National Defence Committee on Dec. 2nd, 2014

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

I see the nods. Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Jack Harris]

Now we have round two.

The first questioner is Madam Gallant from the Conservative Party for five minutes.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and through you to the witnesses.

We know why we're a bit behind as far as UAVs. It's because of that decade of darkness we suffered before.

We're focusing on innovation and helping businesses move forward. I look forward to seeing your businesses grow even more.

Could you describe the data fusion capabilities that you currently have in your UAVs?

[Charles Barlow]

I don't make UAVs. I sell them, set them up, and get the systems working for other people.

A good gamut of what we would normally do is intelligence gathering. You can get great imagery by day and night. As Mr. Glenn said, you can get way down to the resolution that's far beyond what you can get from satellite. You can do signals intercept. You can do signals relay, where you've got the thing up and you can use it just to relay your own communications. You can put nuclear, biological, and chemical detectors as payloads. There are a number of things that you can do with these machines.

It's not unlike what you can do with any manned aircraft. It's just that it tends to be a little less expensive.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

But can you take that information, the IR capability, the actual visuals, and other types of centres and fuse that data so that you can get a clearer picture of what's actually going on?

Mr. Glenn?

[Ian Glenn]

Absolutely. As you know, before I retired from the military I was the architect of the army ISTAR program technically and programmatically. It's a bit of a passion for me.

Beyond our platforms, of which I have a rotorcraft and a fixed-wing, I have a set of technology thrusts that we call “glass to glass”. It's from that lens to the iPad, in my case, and the farmer with the PayPal button.

It's the same for the oil industry. I push that information as they want it straight into pipeline integrity monitoring systems. We pushed live feeds directly into the various Caribbean nations down in South America. We have that ability to do that now.

On the fusion piece, there are increasing tools that allow you to do that. Some of the mapping pieces you saw, those were using some analytics that allow us to very rapidly create 2-D or 3-D maps from imagery we're collecting in real time, and then in near real time creating better products down the road.

Those are all geo-referenced. Everything's geo-referenced, so from a National Defence point of view, I can push directly into any of the command and control systems today.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

How easy is it for non-state actors to obtain UAVs that can be used for purposes that would compromise the safety of North Americans, and are either of your companies subject to ITAR?

[Charles Barlow]

I did mention the fellow in the United States who was planning to attack the Capitol building. That's an attack profile using unmanned systems that we are going to see, I'm afraid, for the rest of our lives. It's just an absolute inevitability.

When we discuss the ability of the other side, as it were, to get access, if you think back to Google Earth, I remember when Google Earth came out everybody over at Defence went “Yikes” because most of the countries had never had satellite imagery before. Most of the people who we were facing had never had satellite imagery and all of a sudden they did.

Now UAVs are going to do the same thing. Not only are they doing the same thing now already, I mean, we were over-flown in Afghanistan by very rudimentary aircraft, model aircraft with cameras strapped on the bottom of them. That's going to get better as well. You can buy some pretty good non-ITAR robots right off some good websites. We are going to see the bad guys using those more and more, just as I showed you their using them in Syria in the ISIS videos.

But we're also going to get as these things proliferate.... The UAVs are up and they're doing their job. Let's say they're delivering pizzas, but they're still collecting data on the wind, the imagery, and all the other stuff.

What you're going to see in five or eight years is an almost live Google Earth for certain areas of the planet because they're going to have a lot of UAVs over them, and that data is going to be coming in.

[Ian Glenn]

Non-state actors? Yes, they've got everything they need. You know, stop at Future Shop or Best Buy on the way home and pick up what you want, fly with your iPhone, and you're there. It's just no longer an issue. It's why Transport Canada had to change the rules: they couldn't keep the rules because the world had changed.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Jack Harris]

I'm sorry, Madam, but your time is just about up. You have five seconds and you can't do much with that.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Auroras, would they support—in what ways would they support or eventually replace that type of capability?

[Ian Glenn]

Aurora is a great platform with a lot of people on board and it will persist as long as it needs to. Eventually, these unmanned systems will have the same capability without putting human life at risk. They're cheaper to operate, safer, and off you go.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Jack Harris]

Thank you, Mr. Glenn.

Thank you, Madam Gallant.

Our next question is Mr. Brahmi on behalf of the New Democratic Party.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Glenn, your perspective on UAV systems is more industrial and technical. Would you say that, right now, there is a sort of convergence of the various technologies? The avionics component of UAVs is becoming less and less important. There is a commonality between land and air robots. That commonality will eventually lead to a convergence in terms of everything command- and control-related, meaning there will no longer be any real separation. Industrially, I assume you use the same platforms, do you not?

[Ian Glenn]

That's a great question. I had the opportunity to speak at a keynote for Canada's first national robotics conference at McGill last week, NSERC conference. The answer is, yes, there is a convergence, absolutely. Smart guys are solving problems every day, and those technologies apply from everything—it's the same technology in this, gyros, rate gyros, all the things you need to know, really high-resolution cameras. Whether I throw this in the air and fly it around or I put it on a robot and drive it around, it's the same technology. There is a strong convergence there.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

In Canada, how will UAVs contribute to maritime defence, for instance? They will be one of the solutions, not necessarily the solution. I would imagine that there are UAVs with submarine capability and that they could eventually replace existing submarines. As Mr. Barlow was saying about the new F-35s, they will probably be the last generation where avionics will play a critical role. Do you foresee the same technological change in maritime surveillance? Will emerging submarine technologies be able to replace existing submarines?

