By Skies Magazine | January 21, 2016 Estimated reading time 6 minutes, 58 seconds.
The government said the RFI was intended to share the RCAF’s requirements with industry and gather feedback on potential options. Northrop Grumman Image
The Royal Canadian Air Force is asking the defence industry for new costing data as it builds the business case for a long range, long endurance unmanned aircraft system.
On Monday, Public Services and Procurement Canada issued a request for information (RFI) on the Joint Unmanned Surveillance Targeting and Acquisition System (JUSTAS) project, a program that has been in development for over a decade.
The government said the RFI was intended to share the RCAF’s requirements with industry and gather feedback on potential options, including cost, which would then be used to “develop detailed cost estimates and refine planning documents leading towards Definition phase funding approval.”
In an interview last week, BGen Philip Garbutt, director general for air force development, said that while the project is still in options analysis, “we’re really close to taking that business case to the department to make sure it not only aligns well with departmental requirements, but [also] with government policy.” He said a submission to Treasury Board would follow in “the near term.”
The government issued an RFI in 2012 on unmanned aerial systems (UAS) capabilities. While some of that information remains relevant, Garbutt said costing estimates in particular needed to be “refreshed.”
The value of UAS for both domestic surveillance and expeditionary intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) has been well established. It was a prominent feature of the Martin government’s International Policy Statement of 2005 and became the focus DAR 8, a new subgroup of the Directorate of Air Requirements, building on earlier trials by the Canadian Forces Experimentation Centre to demonstrate the capabilities of unmanned systems.
The JUSTAS project was put on pause during the mission in Afghanistan as many of the people running the project office were reassigned to operations in theatre. Though it delayed the procurement, the pause proved to be a blessing. During that time, the RCAF leased an Israel Aerospace Industries Heron UAS under an arrangement with Vancouver-based MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates, giving the air force both operational experience with an unmanned system and a new appreciation for what Canada might require.
The delay also coincided with rapid technological advances in unmanned systems, which started to address the question of whether Canada needed a medium altitude, long endurance (MALE) or high altitude, long endurance (HALE) aircraft to meet Arctic, coastal and expeditionary demands.
In a 2012 interview, then RCAF commander LGen Yvan Blondin suggested the technology was starting to deliver the capability Canada had been seeking: a blend between the high altitude but expensive airframes and the mid altitude aircraft that lacked the requisite endurance. “The fact that we didn’t move quickly into UAVs is probably a good thing,” he said. “The technology is moving toward where we may have something in between [a HALE and a MALE].”
In 2013, Maj John Whalen, the RCAF’s project director for JUSTAS, said the focus had shifted from specific platforms to a desired capability as UAS endurance jumped dramatically, in one case to almost 100 hours of flight time.
“We’re not looking at a MALE versus a HALE, we’re looking at a capability,” he said. “Canada is trying to do a lot of things with this UAV. We need a UAV that can cover vast areas at a reasonable speed, slow down to drop a SAR kit, and to be able to get below clouds. Where the United States would have a couple of different families of UAVs, we’re probably going to have one or two. So we’re looking for a general-purpose system that can accomplish everything in one project.”
In the 2012 RFI, the project team invited the defence industry to demonstrate how it would meet the requirements. “We are not stating minimum speed or hours on station, we will tell them a series of scenarios that we expect for the capability and ask them to show us how they would accomplish them,” Whalen said.
That need for out-of-the-box thinking hasn’t changed. In the latest RFI issued on Monday, the government said, “respondents are highly encouraged to offer alternatives to the project concepts and strategies outlined in this RFI. These alternatives should be accompanied by comprehensive arguments and analysis that clearly demonstrate how the proposed solution to the operational requirement is more advantageous to Canada with regard to operational suitability, effectiveness, schedule, cost and risk.”
One of the drivers for an unmanned aerial system is the workload now being handled by the CP-140 Aurora as both a maritime and overland ISR platform. While it has been invaluable on recent missions, it is more expensive to operate than a UAS and presents a larger target to ground-based threats.
To perform in such environments, though, the RCAF is seeking precision strike capability. And that needs to be informed by government policy, Garbutt said.
“Right now JUSTAS is built around two major tenants,” he explained. “A Canada requirement that looks at surveillance in the North, on the East and West coasts, and for intergovernmental events such as a G8 Summit or the Olympics. But as Op Impact has shown us, there is very much an expeditionary role that this platform could satisfy. [But] we need to get [government] confirmation that [this] is what they want. Over the course of the defence policy review, we believe we will get that vector check from government.”
With new costing data and government approvals of UAS mission requirements, there is hope that the latest RFI may be followed soon by a request for proposals.
