War Machines
Southeastern Alberta’s robotic vehicle industry is gearing up to face its biggest challenge to date: the outbreak of peace
by Scott Messenger
Not that they’re avoiding the military. One reason Medicine Hat is the emerging hub of Alberta’s UVS industry is its proximity to CFB Suffield, the military base 30 minutes northeast of the city. Slightly larger than Luxembourg and devoid of mountains, trees and people, Suffield is ideal for testing aerial and ground drones. (Meggitt’s Hammerheads took first spins in a nearby Cypress Hills lake.) And given the restricted airspace, there’s no worry – with respect to unmanned air vehicles that could monitor pipelines, patrol the Northwest Passage, search and rescue, or spot sparking forest fires – about violating Transport Canada regulations currently governing what can and cannot fly.
Matthews admits CCUVS wouldn’t have made regulatory breakthroughs before his contract expired late this July. Still, since the centre’s beginning in November of 2006 – thanks to startup funds funnelled through the Economic Development Alliance of Southeast Alberta – it has made some significant accomplishments. Last November, it secured a $3-million grant from Rural Alberta’s Development Fund. This July, it purchased an air-vehicle launcher – a giant, portable, hydraulic slingshot – with about $900,000 from Western Economic Diversification Canada, to lease to Canadian companies looking to get unmanned air vehicle projects, literally and figuratively, off the ground. It’s also approached Medicine Hat College about developing a UVS training program, commissioned national ground-vehicle market research and established close ties with Transport Canada to continue to push for new regulations.
“This is an emerging technology,” says Matthews. “I can understand Spencer [Fraser]’s frustration because he’s in the business of selling. But to do that, the whole sociological, technical, political framework has to be in place.”
But the current pace also concerns Peter Bovell, DeVry University’s UVS robotics adviser in Calgary. In fact, looking at Alberta’s UVS industry, he invokes the ghost of the Avro Arrow, the Canadian fighter jet that, before the Diefenbaker Conservatives abruptly terminated its development in 1959, promised to be the world’s fastest and most advanced aircraft, capable of intercepting Soviet bombers delivering nuclear payloads via the Canadian North.
“We are at the point where the technology you saw in the Avro Arrow is again possible, and beyond, right here,” he says. “We can do more than ever before, but no one’s taking the initiative to do it.”
By “no one,” Bovell is referring mostly to the government and its lack of ongoing investment in universities and places like Canadian Forces Base Suffield, which through its corporate arm of Defence R&D Canada contributed to the development of Meggitt products like the Badger unmanned vehicle and Barracuda unmanned boat – the latter a favourite for towing targets for Japanese naval exercises. (“Who the hell else is selling robots to the Japanese?” boasts Fraser.) Perhaps for that reason, Bovell, in contrast to Matthews’ belief in an imminent civilian market, seems convinced that Meggitt’s current work, not to mention wireless control system production by Microhard and UVS software design by CDL Systems, both Calgary examples, remain amongst the best strategies for continued industry innovation – and for keeping his graduates in Canada. “The civilian application, sadly, will come only after the military has had its chance to absolutely justify [UVS] use,” says the professor. “Right now, the immediate requirement is in hostile territory.”
That’s why Meggitt, despite its location in the driest city in Canada, is one of the country’s biggest international naval suppliers and why it continues to stock its yard with military UVS technology. There’s an eight-metre long Barracuda shrouded in tarps against the sun and dust, along with half a dozen Hammerheads, similarly protected. Inside the shop, a Meggitt staffer paints sharply scented finish onto as many more in the final stages of production. Another man carefully packs parachutes for a couple of Vindicator IIs, Meggitt’s airborne drones capable of exceeding speeds of 300 kilometres per hour, making them perfect targets for missile or anti-aircraft gun exercises. Even at less than three metres long, they bear a striking, even eerie, resemblance to the Arrow, with a needle-like body and wings flaring out like a cape towards the rear of the fuselage. But unlike the Arrow, the Vindicator II is economically viable and a Meggitt bestseller. And, if CCUVS does shift market focus to civilian uses – or if the Vindicators were outfitted with sensors and equipment Bovell says are already available for myriad domestic applications – this particular UAV might answer a question Fraser feels too few Albertans are asking.
“In the Navy we have a term: Spending money in a foreign port like a drunken sailor,” he says, thinly veiling skepticism around the provincial government’s ongoing investment into resource extraction. “What will we do,” he asks, “when the gas runs out?”
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