[Charles Barlow]

Thinking really quickly, the Royal Navy is already working on a program to buy an unmanned surface vehicle, a USV, that will go to sea for three months on a single tank of gas with some rotors and stuff to keep the power up. That thing can go out to sea and patrol for three months at a time.

They will be deploying that kind of stuff, not only for large deepwater patrols, but also for the close-in stuff. If they're running it through rivers or lakes, or along coastlines, the robots allow you to do certain things that you can't do with manned systems. You can sail a robot into somebody's territorial waters without triggering the same response as you would if you sent in a ship with people on it. I think that drones are one thing, but robotics—no matter whether they crawl, sink, or fly—are the essence of this whole thing.

[Ian Glenn]

I would add that I've worked with autonomous underwater vehicles. UVic has a great system from an American friend of mine. It's about the convergence.

What the flying piece does is give you a great view of the ground. The ground robot is good. Underwater is also good, but with limited communications. If you give the underwater the ability to carry a little antenna, and you have the airborne piece, you can go back and forth so you can get the data back.

Using your imagination when you think about the problem you're trying to solve, and with the flexibility to use robots, you can do amazing things.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Jack Harris]

You have another 40 seconds.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Barlow, you talked about the next generation of aircraft. But what about the next generation of ships? Will North American maritime defence move towards robotic systems?

[Charles Barlow]

I'm convinced that we will.

The one bit that becomes tricky is when you arm them. Once you arm a UAV or a robot of some sort, and you can't get communications with it.... For example if you have a submarine, and it's out and it sees what it needs to see, the people on board can make the decisions about whether or not they are going to use force. If you don't have a connection to the robot you can't do the same thing, unless you give it specific orders to fire at certain times under certain conditions.

For surveillance and for communications, robots are brilliant. If you start talking about armed robotics there is a limiting factor, which is that the decision-maker is potentially thousands of miles away.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Jack Harris]

That's the end of the time.

The next person questioning is the Conservative Party's Mr. Van Kesteren. You have five minutes.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Thank you for appearing here today. I'm not normally a part of this committee, but I'm happy to be here and talk about some of these things.

I remember when drones first were talked about. I think that all of us were fascinated, but we live in a day and age where we're quickly bored with what we see. Although it is a marvel that they're able to do these things, much of the technology talked about has been around, at least in terms of today's technology, long enough that we're waiting for the next quantum leap.

Thinking about the technology that's involved here, the batteries and the different computers, what's on the horizon? The other day, I was reading about a new engine that's being developed—it's speculative at this point—a pulse jet engine or something. What's on the horizon for drones? What can we expect to see?

The second part of my question—in case this goes on a little longer than I expected—I remember in industry we were involved with MacDonald...I forget the name, the ones that did the satellites. Have we got companies, and I could refer to yourselves too, that have the capabilities to develop into something like that, where we would become world leaders and we would start to develop some of these new-generation technologies? Either one of you can take this.

[Ian Glenn]

We already have the ability to do stuff. We're discovering what we can do.

At the end of the day, I tell my guys it's not about the air show. For my fixed-wing and rotorcraft I give them five design criteria: fly as long as you can, as far as you can, carry as much as you can, don't fall down, and make it push-button-get-banana easy. In those streams, just go off and innovate. That actually solves a lot of problems.

In every dimension of everything we do there's an innovation every day: a faster way to process imagery, better communications, or a better way to see things. It's really now that we're able to shape it on a customer-by-customer basis.

To your second question, are we in a position to do this? I ask—and I certainly have these discussions with Industry Canada—where's the next breakout in this country? We've seen what we've done in telecom. We've been there, we've done that, and we've got the shares to still deal with that.

In aviation, what is Bombardier going to do that's going to be a breakout? What are the things that we're going to do?

My point is, in robotic aviation, this country has been a leader in aviation for as long as there's been aviation—the bush pilots, our training for World War II—in all of these things we've been leaders. Now we have the ability to do it again.

I happen to lead the sector. There are guys chasing me hard, which is great. In this Canada is a leader, absolutely, and I know that one of the things that drives Minister Raitt to improve the conditions in the commercial market is to allow us as a country to lead in this space.

[Charles Barlow]

I'll just quickly say that the categories of the robots are basically all established. You're going to see incremental changes like the iPhone 4 to the iPhone 5. The cameras will get better, and the batteries will get better. There's no huge jump that way.

The huge jump that's coming is that these robots are going to all start cooperating. It's called swarm robotics. It's been worked on for a long time and it's starting to become very useful, the way that these things start to understand the situation of the other unmanned systems around them, so that if one of them falls down, the others converge and cover off the area.

I think you're going to see less and less human involvement in robotics, and that on a very steep curve, until—and I'm not talking more than five years from now—you will not need a human to even look at these things. They'll be doing their job 24 hours a day.