Before Clarion, I designed, certified and manufactured a 406 MHz aircraft emergency locator transmitter — the SkyHunter 406 — through my earlier company, SkyHunter 406 Ltd. It holds Cospas-Sarsat type approval certificate number 226. We are ready to ramp up production as required. The approval is held by SkyHunter 406 Ltd., not by Clarion Drone…
On August 4, 2026, the Defence Investment Agency awarded Telesat an approximately $2.3 billion initial contract for the Enhanced Satellite Communications Project – Polar (ESCP-P). Telesat states service under the contract begins in 2028. Twenty-seven days later, National Defence published an article stating plainly that Arctic connectivity is challenging for drones — with less reliable…
Between April 22 and 29, 2026, staff at Collins Bay Institution in Kingston seized multiple packages of drugs, tobacco, weapons and cellphones. CSC said the packages are believed to have come in by drone drop, and put their institutional value at about $171,806. It was the fifteenth contraband seizure CSC had reported at Collins Bay…
This summer, roughly 350 British Army soldiers deployed to Alberta for Exercise Rhino Bizz — a live training rotation at British Army Training Unit Suffield built around drones, electronic warfare, and force-on-force scenarios on Canadian terrain. Canadian troops trained alongside them. But the civilian side of Canada’s own security establishment — government, law enforcement, and…
The Canadian Army is committing to drones at scale. Doctrine notes are being drafted, procurement timelines are advancing, and the intent to put unmanned systems in soldiers’ hands is real and accelerating. What is not accelerating at the same rate is the pipeline to qualify the people holding the controllers. Doctrine on paper, hardware in…
Canada’s first-ever Defence Industrial Strategy, released in February 2026, named uncrewed systems and training and simulation as distinct sovereign capabilities — two separate lines, equal weight. The $29.6 million commitment to a drone hub in Mirabel funds one of them. The other does not appear in the announcement. This is not a budget rounding error….
Canada’s Defence Drone Initiative is building a rolling supplier qualification mechanism across six capability areas, with deadlines that matter. The Build-Partner-Buy framework knows exactly how to answer the question of who is allowed to sell drones to the Canadian Armed Forces. It has no answer for who is trained to fly them. Procurement is outrunning…
Your drone program filed clean flight logs last quarter. Pilots are qualified, maintenance is documented, and Transport Canada’s November 4, 2025 regulatory amendments gave your operations more room to work. The aircraft is performing. But somewhere between the sensor and the decision-maker, the data disappears — into drives, into folders, into organizational silence. The drone…
A flight reviewer recently told me that the majority of BVLOS candidates he evaluates can accurately describe a lost link procedure. They recite the steps correctly. Then he asks them to execute it — simulated pressure, VO calling in traffic, clock running — and most of them fail. This is not a knowledge problem. Ground…
Canada’s formalized BVLOS framework — updated under Transport Canada’s November 4, 2025 regulatory changes — arrived after some Canadian operators had already spent years conducting equivalent missions abroad. What those operators brought home was not a competitive credential. It was something the updated CARs Part IX language cannot supply: the specific, non-transferable knowledge of what…
