies, so we didn't need that money.” But Thomas acknowledged the department was to blame for some of the other underspending and industry has also faced challenges in delivering on projects – though she said it shouldn't be a surprise there have been some problems given the number of projects underway. “There are going to be some slowdowns by us,” she said, adding: “If money isn't moving quite quickly enough because of a problem with a particular supply chain, a particular supplier, a contract, the way we've defined a project, we work with industry to try to resolve that.” While the fact the department saved money on some projects was seen as a positive development, Conservative defence critic James Bezan said he is nonetheless concerned that hundreds of millions of dollars in promised new investments aren't being realized. “Despite the explanation that was given by officials at committee, we still feel projects are falling behind, promises are going to be broken and ultimately the Canadian Armed Forces will not get the equipment that it needs in a timely manner,” Bezan told The Canadian Press. “The whole idea that they're finding efficiencies is good news. But at the same time, those dollars should be getting re-invested in other capital projects that aren't off the books yet.” Thomas did not say which projects will be affected by the underspending. And the underspending doesn't just mean delivery of some promised equipment will be delayed, said defence analyst David Perry of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute; it also threatens Canada's ability to meet a key NATO spending target. All members of the military alliance agreed in 2014 to spend two per cent of their gross domestic products on the military within a decade – a commitment that has since taken on new importance with U.S. President Donald Trump's demanding all NATO allies spend more. While Canada has long resisted that target and the Liberal defence policy shows spending only reaching 1.4 per cent of GDP by 2024-25, the Liberal government has said it will achieve another NATO target to direct 20 per cent of defence spending to new equipment. “So the military is not getting re-equipped as fast as intended when the defence policy was published,” Perry said in an interview. “And we had basically reassured NATO that we were going to really do a good job at spending on recapitalization, and we're not nearly as far ahead as we should be on that.” https://globalnews.ca/news/5018310/federal-government-military-spending-nato/

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  19 juin 2018 | Local, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  LE CANADA VA SE DOTER DU SEGMENT SOL BASÉ SUR LES TOUTES DERNIÈRES TECHNOLOGIES DE THALES POUR RÉPONDRE AUX SIGNAUX DE DÉTRESSE

  • Le Canada a attribué la phase II du contrat de segment au sol MEOSAR (Système de satellites en orbite moyenne pour la recherche et le sauvetage) à Thales Canada. • Le contrat comprend l'acquisition de deux MEOLUT et des services de maintenance pendant cinq ans incluant des options pour cinq années supplémentaires. • Gr'ce à la puissante et compacte solution d'antennes réseau MEOLUT Next de Thales Alenia Space, le Canada bénéficiera du premier système de recherche et de sauvetage spatial de ce type au Monde. e Canada a attribué la phase II du contrat de segment au sol MEOSAR (Système de satellites en orbite moyenne pour la recherche et le sauvetage) à Thales Canada. Ce système aidera le Canada à réagir rapidement et efficacement aux signaux de détresse provenant de la terre, des airs et des mers, d'un océan à l'autre, ce qui permettra au Canada de s'acquitter de ses obligations en vertu de l'Accord international COSPAS-SARSAT. Le contrat comprend l'acquisition de deux MEOLUT et des services de maintenance pendant cinq ans avec des options pour cinq années supplémentaires. Gr'ce à la puissante et compacte solution d'antennes réseau MEOLUT Next de Thales Alenia Space, le Canada bénéficiera du premier système de recherche et de sauvetage spatial de ce type au monde. Thales Alenia Space conçoit, exploite et fournit des systèmes satellitaires pour les gouvernements et les institutions, les aidant à positionner et à connecter n'importe qui ou n'importe quoi, partout. Depuis sa mise en service en 2016, MEOLUT Next a délivré des performances inégalées, détectant les signaux de détresse à plus de 5 000 km de distance. Cette nouvelle capacité permet de sauver des vies. Le 2 juillet 2017 à 6 h 30, à 70 kilomètres au large de la Sardaigne, un voilier de 12 mètres avec trois personnes à bord a déclenché sa balise COSPAS/SARSAT lorsque son gouvernail s'est brisé et que son moteur est tombé en panne. Sa radio VHF étant hors de portée, les marins se sont vite rendu compte qu'ils se trouvaient dans une situation critique avec des vagues de plus de quatre mètres de haut et un