24 years have passed since the first attack of lethal drones is considered widely: an attack by Predator UAV in a convoy of Al-Qaeda vehicles in Afghanistan only nine weeks after the attacks of September 11.
The strike killed Mohammed Atef, son -in -law of Osama Bin Laden and head of the group’s military operations, and made clear all that war of the 21st century would see an important role for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV).
The big and expensive drones of fixed wing, such as the predator and the reaper, still have their place. Canada has ordered that a fleet of similar drones is expected to be in operation in 2033.
But the war in Ukraine has moved the approach of the UAV billionaires to much cheaper drones, smaller and sometimes disposable.
Like the military around the world, the Canadian Armed Forces saw the conflict of Ukraine transforming what was largely an artillery war only 18 months ago in a nightmare contest between buzzing machines and the operators that guide them.
“It is revolutionizing a part of the battle space,” says Lieutenant Royal Canadian Air Force. Chris Labbé, who directs the office of aircraft systems known of the forces. “You will see that different academics or analysts now talk about the ‘air coast’, really the space between the ground and the 1,000 meters in the air, perhaps above that.”
That space used to be dominated by helicopter, said Labbé. But the Nagorno-Karabakh war, and then the war in Ukraine, have accelerated the advances in the drone war.
The Canadian army is determined to maintain the rhythm of that change, he said.
A craft weapons industry
Almost all about smaller drones represents a change of direction in military thinking and industrial production. For decades, acquisitions have had a longer and longer timeline prices tendency. The F-35, for example, is such a complicated and expensive weapons system that several countries had to buy and invest in advance.
Drones do not need giant factories with sophisticated production lines. Instead, said Tom Barton, from Janes’ defense in London, Ukraine, has a decentralized production in small workshops.
“Some of the ways in which the boys in their garages are actually rationalizing 3D impression and resulting in amounts of these UAV, you would not have thought it was imaginable so far,” said Barton.
Look | Drone capable of taking an injured soldier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mqutqt0lni
He says that Russians have also cultivated 3D printing and the manufacture of an army of home engineers. Its wide distribution makes it impossible to close production through bombings or missile attacks.
Labbé says that Ukrainian drones builders also experience and share results, promoting rapid improvements in surveillance and attack capacities.
“The speed at that innovation is absolutely scorching,” he said.
Labbé said that to further stimulate innovation, Ukraine has instituted a rewards system for first -line units in which those who are most successful receive points they can use to buy a new online drones related kit.
Launch a challenge
The Canadian forces wish to capture part of that same innovative energy, and until that end they have issued a series of “challenges” to Canadian drones manufacturers through the innovative program Solutions of Canada (ISC).
The industry has noticed the change, says Philip Reece, CEO of Indro Robotics, both in the amount of money and in the game and how fast the government reviews the presentations.
“They return with some quite well thought out questions, and then moves to try first and then acquisitions,” he said.
The Government and the Army of Canada are trying to obtain a Canadian advantage in a new arms race for drones by issuing industry challenges and testing everything from marine drones that can attack ships to lasers that can burn drones in the air.
A challenge currently published by ISC invites manufacturers to send a “daring interceptor” dron, capable of attacking enemy drones “of several hundred grams to several hundred kilograms” that can operate from the ground level to altitudes of more than 3,000 meters and reach speeds “in excess of 200 km/h”.
The language of the challenge invites designers to seek “creative and innovative solutions” for the interception of drones beyond “contacting their goal with an explosion.”
The sandbox
The examples of that new approach have already been tested in a place called Sandbox in Suffield, Alta., Including a successful test of a directed energy weapon that caused an objective drone to explode in bright green flames in the air and crashed into the floor.
Another interceptor drone tested in the rounded sandbox above its target and dropped a network, catching the proje of the target drone.
Another area of research and furious development inspired by the Ukraine War is the command and control of the UAV in a battle space where radio and even GPS signals are easily struck.
The Russians were the first to realize that they could defeat Jamming by connecting fiber optic cable reels to their drones. The command signals travel along that thin filament, instead of through the air where they can get stuck. Ukraine recently flew a drone with a 50 kilometers long fiber optic reel.
These innovations in turn promoted innovation in the world of counter-rone, said Reece.
“They are now making more kinetic response,” he said. “The radio and the GPS jam no longer cut it when you have a drone that has fiber optic. So that has definitely advanced very fast.”
Air, Earth and Sea
Canadian drone development is not limited to the air. The Navy adapted its Hammerhead Naval Artillery objectives to create a marine attack drone loaded with explosives. He was successfully tested (and explosively) last month.
Labbé says that the operations of Ukrainian missiles of drones and anti -struggles in the Black Sea are “an incredible achievement that speaks very well of the potential of unprepimed systems.”
Look | Marine attack marine marine tests: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olyvvx8tfgk
He says that a current interest is in the area of medium -sized air drones, which weighs hundreds of kilograms, which can evacuate a victim on a stretcher or supply troops forward from the rear areas.
And Reece said his company is experiencing with terrestrial drones that can move faster than a car and work with aerial drones for recognition.
“They can also move on and configure mesh networks, so safe communications that cannot be hacked can advance,” he said.
One of the advantages of drones is that they often cost much less than their goals, acting as an equalizer of the battlefield against opponents with greater force in vehicles, airplanes and vessels.
Barton said that drones in Ukraine have been used to eliminate elements of the expensive Russian air defense systems, and that a well -equipped drone force with sufficient qualified operators would even make the opponent stronger doubt in launching a armored attack.
He said that for a country like Canada with vast borders to defend, “drones are potentially a great solution.”
Canadian drones for Europe?
Drones could also offer a path to European defense acquisition agreements that Canada would like to access, if Canada can develop an industry that produces desirable drones for the European military.
“Now is the turning point between drones and robots and AI,” Reece said. “Canada knows that we are. You can see for all the answers, commercial and governmental, that is now the time to move forward.”
Reece says that Canada is in a solid position partly because Transport Canada has been ahead of most national regulators by recognizing the industry’s potential and creating sufficiently permissive conditions to allow the use of drones to flourish.
“We have the skills here, we have the knowledge and we certainly have the need,” he said. “Then, if we are already ahead in drones and robots and we can follow the rhythm of the AI, assembling them definitely makes us an international power.”
