Though former pilot and current head of the CF project JUSTAS, Leftenant-Colonel Gord Smith is cautious about arming Canada's soon to grow remote-controlled air force with Hell Fires and other weapons, saying it's important they "walk before they can run," he recognizes the importance of the burgeoning fleets of the machines, and their limitations.
“Whether we get to the point of a HALE (High Altitude Long Endurance) machine is really going to be a resources-based decision. It gets prohibitive and starts to defeat the argument that UAVs are cheaper and more expendable. Ownership is not as inexpensive as people make it out to be — where you may diminish the requirements for people to operate the air vehicle, you start to pick up and intensify the requirement for a more robust information management backend to manage the data that comes off the device.”
More than merely monetary concerns, Smith's reservations about the vehicle include the time lag issue, where the situation on the ground can change dramatically between the time images are received and sent to HQ by the UAVs and the time action is sanctioned and executed. As more mistaken attacks occur, and civilian body counts escalate, tasking Canadian UAVs for the kind of assassinations and ground support missile launching increasingly common for U.S. forces is something none in JUSTAS want to see. Smith says,
“We’re not in a position to even consider that now. We’re going to evolve our inventory to eventually get there. We’re not going to put hellfire missiles on our first UAV, notwithstanding the fact that some people may want to see that. We’ve got to crawl a little before we walk, and then walk before we run.”
Reservations aside, the Harper government is determined to get more UAVs into the field and increase the roles of those vehicles. Last December, the Conservatives announced a 750 million dollar investment in the technology. The next decision they will make is where to spend that $750 million. Israel and the U.S. are the two UAV super powers, but it looks like Israel Aeronautic Industries (IAI) and its Canadian partner MacDonald Dettwiler Aeronautics (MDA) are front-runners. They inked a 100 million dollar contract to supply an unrevealed number of UAVs in August of last year.
"We did a big evaluation and we believe Israel is better at this than the Americans. They have been flying longer and have learned a lot of lessons. A lot of aspects of their program are very advanced. They have the technology and experience. They build them right."
Just and Right
As the bodies of the latest two Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan are returned to their families for burial, the chance for the government of Canada today and those that will follow to make military commitments to NATO, the UN, and the American military without risking Canadian lives is particularly poignant and tempting.
While there may be few tears shed for the anonymous "others" that fall through the agency of Canada's military, there is a price to be paid. No longer a "peacekeeping" but war fighting nation, Canada has become, since the 9/11 attacks, barely recognizable to its pre-attack state and hardly discernible from its war obsessed neighbour to the south.
Where Peter Gabriel may be right about the dirth of tears robot armies need shed, on the other side of the War on Terror there are real people,
more often than not civilians, supplying an endless river of them.
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