Thanks so much.
I'm just really mesmerized by your comments about where we're going in the future with these technologies. They are already completely available if we were to avail ourselves of them for military.... If we were to be doing surveillance of our vast ocean area, what might that mean for some of the big, expensive equipment replacement projects that are planned? Should there be a future government that's a different one from the current government, are we going to be faced with...? For example, fixed-wing search and rescue, it was a big priority starting in 2003. In 2013, it's still a big priority, and an urgent one according to the Auditor General. Oh, I forgot, it's all the fault of the previous Liberal government. So in the nine years, nothing has progressed under this government, but are we not going to need as many fixed-wing search and rescue vehicles if the search can be done by drones?
I guess the other obvious one is, if we are really patrolling through aviation robotics, are we then going to find that the need for Arctic offshore patrol ships to patrol vast areas of our Arctic Sea...? Again, it's a project that has been delayed and delayed and delayed, and the first one may not be available until four years from now. But if the last nine years continue, it might be longer than that. Are we going to find that these are obsolete by the time we actually have them coming off the assembly lines?
What you're suggesting is a lot cheaper. That's expensive equipment. Are we going to need both, or is it going to replace some of these others?