Silicon Valley-style innovation clusters to include aviation companies

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  26 septembre 2023 | Local, Aérospatial

  ITPS Canada's 5th Generation Surrogate Training Aircraft completes first flight - Skies Mag

  The 5STA is a Hawker Hunter aircraft with upgraded technology that emulates the performance and avionics of the latest generation fighters.

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  30 septembre 2019 | Local, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre

  ISRAELI DEFENCE ATTACHÉ CULTIVATES TIES WITH CANADIAN MILITARY

  By Paul Lungen, Staff Reporter Col. Amos Nachmani has been in Canada for a couple of years now and, along with his family, he's embraced the cold. It's not something he's used to, coming as he does from warm weather Israel. Winter snow and skiing are something they've learned to enjoy, so while they're here, they'll take full advantage of it. As Israel's defence attaché in Ottawa, his sojourn in Canada is slated to last three years. But it's a busy three years, during which he represents the Israeli military and serves as a liaison to the Canadian Armed Forces. It turns out that there is a great deal of co-operation between the two militaries – everything from the exchange of ideas, to trade in hardware. Nachmani, a former tank combatant, infantry battalion officer and intelligence officer, is one of only 22 international military attachés stationed in Canada. The Canadian Armed Forces liaises with other militaries from around the world, but most of them are based in Washington, D.C. Yet ever since then-prime minister Stephen Harper and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to a greater level of military co-operation in 2011, Israel has stationed a military attaché to Canada. At the same time, Canada has its own attaché in Tel Aviv. Military co-operation between the two countries has continued under both Conservative and Liberal governments. “Our relationship is robust and totally agnostic to the notion of who is in power,” Nachmani said. Nachmani said he engages “regularly with the different services in the Canadian Armed Forces, to understand your capabilities, your needs, your plans, in order to see where we can help each other out.” During his time in Canada, he has been invited to military briefings, witnessed exercises and visited bases. In 2017, Nachmani joined former Canadian chief of the defence staff, Gen. Thomas J. Lawson, to discuss “The Future of the Israel-NATO Strategic Partnership.” On Nov. 11 for the past two years, Nachmani laid a wreath during the Remembrance Day ceremony at the National War Memorial in Ottawa. He's discussed with his Canadian colleagues “force buildup,” in which they share tactical methodologies, best practices and partake in military diplomacy. The idea, he said, is to find areas of common interest, “bridge gaps and find common solutions,” and make sure his Canadian counterparts understand “our side of the picture.” How does that translate in a practical sense? Nachmani points to Canadian involvement in Afghanistan, where our military was part of an international effort to fight al-Qaida. Canadian forces had unfortunate experiences with improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which caused casualties. “This is a serious problem. We also encountered this in the past in southern Lebanon and Gaza,” Nachmani said. The two militaries addressed the problem jointly by engaging in research and development of a system that would warn of concealed IEDs. “That brought a good, robust solution and both militaries have implemented it,” Nachmani said. Trade is also part of the military relationship between the two countries. Altogether, Israel defence industries sell to Canada an annual average of a little under US$100 million ($133 million) in military hardware, mostly radar and electronic warfare equipment, he said. Prior to moving to Ottawa, Nachmani commanded the IDF's International Cooperation Unit, where he met Canadian officers. For other militaries, the IDF “is a very valuable partner and ally for a country like Canada, due to our deep understanding of the situation in the Middle East, our intelligence capabilities and assessment, and our operational experience,” he said. Canada has sent troops to Afghanistan, on peacekeeping missions and to Iraq to fight ISIS. Canada turns to Israel, and others, for added value in learning ways to understand the Middle East, he said. From his experience interacting with Canadian soldiers, Nachmani believes the IDF and the Canadian Forces share many values: “These are two Western allies that value the Western way of living, liberal values, law-abiding militaries and countries.” Both have a respect for human life and always try to minimize collateral damage in their operations, he added. While Canada is much larger in size than Israel, its Armed Forces are much smaller. They include only 65,000 career soldiers and another 35,000 reservists. Israel has about 40,000 career soldiers, along with 100,000 conscripts serving at any one time. In times of emergency, it can call up as many as 650,000 soldiers, he said. As for the differences between Israeli and Canadian soldiers, Nachmani pointed out that when Canadians are deployed, they're often sent to the other side of the world. “They don't think how this will affect the people at home,” he said, whereas the average Israeli soldier is usually deployed an hour drive from home, so the attacks on Israel feel personal. https://www.cjnews.com/news/canada/israeli-defence-attache-cultivates-ties-with-canadian-military

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  11 juin 2018 | Local, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR

