What can Canadian defence firms learn from Ukraine's drone expertise?

After years of conflict with Russia, Ukraine is perhaps the world leader on using drones to attack an enemy. Ukraine's actually used fewer resources to turn inexpensive drones into a persistent problem against Russian aggression including to intercept the Shahed drones used by Russia. Ukraine's expertise in drones is just one of the reasons for a new 100-year partnership between Canada and Ukraine signed last month. Ukraine is constantly innovating And it's now on track to build more drones than China, Russia and every NATO member. Canada, Canada can learn from you. We can continue to work together and we can expand our partnership to defend your freedom and to defend ours. One Canadian company leaning into this new partnership with Ukraine is Dominion Dynamics. The defense firm partnered with Ukrainian robotics company Tencor to manufacture drones in Canada. A percentage will then be sent to Ukraine and other NATO allies. Here's the CEO and founder of the Ontario-based Dominion Dynamics. Elliot Pence, hello. Hi. Seems the Ukrainians almost invented mass drone warfare. What can Canada do to help them out? Yeah, certainly the Ukrainians have done a lot to push the technology forward, and we've seen that really since 2022. I think Canada has a critical role to play in this, not just from a technology perspective, but from a productive capacity perspective. We've got 125,000 labor force in the auto sector. We can definitely pivot that in part to building drones. And when I say drones, really, Group 1 all the way up to Group 4 drones, so small FPVs to large, much more sophisticated, what they call loyal wingman drones, which is what we're making. Yeah, I want to lean in on that a bit, because when you talk about the different levels of drones, people may be imagining something solely in the air, but you're talking about ground-based vehicles as well. What is it that you will actually help build? Yeah, so our focus is really about autonomous systems, and autonomous systems exist in the sea all the way up through to space. And so what we're building is both air drones, ground drones, and sea drones. So these are really just things that are controlled by a human and are focused on executing a specific what's called concept of operation. So no human in them, but controlled by humans. We're already at a point where so many of the warfighters are much further back from whatever a front line means these days. We seem to be moving towards a place where even humans are not involved, that it will be drone on drone. How quickly do you imagine that happening? I think it's already happening, David. I think we see it not just in Ukraine, but we saw it really 10 years ago, starting with the Nagorno-Karabakh War. And it's really accelerated in the last couple of years all the way up until really now with the Iran battle. And so, yeah, I think it's already on us. And I think we need to prepare for that real reality. If humans aren't involved in prosecuting war, does that leave open challenges in permitting AI to make decisions essentially within milliseconds about who it kills? Well, I think what's being contemplated here is not having humans not involved in the prosecution of war or violent acts. Humans always have to be central to that. What is really being contemplated here is how do you leverage autonomous systems to affect the kind of thing that humans want to create? So it's about having the humans more central to the prosecution of war, having more precise effect on target and not having less precise effect on target. That's really a critical distinction when we talk about autonomous warfare. What Dominion Dynamics brings to the table here, what Canada brings to the table, yes, is the ability, the manufacturing base. But is more than that, I want to lean into some of the software that you have, Orinette. What exactly would that do, say, for the Ukrainians who are trying to fight for their country against the Russians? Yeah, so what we're building with Orinette is really about communication protocols. So autonomous systems rely on the ability to leverage different frequencies, different wireless frequencies. What we're building is software that allows these autonomous systems to speak with each other and to control each other, to command each other across different kinds of, whether that's a cell signal, whether that's a radio frequency, whether that's SATCOM. We're building the ability to store and forward data, which are essentially command and control mechanisms, to autonomous systems, and that's what we're deploying in Ukraine. We see auto assembly plants in this country in some cases being sidelined, being shut down. Do you see the ability to use large segments of those manufacturing facilities to continue to build something? Yeah, so the prime minister has set a clear goal for the country, 125,000 workers in the defense industry by 2035. It just so happens that we have 125,000 workers in the auto industry. I think there's clear alignment and synergies between both of those industries. We've been quite vocal about the utility of some of the, in particular, unionized workforce that is currently working in the auto industry and helping them, retraining them and retooling some of these factories to start producing large format drones. We have an interest in building smaller batches, so smaller numbers of drones, but larger drones. Ours is called Dominion Scout, but there's certainly others. You are potentially selling into the foreign space, but that doesn't mean that these drones and this technology wouldn't be used by Canadians. And in fact, I've been up in the north and there have been examples of your drones being used there. Where do you see Canada using this particular technology within its own military? Yeah, so our principal focus from day one has been selling to the Canadian government. We see that as both the highest need and greatest demand. A lot of what we're building is for Arctic awareness to what we call domain awareness. So, you know, we're talking about buying 90 fighter jets that solves 30% of the problem. What we're really building capabilities for is solving the 70% of the other part of that problem. And we really can only do that with autonomous systems that have long range. And when we say long range, we're talking thousands of miles here. Is the benefit of your drone systems that they can deal with the climate or the vastness or what? Yeah, the benefit of what we're building is the ruggedization. So it's survivable at minus 60. It has a thrust profile that allows it to go in medium altitude and high altitude. It can take off from gravel runways. A lot of the Arctic airstrips that we have are gravel. And so, yeah, that is what we're building around, those specific constraints. Elliot Pence, thank you very much. Thank you, David.