vent soufflant à 40 nœuds. MEOLUT Next a été en mesure de recevoir et de traiter leurs signaux de détresse en moins de cinq minutes, fournissant ainsi un positionnement précis aux autorités. Un avion a identifié le bateau moins de deux heures après le déclenchement de la balise et un hélicoptère a ramené l'équipage en lieu sûr, sauvant ainsi les trois vies. « Thales Canada est fier de fournir des solutions de classe mondiale qui vont nous améliorer la vie et nous maintenir en sécurité », a déclaré Jerry McLean, directeur général et vice-président de Thales Canada. « Des systèmes C4ISR complexes aux C3 maritimes intégrés et aux diverses solutions aérospatiales, ce contrat reflète l'engagement continu de Thales envers l'innovation canadienne. » « Nous sommes confiants que notre solution répondra aux attentes MEOSAR du Canada et les dépassera, tout en offrant au Canada une technologie décisive pour ses moments décisifs », a déclaré Philippe Blatt, VP Navigation France chez Thales Alenia Space. « Aujourd'hui, MEOLUT Next est la seule solution au monde capable de traiter les balises de deuxième génération en temps réel. Son efficacité opérationnelle a récemment été reconnue par Space & Satellite Professionals International (SSPI) pour ses contributions humanitaires ». Notes à l'éditeur COSPAS/SARSAT COSPAS/SARSAT est une organisation intergouvernementale fondée par le Canada, les États-Unis, la Russie et la France. En opération dans 43 pays à travers le monde, ce système de détection et de distribution d'alertes de détresse par satellite est surtout connu pour détecter et localiser les balises de détresse activées par les aéronefs, les navires et les randonneurs de l'arrière-pays en détresse. Aujourd'hui, quelque 500 000 navires et 150 000 aéronefs sont équipés de balises de détresse COSPAS/SARSAT. À ce jour, le service COSPAS-SARSAT a sauvé plus de 37 000 vies. MEOLUT Next Les systèmes conventionnels MEOLUT (Medium Earth Orbit Local User Terminal - terminaux locaux pour charges utiles en orbite terrestre moyenne) utilisent de grandes antennes paraboliques et sont limités par le nombre de signaux satellites qu'ils peuvent recevoir. La solution MEOLUT Next de Thales Alenia Space est compacte, elle mesure moins de six mètres carrés, et permet de suivre jusqu'à 30 satellites, améliorant ainsi significativement le taux de détection des balises de détresse tout en élargissant la zone de couverture. Comme il n'y a pas de composants mécaniques, les coûts d'entretien du matériel sont les plus bas sur le marché. À propos de Thales Ceux qui font avancer le monde s'appuient sur Thales. Nous sommes aux côtés de ceux qui ont de grandes ambitions : rendre le monde meilleur et plus sûr. Riches de la diversité de leurs expertises, de leurs talents, de leurs cultures, nos équipes d'architectes conçoivent un éventail unique de solutions technologiques d'exception, qui rendent demain possible dès aujourd'hui. Du fond des océans aux profondeurs du cosmos ou du cyberespace, nous aidons nos clients à maîtriser des environnements toujours plus complexes pour prendre des décisions rapides, efficaces, à chaque moment décisif. Fort de 65 000 collaborateurs dans 56 pays, Thales a réalisé en 2017 un chiffre d'affaires de 15,8 milliards d'euros. À propos de Thales Canada Chef de file national en recherche et technologie, Thales Canada allie plus de 50 ans d'expérience et le talent de 1 800 personnes qualifiées d'un océan à l'autre. Avec un chiffre d'affaires de 500 millions de dollars, Thales Canada offre des capacités de pointe dans les secteurs du transport ferroviaire urbain, de l'aviation civile, de la défense et de la sécurité qui répondent aux besoins les plus complexes des clients dans tous les environnements d'exploitation. À propos de Thales Alenia Space Combinant 40 ans d'expérience et une diversité unique d'expertise, de talents et de cultures, les ingénieurs de Thales Alenia Space conçoivent et fournissent des solutions de haute technologie pour les télécommunications, la navigation, l'observation de la Terre, la gestion de l'environnement, l'exploration, la science et les infrastructures orbitales. Les gouvernements, les institutions et les entreprises font confiance à Thales Alenia Space pour concevoir, exploiter et livrer des systèmes satellitaires qui les aident à positionner et à connecter n'importe qui ou n'importe quoi, partout, à observer notre planète, à optimiser l'utilisation des ressources de notre planète et de notre système solaire. Thales Alenia Space croit en l'espace comme nouvel horizon de l'humanité, qui permettra de construire une vie meilleure et plus durable sur Terre. Co-entreprise entre Thales (67 %) et Leonardo (33 %), Thales Alenia Space s'associe également à Telespazio pour former la Space Alliance des sociétés mères, ce qui offre une gamme complète de services et de solutions. Thales Alenia Space a réalisé un chiffre d'affaires consolidé d'environ 2,4 milliards d'euros en 2016 et emploie 7 980 personnes dans neuf pays. www.thalesaleniaspace.com CONTACTS PRESSE Thales Canada Cara Salci Tel.: 613-404-9413 cara.salci@ca.thalesgroup.com Thales Alenia Space Sandrine Bielecki Tel: +33 (0)4 92 92 70 94 sandrine.bielecki@thalesaleniaspace.com Chrystelle Dugimont Tel: +33 (0)4 92 92 74 06 chrystelle.dugimont@thalesaleniaspace.com Cinzia Marcanio Tel: +39 06 41512685 cinzia.marcanio@thalesaleniaspace.com https://www.thalesgroup.com/fr/monde/espace/press-release/le-canada-va-se-doter-du-segment-sol-base-toutes-dernieres-technologies

