DND plans secret drone facility
Ottawa will be home to a new $65-million installation used to control and operate the military’s future fleet of drones.
But National Defence says the exact location in the city for the new facility to accommodate 198 personnel, simulators and drone control systems must remain secret.
The Liberal government announced on Dec. 19 that Canada would buy 11 remotely piloted aircraft from a U.S. company in a $2.5 billion project.
The new drones will be stationed at 14 Wing Greenwood, N.S., and 19 Wing Comox, B.C. But they will be controlled and operated from the new facility to be built in Ottawa.
“We are planning to construct the facility on existing DND land in Ottawa,” National Defence spokesperson Andrée-anne Poulin said. “For operational security reasons, we will not be providing the exact location.”
That level of secrecy will put the new Royal Canadian Air Force facility on a whole different footing than other sensitive military installations in the country. Canada’s most secret defence-related organizations — the Joint Task Force 2 counterterrorism unit and the electronic spy organization known as the Communications Security Establishment — operate from locations in Ottawa that are openly acknowledged by the federal government and Canadian military.
Neither National Defence nor the Canadian Forces responded to a question on how they planned to keep secret the daily comings and goings of almost 200 military personnel.
The new Ottawa facility will be around 6,000 square metres and house six stations to control the drones as well as two simulators to support operations.
Work is underway in designing the facility and a contract for the modified design-build project was tendered and awarded to Bird Construction in May 2023.
“The new facility will be designed to achieve Green Building Certification and will align with the Greening Government Strategy compliant to support climate-resilient operations,” National Defence said.
The department could not say when construction would start. “We will have a better idea of when construction will begin once the design work is complete, but we expect the facility will be complete in 2028,” Poulin noted.
Critics have pointed out the military and National Defence are sliding toward more secrecy even as the federal government frees up billions of dollars in additional spending. The House of Commons Committee on National Defence has launched hearings into the lack of openness and transparency.
So far it has heard that National Defence violates federal law in almost 40 per cent of the requests it receives to produce records under the Access to Information Act.