Defence Minister David McGuinty says securing a deep-precision strike system is 'an area we can’t let slip.'NEO/The Canadian Press
Canada is moving quickly to secure a long-range strike system that has proved effective in the war in Ukraine, putting much of the country’s evolving defence-procurement strategy to the test.
The deep-precision strike (DPS) system that Canada is looking to buy from another country initially, and later develop in-house, is somewhere between a long-range one-way attack drone and a cruise missile.
It’s a mode of attack that several North Atlantic Treaty Organization members, including Canada, have identified an urgent need for based upon observations from the war in Ukraine. Germany and Norway are among the countries with companies leading in this field.
“The nature through which this war is being prosecuted in Ukraine, is indicating we need this kind of deep-precision strike system. That our adversaries have them in their possession. That they are working to improve them. That this is an area we can’t let slip,” Defence Minister David McGuinty said in an interview.
The procurement, and subsequent development, of a DPS system in Canada over the next couple of years will be among the first tests of changes the federal government has put forth to improve its historically sluggish bureaucratic processes when it comes to defence purchases.
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These types of guided munitions are being used by both sides in the war to take out high-value targets away from the front lines. For example, recent reports detail Kyiv’s use of long-range drones to hit warehouses and oil refineries in Russia more than 2,000 kilometres from Ukraine. The increasing use of drones in place of expensive legacy systems for these types of deep strikes means they can be carried out at an increasingly low cost.
“If we need any more evidence about the pace of change in technology, all we need to do is look at the theatre of war there,” Mr. McGuinty said, referencing Ukraine and his conversation on Tuesday with the country’s Defence Minister.
At the end of July, Canada made clear its intentions to develop and procure its own sovereign version of a DPS system through an uncrewed technologies marketplace that it’s creating with Canadian industry called the Defence Drone Initiative.
The application period to join the marketplace’s pool of qualified suppliers closes on Aug. 14. Around 500 vendors are expected to be accepted initially, with more invited to apply at later dates.
While the quantities to be bought through this marketplace are yet to be determined, they will inevitably feed into a national objective that the Canadian Joint Forces Command is helping with to increase the number of drones being produced in Canada by 200 times, or two million drones a year, said Lieutenant-Colonel Nick Verreault, head of the Joint Uncrewed Systems Office and DPS program director.
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The reality is, Canada is behind in its development and training on these kinds of systems. In a presentation to more than 100 industry members about DPS in August, Lt.-Col. Verreault said the use of digital technologies for firing systems is “well-established in Eastern Europe and among allies.” He added, “The CAF is years behind and this is the catch-up attempt.”
DPS systems will be one of the first six capabilities that National Defence will request from this pool of suppliers in the hopes of developing a sovereign production line.
This ties into the “build” part of Canada’s Defence Industrial Strategy, which Ottawa released in February to provide some direction to the sector as to how an influx of federal funds will be spent.
Similar efforts are under way in a coalition of 12 European countries, led by Britain, who have committed US$50-billion over the next decade toward developing DPS capabilities.
The coalition cited the U.S.’s changing role in European defence as part of its reasoning for the initiative, after President Donald Trump called out NATO members for being overly reliant on his country’s military might. Canada has similar incentives.
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As a capability that goes hand in hand with drones and ammunition, DPS is being increasingly viewed by NATO members as a form of deterrence that they want to be able to access in their own backyard.
But before Canada builds anything, it, too, will work with its allies to employ the other two parts of its industrial strategy – partner and buy – to purchase a DPS system within the next 10 months.
There is currently no technology in Canada that meets the requirement of such a domestically designed and manufactured system. So, Ottawa plans to buy one from another country in the hopes that industry, as well as the military, may learn from it.
Paul Ziadé, chief executive officer of Calgary-based North Vector Dynamics, said he’s excited about the opportunity to both partner, and later build, in Canada. “There are a lot of big players internationally who are scrambling to find Canadian partners to get their foot in the door here, which I think is a good thing.”
He still has questions, such as what the specs will be for the sovereign capability, what does “sovereign” mean in this context and where will industry be allowed to conduct testing. But he expects those answers will come in time.
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Led partly by Ottawa’s newly created Defence Investment Agency, the marketplace model being tapped to develop the sovereign version of the system places an emphasis on iterative development – something Ukraine has taken the lead on globally in its fight against Russian aggression.
A key factor in Ukraine’s success on this front has come from helping industry work closely with its soldiers on the front lines, said Colonel Chris Labbé, director of joint requirements for the Canadian Joint Forces Command, in the same industry presentation in August.
For example, he said, “Tactical units partnered with startups, a corporal WhatsApping the lead engineer asking for a change by tomorrow, engineering changes fielded within 24 hours.”
Ukraine’s circumstances are different than Canada’s and their focus is on survival, he said.
But the goal of Canada’s marketplace and having a prequalified pool of suppliers is to get the country reasonably closer to the same pace of innovation.
“The [Defence Drone Initiative] is the framework, flexible enough to get us closer – not all the way, but closer – to how things evolve in a theatre like Ukraine,” Col. Labbé said.