Where we build.

Land

The land battlespace has changed more in the past four years than in the preceding thirty. Uncrewed systems have moved from a reconnaissance adjunct to a primary means of finding and striking. Defeating them has become a permanent requirement rather than a specialist one. And the volumes involved have exposed how poorly Western industrial bases are configured for equipment that is consumed rather than maintained. Canada’s land forces meet this shift with fleets requiring modernisation and a domestic supply base that was not built for it.

Capability classes

• Uncrewed ground and air systems for reconnaissance, logistics and effect
• Counter-uncrewed-aircraft systems and tactical electronic warfare
• Land command, control, communications, computing, cyber, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting
• Direct-fire and indirect-fire modernisation
• Tactical logistics and sustainment systems

Air

NORAD modernisation, the reopening of the Arctic as a contested approach, and the arrival of crewed-uncrewed teaming as an operating concept have changed what the air domain requires of industry. Canada is buying advanced crewed aircraft while the capability that will fly alongside them, and the sensing layer that makes northern approaches legible, remain substantially unaddressed by domestic industry.

Capability classes

• Uncrewed combat air systems designed to operate alongside crewed aircraft
• Persistent surveillance of northern and near-space approaches
• Air-launched effects
• The air-domain segment of cross-domain command and ISR

Maritime

Canada holds the world’s longest coastline and responsibility across three oceans, with a fleet whose renewal is concentrated in a small number of very large platforms on long timelines. Meanwhile the maritime problem has moved underwater and toward the uncrewed: subsea infrastructure that is both critical and exposed, submarine activity in approaches that were once effectively closed, and a domain-awareness burden that cannot be met by crewed platforms alone.

Capability classes

• Uncrewed surface vessels for persistent maritime domain awareness
• Autonomous underwater systems for reconnaissance and sensing
• Underwater effects
• Host and deployment platforms for uncrewed maritime systems

Cyber and Intelligence

Two shifts are running simultaneously. Cryptographic systems protecting government and defence communications must migrate to post-quantum standards on a timeline set by an adversary capability that does not yet exist publicly. And the volume of signals and open-source material now available has moved past what analytic workforces can process, making automated exploitation a capability requirement rather than an efficiency measure. Both are areas where Canada has a genuinely strong research base and a thin commercial one.

Capability classes

• Quantum-safe and post-quantum cryptographic communications
• Cyber operations capability
• AI-assisted signals intelligence exploitation and analysis
• Quantum sensing