Vanguard Magazine

EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW E I don't think anyone can doubt that most of the companies are producing equipment and selling it overseas, as opposed to just buying foreign equipment and operating it in Canada. Canada's got to ask itself which part of that equation it wants to focus on. Do you want to have a Bombardier in your midst or do you want to have a WestJet? There are benefits to each and I'm not being negative to one or the other. That's a discussion for the govern- ment. But it has got to be a bit more focused. We purport to be the fifth largest aerospace economy in the world yet we don't have a national program for unmanned vehicles. At Meggitt, we've taken a bit of the Own the Podium mentality from the Olympics and said, wait a minute, we are the best, so why don't we tell it. We have focused on a niche area where we are a world leader – we've got North American, U.K., Australian and other Pacific Rim customers – and we've done very well, but it's not without its challenges." Q The unmanned market has exploded in recent years. How do customers perceive it? Is it trusted? I believe so. But there are a lot of charlatans out there. I can't tell you the number of times I've heard a company say it is the only one in Canada doing something, but when you ask how many actual flights they've completed, they'll say, "we've done three." Well, we're doing 30-40 flights a day at Suffield. There is a big difference between number of flights versus the number of hours flying. Because the hard part is launching and recovering and for that you need thousands of flights. Q What key capabilities are customers seeking with these systems? Reliability. And with reliability comes cost. The notion that these are cheap and cheerful – no, there is an asymmetry in the cost of unmanned vehicles. Payloads far exceed the costs of the platforms. And since there is no breakthrough sensor on un- manned vehicles that doesn't exist on fixed wing, I would sug- gest another is persistence. What you are seeing is the trend away from tactical UAVs to MALE (medium altitude, high endur- ance) UAVs. Q Are you taking solutions to them or are they coming to you with requests? Who is driving the need for innovation? A bit of both. We do performance measurement of weapons sys- tems and counter force simulation. If there is a threat out there that we can emulate, we'll take that to customers. If you were to break up unmanned vehicles for the early adopters, which is primarily military, you've got weaponized systems, decoys – no one talks about them but there is a huge business – surveillance systems, and then targets. And then, of course, there's training. Canada's got some niche capabilities in most of these and there is a lot of innovation out there. Meggitt has 250 subcontractors in Canada, from Sidney, Nova Scotia to B.C., who provide us with everything from software to painting and propellers. Q Do you see the Arctic as significant market for unmanned systems? There is potential, but unmanned is just part of a solution. What is the effect you are trying to achieve? What would I do with respect to Russia? Well, that's one thing. What would I do with respect to Greenland? Well, that's another. Ultimately, you need a layered ap- proach, so your most effective solution begins with a satellite, and then perhaps manned or automatically piloted systems. Q You clearly have a role in helping the Canadian navy prepare for what it has termed the "contested littorals." What sort of complex training solutions do they require? They are one of our bigger supporters. We have two initiatives going on with the navy that will probably mature in the next year that no one in the world is looking at. I can't say more than that at the moment. www.vanguardcanada.com OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2012 23

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