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  25 septembre 2020 | Local, Aérospatial, Sécurité

  Operation recovery: Airlifting a CC-138 off the Arctic ice

  Chris Thatcher In early June, the RCAF regained possession of a CC-138 Twin Otter that, 15 months earlier, had suffered severe damage to its nose and tail during a difficult landing on the ice of the Beaufort Sea A workhorse of the north, the Viking Air DHC-6 was built to withstand much that the harsh Arctic could throw at it. But this aircraft's return to service is a tale of ingenuity and a testament to the recovery and salvage capability of the Air Force and its partnership with Canadian industry. The aircraft, 803, was one of two Twin Otters from 440 Transport Squadron in Yellowknife participating in Operation Nanook 2019, an annual Canadian Armed Forces interoperability exercise with allies and civilian agencies held across the Arctic. The crew was on a scouting mission near Pelly Island on that afternoon of March 10, 2019, carrying three defence scientists looking for landing spots on the unprepared sea ice to conduct research later in the exercise. They had landed without incident near Tuktoyaktuk earlier in the day and were attempting to set down on a smooth area of ice when the aircraft “bounced into the air after contacting a drift perpendicular to the aircraft's heading ... [and] impacted the base of a larger drift,” according to the flight safety investigation report, collapsing the nose landing gear. One hundred and sixty kilometres away in Inuvik, Maj Andrew Oakes, commander of the second Twin Otter, had just settled into his hotel room when the phone rang. “I thought to myself, this is not good. There is only one person I know with a sat phone at the moment who could be calling my cell phone.” The news was mixed: There were no injuries but there was no way the crew was flying the aircraft off the ice. Armed with their location, Oakes and a crew immediately took off in the second CC-138 “to see if we could land and pick them up.” When he arrived overhead an hour and a half later, the damaged Twin Otter was sitting low in the ice and the nose, buried in the snow, appeared to be sheered off. With the low angle of the sun, the undulations of snowdrifts were now visible across the ice. He quickly reconsidered attempting a landing. Landing on ice requires a deft touch. Because of its varied operations, the CC-138 has a landing assembly that includes both tires and skis, a heavier and less flexible construction than just the skis. The aircraft must set down at the exact spot “you want to land” and then slow as rapidly as possible, using reverse thrust and some elevator control. “It is tricky. It is easily the most challenging thing that is done in a Twin Otter,” said Oakes. While the stranded crew had prepared a snow camp for the night, a civilian search and rescue helicopter, dispatched from Inuvik shortly after the accident, soon arrived on scene and transported them back to the town. An instructor on the Twin Otter, Oakes had been seconded to the exercise as an aircraft commander from his job as a staff officer for air mobility readiness at 1 Canadian Air Division (1 CAD) in Winnipeg, Man. He soon found himself tasked with commanding Operation Recovery, an air task force quickly assembled to salvage the aircraft. The RCAF has over many years developed considerable specialized recovery and salvage capability. And in 2012, a CC-138 with a sheared nose landing gear strut was lifted from dry tundra southwest of Inuvik in much warmer conditions. More recently, in -20 C temperatures of January 2019, the RCAF employed a CH-147F Chinook to lift and sling a CH-146 Griffon belonging to 417 Combat Support Squadron some 50 miles from the Cold Lake Air Weapons Range after the helicopter's main rotor blade struck a communication tower. MGen Christian Drouin, commander of 1 CAD at the time, observed: “We now have this recovery capability because of the professionalism and ingenuity of the personnel involved.” The preferred and most cost-effective option would have been to fly in technicians from 440 Squadron and the salvage and recovery team based at 8 Wing Trenton, Ont., to repair the aircraft on the ice and fly out. “It