But the war in Ukraine has shifted the focus away from multimillion-dollar UAVs to much cheaper, smaller and sometimes disposable drones.<\/p>\n
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Bill Blair, at the time the minister of defence, announced last year that Canada would be providing more drones to Ukraine. While those drones were built by a Dutch company, Canadian firms are developing their own products \u2014 and taking lessons from the rapidly advancing technology. (Nathan Denette\/The Canadian Press)<\/p>\n
Like militaries around the world, the Canadian Armed Forces saw\u00a0the Ukraine conflict transform from what was largely an artillery war just 18 months ago into a nightmarish contest between buzzing machines and the operators who guide them.<\/p>\n
“It’s revolutionizing a part of the battle space,” says Royal Canadian Air Force Lt.-Col. Chris Labb\u00e9, who heads the forces’ Joint Counter Uncrewed Aircraft Systems Office. “You’ll see different scholars or analysts talk now about the ‘air littoral’ \u2014 really the space between the ground and 1,000 metres in the air, maybe above that.”<\/p>\n
That space used to be dominated by helicopters, said Labb\u00e9. But the\u00a0Nagorno-Karabakh war<\/a>, and then the war in Ukraine, have accelerated advances in drone warfare.<\/p>\n The Canadian military is determined to keep pace with that change, he said.<\/p>\n A cottage arms industry<\/p>\n Nearly everything about smaller drones represents a change in direction in military thinking and industrial production. For decades, procurement has trended toward\u00a0ever higher prices and longer timelines. The F-35, for example, is a weapons system so complicated and expensive that multiple countries had to buy in and invest in advance.<\/p>\n Drones don’t need giant factories with sophisticated production lines. Instead, said Tom Barton of Janes Defence in London, Ukraine has decentralized production into small workshops.<\/p>\n “Some of the ways that guys in their garages are actually streamlining 3D printing and turning out quantities of these UAVs, you wouldn’t have thought was imaginable up to now,”\u00a0Barton said.<\/p>\n WATCH | Drone capable of carrying an injured soldier:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n He says the Russians have also farmed out 3D printing and fabricating to an army of home-based engineers. Their wide distribution makes it impossible to shut production down through bombing or missile strikes.<\/p>\n Labb\u00e9 says the Ukrainian drone-builders also experiment and share results, driving rapid improvements in surveillance and strike capabilities.<\/p>\n “The speed at which that innovation happens is absolutely blistering,” he said.<\/p>\n Labb\u00e9 said\u00a0that to further\u00a0spur innovation, Ukraine has instituted a rewards system for front-line units whereby those who have more success receive points that they can use to buy new drone-related kit online.<\/p>\n Throwing down a challenge<\/p>\n The Canadian Forces would like to capture some of that same innovative energy, and to that end have issued a series of “challenges” to Canadian drone makers through the program Innovative Solutions Canada (ISC).<\/p>\n The industry has noticed the change, says Philip Reece, CEO of InDro Robotics \u2014 in both the amount of money up for grabs and how quickly the government reviews submissions.<\/p>\n “They come back with some pretty well thought out questions, and then it moves through to testing first and then procurement,” he said.<\/p>\n WATCH | More about the Canadian drone industry:\u00a0<\/strong> Canada applies lessons from Ukraine in a new arms race for drones <\/p>\n Canada’s government and military are trying to get a Canadian edge in a new arms race for drones by issuing industry challenges, and testing everything from marine drones that can attack ships to lasers that can burn drones in mid-air.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1754484918_328_default.jpg\")
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A Ukrainian interceptor FPV drone is seen in July. (Valentyn Ogirenko\/Reuters)<\/p>\n