Canada — Minister MacKay Awards Contract For Experimental Radar Site

OTTAWA — The Hon­ourable Peter MacK­ay, Min­is­ter of Nation­al Defence, today announced the award of a $7 mil­lion con­tract to Raytheon Cana­da. These funds will be used to build and install a next-gen­er­a­tion High Fre­quen­cy Sur­face Wave Radar (HFSWR) sys­tem and to assess the per­for­mance of this tech­nol­o­gy in an oper­a­tional envi­ron­ment.

“Our Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to pro­tect­ing Cana­di­an sov­er­eign­ty,” said Min­is­ter MacK­ay. “Under­tak­ing research into sur­veil­lance tech­nolo­gies is vital to sup­port­ing the military’s effort to mon­i­tor mar­itime approaches.” 

Tra­di­tion­al radars detect tar­gets that are with­in the line of sight and can­not detect those which are over the hori­zon. Con­se­quent­ly, long-range detec­tion of sur­face ves­sels cur­rent­ly requires patrols by air­craft, which are cost­ly and do not always pro­vide per­sis­tent cov­er­age. Ground-based HFSWR has the poten­tial to address this short­com­ing by trans­mit­ting and receiv­ing elec­tro­mag­net­ic waves that trav­el along the curved ocean sur­face, allow­ing over-the hori­zon detec­tion of ves­sels. Because Cana­di­an indus­try has been involved in the devel­op­ment of HFSWR from the begin­ning, it is in a good posi­tion to cap­i­tal­ize on the tech­nol­o­gy and devel­op com­mer­cial products. 

This con­tract is part of the Defence Research and Devel­op­ment Cana­da (DRDC) project enti­tled Per­sis­tent Active Sur­veil­lance of the Exclu­sive Eco­nom­ic Zone (PASE). PASE was ini­ti­at­ed in 2007 and sup­ports the sur­veil­lance by the Cana­di­an Forces (CF) of Canada’s mar­itime approach­es by explor­ing the per­for­mance of com­mer­cial­ly avail­able and devel­op­men­tal sen­sor systems. 

This final step of the project involves in-depth tri­als car­ried out joint­ly by DRDC and Raytheon Cana­da at Hartlen Point in Nova Sco­tia. Project results are antic­i­pat­ed to be pre­sent­ed to the CF ear­ly in 2014. 

“This tech­nol­o­gy demon­stra­tion project is an excel­lent exam­ple of indus­try and gov­ern­ment work­ing togeth­er to meet mil­i­tary require­ments by advanc­ing sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy and engag­ing the Cana­di­an inno­va­tion sys­tem,” said Dr. Marc Fortin, CEO DRDC. “In this dynam­ic tech­no­log­i­cal cli­mate, DRDC’s pro­grams ensure that the CF have the sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-based infor­ma­tion need­ed to con­sid­er the tech­no­log­i­cal options that will best serve their needs.” 

DRDC is Canada’s leader in defence and secu­ri­ty sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy in an ever-evolv­ing defence and secu­ri­ty envi­ron­ment. An agency of the Cana­di­an Depart­ment of Nation­al Defence, DRDC pro­vides DND and the Gov­ern­ment of Cana­da the knowl­edge and tech­nolo­gies need­ed for nation­al defence and security. 

Source:
Depart­ment of Nation­al Defence, Canada 

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