Page 15 - September 2019

Assessing the Canadian UAV experience so far, March And what of the future? For the Canadian Forces, the UAVs
said several important issues remain to be addressed. covered under the Noctua lease are to be returned to the
For example, despite a decade of work in this field, there vendor in 2011 or 2012. The Canadian Forces has announced a
still is no permanent Canadian UAV squadron or follow-on program called JUSTUS (Joint Unmanned
standardized training, so that instruction is done on an Surveillance and Target Acquisition System) that aims to
ad hoc basis. create in the CF a “robust capability to operate UAVs here and
overseas” and senior officers have talked about using UAVs to
There are also a host of interesting personnel and
psychological issues. For example, where will the enhance the CF’s Arctic surveillance capability. Alas, the
earliest that a replacement UAV could be in place would be
operators of tomorrow come from? Trained military
2014. What happens in the interim to the expertise developed
pilots like to fly, but “don’t like the idea” of sitting
behind a desk and controlling a UAV, especially when by Canadian Forces personnel? One solution would be to
attach Canadian personnel to UAV programs operated by the
most UAVs have automatic takeoff and landing
programs in them. One potential source could be USAF (at isolated Creech AFB in Nevada) or RAF (which is in
the process of moving its UAV program to RAF Waddington).
navigators (whoops, air combat systems operators), who
theoretically have “air sense” and experience with For northern operations, there is the problem of
sophisticated electronic systems. communication frequencies that will have to be reacquired (by
the federal government from the private sector, to which they
And what about “being at war when you’re not at war”?
were recently sold). In any event, satellite coverage that would
USAF UAVs are launched “in-theatre” but are controlled
(via satellite) from a facility at Creech Air Force Base in permit sending data to and from northern UAVs extends only
to about 60 degrees north latitude.
the Nevada desert. Operators typically spend “eight
hours hunting and killing things and watching on screen; Beyond that technical element, there is another challenge:
at the end of the shift, they just go back to their homes,” despite the proven reliability of UAVs, agencies like Transport
March said. That means the stresses of a kind of combat Canada, NAV Canada and the public, too, “have great difficulty
flying, “including collateral damage” are taken home, with us flying them in the same airspace as manned aircraft,”
and vice-versa. “There’s a big psychological study being March said. For help on all this, plus the challenge of operating
done on this.” UAVs in cold-weather environments March said there is a
growing pool of experience not in the USAF (which has
Three are other interesting questions. Should there be
medals and commendations for UAV operators who hitherto operated most of its UA Vs in deserts) but in the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security, which recently has been
have shown exceptional skill in their work? And do UAV
operating UAVs to patrol the Canadian border from bases in
operators deserve flight pay? “The financial people and
pilots say no; the operators say, ‘Hell, yes!’ — because of New York state and North Dakota.
the need to keep up their skills,” he said, adding, “These “ It’s going to be the technology of the future,” said March.
are some of the really interesting issues and stuff, “We’re pushing hard and talking about spending about $1
mundane as they are, that you have to deal with as the billion of taxpayers’ dollars to do it.”
technology progresses.”
There are still more problems. After a UAV has collected
data, somebody, somewhere, must analyze what’s been
collected; still more work is involved if its data has been
encrypted. March said it’s been estimated that a cross-
Canada flight by, say, a USAF Global Hawk UAV would
collect enough data on a single flight to keep every
single analyst in the Canadian Forces working flat-out for
30 days. “That means more requirements for analysts
and how to store the information that’s kept. And what
are the legal implications of ‘Hoovering’ up all of this
electronic data?”