Defence Team News: Testing counter-drone tech in Ottawa
Video / March 16, 2026
Transcript
What we've learned right now from the war in Ukraine is that the UAV threat is very real in urban settings.
So, we are here in Ottawa to conduct the Counter Uncrewed Aerial Systems Sandbox. It is the first time we’ll be delivering such a sandbox in an urban environment. Those are really critical pieces that we do with industry, with operators, and with scientists. They get valuable feedback from operators, something that in this defence and security realm is very hard to come by without a program like IDEaS.
Yes, there's been some interesting innovations, particularly in the sphere of an acoustic detection system that projects sound waves and detects a reflection of that, which is something we've never seen before. Countering the threat that now is omnipresent with drones on the battlefield is absolutely important, but also it's important for us to be able to protect sites in Canada as well.
The environment is very complex where things like reflections of buildings have to be taken into account or the simple fact that your view might be blocked if you have a camera system.
Technology that operates in urban environments will be very useful to save lives, assets, and infrastructure.