Defence Team News | Counter drone prototypes undergo real world testing
Video / August 06, 2024
Transcript
For the 2024 Sandbox, we are focusing on a physical defeat of the drone threat, that includes with weapon systems such as guns, but also with directed energy such as the laser that you see behind me here. The Counter UAS Sandbox here, in Suffield, allowed us to host 15 companies over the last 4 weeks. And we got to test their counter drone technology to help us discover what better technologies are. As general technology evolves, it's important for us to know what the better ways to counter those technological advancements are. We also had a number of observers and visitors from a number of countries, other allied partners and as well as the Ukraine armed forces that sent observers, which is outstanding, because it allows us to learn from their own experience and allows them to learn from the testing that we do.
In this year's sandbox, we've seen lasers to be a promising technology. They're effective and fast means in defeating UAS, and have been shown to effectively defeat at long ranges and their ability to track fast moving drones.
I think it's important to note that Canada doing one of the first laser firings over the horizon for a laser weapon system is quite an important milestone for us to achieve, because it's technically challenging in order to do it in a safe manner. And it's an important achievement for the Canadian Armed Forces at DND to be able to showcase the capabilities that we have in Suffield, here, and for us to learn a lot more about how to operate a directed energey system like a laser. As battlefield innovation advances so rapidly, we need to keep doing those sandboxes in a continuous manner in order for us to adapt the technologies that are being presented for us to be able to inform our requirement when it comes time to acquire systems to protect our own troops and assets.
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