would have been very good exposure for the technicians, because it is not something they would do normally. They have equipment and some training on how to extract an aircraft from [unusual] sites,” said Oakes. However, daytime temperatures were already reaching -5 C and forecasted to rise to zero, so conditions to land and take off from ice on skis were no longer ideal. “When you are warmer than minus 10, landing and takeoff distances will start increasing exponentially.” He also weighed a second option of calling in a Chinook from 450 Tactical Helicopter Squadron in Petawawa, Ont., to lift and transport the Twin Otter back to Inuvik. But nighttime temperatures were “still going down quite a bit and there was a chance the aircraft would freeze in .... That would be a worst-case scenario where no one is getting the aircraft off the ice, period.” In the end, the discussion among the crews and with 1 CAD was “pretty short,” Oakes recalled. In coordination with the Combined Aerospace Operations Centre in Winnipeg, a plan was soon in place to lift and sling the aircraft with contracted support from Momentum Decisive Solutions. By March 16, a CC-177 Globemaster III carrying two Griffon helicopters and various technicians from 440 Squadron and the salvage team arrived in Inuvik. Under the watchful eye of a Canadian Ranger patrol from Tuktoyaktuk that arrived by snowmobile and set up predator defence from polar bears that had been spotted in the area, the technicians began to lighten the CC-138 for airlift. They removed the nose gear, fuel and non-essential parts, and then strapped wooden blocks to the top of the wings to sling the load. They also attached a drogue parachute to help stabilize the flight. On March 24, Oakes watched from one of the Griffons as a Sikorsky S-61R, a derivative of the S-61/SH Sea King, operated by VIH Aviation Group of British Columbia, lifted the 7,800-pound CC-138 and, steadied by the chute, began the 160-kilometre flight to the Inuvik airport. To manage the distance, VIH had prepositioned a fuel cache on the ice about midway from Inuvik. Even without its own power, the Twin Otter still wanted to “fly,” Oakes observed. “It was pretty spectacular to watch.” A brand-new aircraft Bringing the Twin Otter back to life was no small task. KF Aerospace, formerly Kelowna Flightcraft, is the prime contractor for a CC-138 life extension project as well as regular in-service support. Within days of the incident, the company was contacted and dispatched aircraft maintenance engineers to Inuvik to guide the removal of the wings. Back in Kelowna, they then built special fittings to anchor the aircraft in the cargo hold of a CC-177. When the damaged Twin Otter arrived at their facility on June 14, special jigs and a donor nose were already in place. “This isn't the first time we've had to fix the nose section of a Twin Otter, so we had some good jig structures ... and we were able to reuse them,” explained Gregg Evjen, vice-president of maintenance and engineering. KF Aerospace frequently performs heavy structural modifications, including freighter and tanker conversions, so the tricky modifications to the CC-138 were well “within our wheel house,” said Evjen. Still, the company had to fabricate some parts to connect the new nose and repair the landing gear and tail section. With the aircraft already stripped bare, the company took advantage of the situation to conduct a full periodic inspection and maintenance program and complete the life-extension package, including re-winging the airframe. “It looks like a brand-new airplane,” he said. KF Aerospace has taken on some challenging jobs in the past, including an upgrade program for the Bolivian Air Force T-33 jet that involved taking apart and crating aircraft, flying them to Canada for the modifications, test flying them, and then re-crating and returning them to Bolivia to be assembled. Resuscitating a Twin Otter was hardly new. “But the fact that it was up North and had to be brought off the ice pack, and we had to mount it in a C-17 and manufacture special fittings so we could strap it down properly – that was unique,” said Evjen. Though the military strives to be self-sufficient and will build capacity to overcome most obstacles, Operation Recovery was a textbook example of the collaborative role civilian partners can play. To Oakes' surprise, it was also a remarkable instance of how quickly the chain of command can make decisions when time is of the essence. “I was really impressed with the speed that this came together, and with the level of co-ordination and teamwork,” he said. “It was a great example of how we can get things done. It did help working with the civilian contractor. They were experts. They knew exactly what to do and they had the equipment.” https://www.skiesmag.com/features/operation-recovery-airlifting-cc-138-off-arctic-ice/ .