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On Sept. 10, Prime Minister Mark Carney and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced a series of initiatives to expand Canada’s defence capabilities and support Ukraine.
Industry participants say Ukraine, now in its fifth year of war with Russia, has considerable battlefield experience Canada can learn from.
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Six Canadian defence suppliers [aare] receiving federal contracts worth up to $50 million in total to produce drones and uncrewed ground vehicles.
Last week, Carney also announced a partnership between Ottawa-based General Dynamics Mission Systems-Canada and Ukrainian company Green Tech Harvest to produce drones and related technologies.
That partnership is the latest in a series of Canada-Ukraine drone arrangements. In May, Hamilton-based Sentinel Research and Development also announced a drone production agreement with Ukrainian defence company Airlogix.
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The goal is ambitious: to give Canadian industry the capacity to produce “millions of drones over the next two years,” according to the Prime Minister’s Office.
Ottawa says the initial contracts will “increase the number of drones currently deployed by the Canadian Armed Forces tenfold.”
Much of this production will go to Ukraine.
“Thirty per cent of these drones will go to Ukraine immediately to [the] battlefield,” Zelenskyy said during the joint press conference with Carney.
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Sergii Vlashchenko and Igor Kolosiuk, Ukrainian defence-technology experts and co-founders of Vancouver-based Snake Island Lab, say such qualities have enabled Ukraine to hold its own against a larger and wealthier Russia.
“Every large brigade, every army corps … has its own research and development laboratory, manufacturing capabilities, and financing capabilities inside the corps,” Vlashchenko said in a joint interview with Kolosiuk.
“It lets them face a challenge, invent to overcome it, and manufacture the response within weeks.”
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A June study found that Ukrainian producers could move from prototype to deployment in weeks, with some minor fixes implemented within 24 hours.
The cost benefits of this approach are considerable.
Ukraine spends as little as US$200 to $1,000 on a typical FPV drone. Before Ukraine popularized these drones, the U.S. military could have previously spent as much as US$53,000 for the closest equivalent.
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Kolosiuk says Ukraine is looking to Canada for a more secure supply chain. He says the two countries could build a scalable, non-Chinese supply chain serving both the Canadian and Ukrainian militaries.
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I’m fully aware of what kind of dystopia it can bring about, I’ve read too much about Israel’s use of it against Palestinians and it’s horrifying. But just because they use it that way, doesn’t mean we have to use or will be using it in the same way.
My principal point is that drone-based oppression is available with non-Canadian components already and through other means you’ve rightly identified like paramilitary goons, and plenty of examples over several centuries. Building a domestic supply chain for drones or not doesn’t make a big difference for horrible people to do horrible things, as much as it will make a big difference for us to defend ourselves if needed, and be useful in other ways when we don’t need to. *And to stop the export of the tech for oppressive uses is a legislative/political fix.
Love that you read a bunch of links to articles about how Canada does exactly that and then still lie about it being “possible.” (bet you totally read them all in a few minutes too)
Canada is horrible, this is a horrible thing. Just grow a spine and admit that you don’t care because you benefit from it and shut the fuck up.
(also, to fucking act like you care about Palestinians while cheering on EuroAmerican imperialism is the same, straight up revolting, performative bullshit that I’d expect from Canadians)
I did read one or two of them and the parts you quoted, but you can’t even seem to accept where I’m agreeing with you about the harms Canada has committed. So, I’ll call it there. I hope you have a nice day.
Uhuh.