Drones won’t replace all jets, commander says
Calls for more access to flight simulators
Good soldier that he is, Lt.Gen. Yvan Blondin refused to be dragged into the F-35 fighter-jet controversy.
But the commander of the Royal Canadian Air Force did advise the media at a luncheon speech Wednesday to the Conseil des relations internationales de Montréal to tone down the breathless rhetoric about drones.
Some reports in Quebec have sounded the alarm over the Bagotville air force base, which operates a squadron of CF-18 fighter jets and employs hundreds, theorizing that it would be replaced by a fleet of drones.
Blondin said “the media tends to give the image of drones as revolutionary — and that we should replace everything with drones now.”
“But they are a complementary capacity. They can’t replace jets altogether.
“The weaknesses of drones is that they are attached by an umbilical cord to satellites. If that satellite is taken out or its signals are intercepted, I lose my entire fleet of drones,” he said.
“And their visibility is two-dimensional. So we’re a long way off from replacing jet fighters. They are useful when there is no military threat, but they are marginal, not a major replacement. Certainly, they’ll be used more and more over time, but it will be an evolution. We’re talking about 50 years, not 10.”
Blondin also made a plea for closer alignment between military contracts Ottawa hands out and Canada’s aerospace industry.
He especially singled out flight simulation, which he praised as an essential tool that saves a huge amount in lean times — like the current environment.
“I could cut my costs by 30 per cent if I had more access to simulators,” said Blondin, a highly experienced pilot who was stationed in Bagotville for nine years. “There are things I can do in a simulator that I actually can’t do in flight. The technology allows better detection around the aircraft, as well as of other aircraft.
“It also offers training I don’t have in flight. You take off from Bagotville in January at midnight — I can tell you there are not a lot of targets out there.”
The endorsement pleased Marc Parent, the president of CAE Inc., who was in the audience. CAE is one of the world’s leading flight simulation firms, providing hardware — the simulators — and training at its centres dotted around the world.
“Obviously, we’re pleased to see the general’s outlook,” Parent told reporters later.
New Horizon, a new Canadian defence program, aims to get Ottawa and the aerospace industry to work more closely to benefit homegrown companies — “a Canadian solution to Canadian problems.”
“We want to be so pure in Canada — ‘Let’s not talk to each other,’ ” Blondin said. “We develop our needs in secret and then we exclude Canadian industry.
“All other countries cooperate between the military and industry.”
The result in Canada, he said, can be endless procurement contracts like searchand-rescue helicopters.
The federal government hit the pause button in December 2012 on its purchase of 65 F-35 jets from Lockheed Martin Corp., the only firm that Ottawa allowed to bid.
Ottawa originally pegged the deal at $16 billion, later amending that to $25 billion. But a study by the Defence Department placed the real cost at closer to $46 billion.
The government has since invited other manufacturers to present information about their own jet fighters — but has still not opened up the competition to them.
Blondin said the government is trying to get the military and industry closer together “and I salute that.”