  Here are just some of the ways Canadian technology keeps Americans safe

  It's been a week since the Trump White House slapped Canada with steel and aluminum tariffs on the ground that reliance on our imports was threatening the “national security” of the United States. If Canadians are particularly galled at this, it might be because no foreign country in modern times has done more to arm and equip the United States than Canada. “I would not be surprised if every single major aircraft or warship in U.S. military service today has Canadian components in it,” said Richard Shimooka, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. Below, a cursory summary of some of the Canadian stuff used by history's most powerful military. Landing gear We'll start with an entry that directly concerns steel and aluminum. Quebec-based Héroux-Devtek is the world's third largest aircraft landing gear company, and some of that is thanks to a longstanding relationship with the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy. Specifically, Héroux-Devtek is in charge of landing gear repair and overhaul for several large U.S. aircraft, including the heavy-lift C-130 Hercules. Of course, landing gear is made almost entirely of steel or aluminum. So, thanks to these new tariffs, American military procurers are either going to start getting hosed on their Héroux-Devtek contracts — or they're going to have start getting their landing gear overhauls from a U.S. company that isn't their first choice. Armoured personnel carriers “Canada and the US have been building military equipment for each other since the summer of 1940,” David Bercuson, a military historian at the University of Calgary, told the National Post. “Literally billions of dollars of such equipment has passed the border since then.” The most obvious example is the Stryker. There are nearly 5,000 Stryker armoured personnel carriers in the U.S. military, and all of them were built in London, Ontario. Not only that, but the Stryker is even based on a Canadian design, the LAV III. Coming in at a rock bottom $4 million apiece, the Americans use Strykers for everything: Ambulances, firefighting, missile platforms, chemical weapons defence and mine detection. They even started rigging them up with giant lasers to shoot down enemy drones. Armoured vehicles happen to be a Canadian specialty. While the United States was busy throwing money at big ticket items such as tanks and attack helicopters, the shoestring Canadians have gotten very good at the much cheaper task of simply strapping guns and armour to oversized trucks. And if a U.S. diplomat found themselves touring Iraq in an armoured Toyota Land Cruiser, chances are good they were shielded from bullets and IEDs by Canadian workmanship. Specialized aircraft Here again, the United States has it covered when it comes to big ticket aircraft such as fighters or bombers. But the U.S. military will occasionally call up Canadian plane-makers when it needs something quirky. Bombardier has retooled some of its airliners and business jets to act as airborne radar platforms. When the United States Army Parachute Team appears at air shows, they're jumping out of a Canadian-made de Havilland Twin Otter. De Havilland has also hooked up the Americans with some of its famously rugged prop planes for use in electronic warfare, remote cargo drops or simply moving National Guard troops around Alaska. All told, the U.S. military is flying more planes built in Canada than in any other foreign country. The U.S. military's only cargo drone (and it has the most Canadian name imaginable) A U.S. special forces unit is pinned down on a remote Central Asian mountaintop. Surrounded by militants on all sides, it needs an emergency airlift of water and ammunition to even see daybreak. Enter the SnowGoose, an unmanned autogyro specializing in precision deliveries to special forces. The SnowGoose is the U.S. military's only cargo drone, and it's an all-Canadian creation. An emerging theme on this list is that Canada is great at building niche military hardware for cheap, and the SnowGoose is no exception. As the drone's Stittsville, Ont. builders note, it can move cargo across a battlefield at a fraction of the price of other drones. Nuclear fuel Uranium is a big part of the modern U.S. military. It has more than 100 nuclear-powered vessels in the navy, and there's also those 7,000 atomic weapons it still has lying around. Canada has sold a whole lot of uranium to the U.S. military, going all the way back to the initial atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. However, the taps were somewhat shut off in the 1960s, when Canada started limiting uranium exports to “peaceful” purposes. Still, with Canada ranking as the United States' top uranium dealer, we help keep their uranium topped up enough to have plenty left over for the military. Speaking of nuclear weapons, it might behoove the White House to remember that if a Russian or North Korean missile should happen to be fired in their direction, a Canada-based NORAD station will likely be among the first to let them know. Making fighter jets last forever This entry should fill thrifty Canadians with particular pride: We've gotten so good at squeezing every penny out of our CF-18s that we're now globally renowned experts at fighter jet life extension. Among other things, Canada invented “robotic shot-peening,” a method of using robots to restore aging aircraft with a precision never before known. The technology has been exported to Europe, Australia and, in 2013, the U.S. Navy brought in the Quebec aerospace company L-3 MAS to give its jets a makeover. Battlefield communications Tactical radios are another niche technology in which Canadian companies have a built a slow but steady reputation with the Americans. In a 2017 reporton Canada/U.S. military industrial cooperation, the Center for Strategic and International Studies noted that the U.S. military has been using Canadian radios since the 1960s. Ultra TCS, headquartered in Montreal, remains a supplier of tactical radios to both the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. And these aren't just walkie-talkies; they're hyper-advanced networks that can provide email, voice and even video hook-ups to American troops in battle. Jeeps That's right. The Second World War-era Willys Jeep — one of the most American vehicles in history — was manufactured in part by Canada. Ford Motor Company of Canada churned out thousands of Jeeps after the Second World War. In 1952 alone, Canadian factories were making an average of seven of them per day. According to Ford Canada's website, “these postwar Canadian-made Jeep were shipped to the United States, for the American military forces.” Space robots DARPA is the U.S. agency tasked with pursuing military so cutting edge that they occasionally veer into outright science fiction. Last year, DARPA signed a deal with Canada's MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates to design robots that could be dispatched into space in order to repair U.S. military satellites. And like most times Canada is brought in for U.S. military stuff, the robot space mechanic program is indeed intended as a cost saving measure. Canada has been a leader in space defence for some time. Our beloved Canadarm, in fact, technically qualifies as an early military space robot. Over the course of the space shuttle program 11 missions were sent up to perform classified work for the Pentagon. We still don't know the specifics of what the Canadarm did for Uncle Sam on those missions, but the arm is a certifiable Cold Warrior. http://nationalpost.com/news/canada/security-threat-our-butt-here-are-just-some-of-the-ways-canadian-technology-keeps-americans-safe