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A team from the Canadian Navy test thermal imaging drone capabilities in Arctic environments, during Operation Nanook, the Canadian Armed Forces’ annual Arctic training and sovereignty operation, in Inuvik, NWT, in February, 2025.COLE BURSTON/AFP/Getty Images
Ottawa is creating a marketplace of drone suppliers to expedite the delivery of the low-cost technologies to the Canadian Armed Forces, as continuing conflicts illustrate how critical these systems are to modern warfare.
The Defence Drone Initiative marketplace was launched on Thursday with a request by the federal government for companies to apply to enter a pool of suppliers that the Armed Forces and Coast Guard can go to for specific products and services. This could include testing, prototype development or production opportunities.
The initiative is being led by the Department of National Defence and the Defence Investment Agency and is a direct follow-on from the federal government’s Defence Industrial Strategy, which was announced in February.
It identified uncrewed and autonomous systems as one of 10 sovereign capabilities that the government wants to prioritize building at home, ensuring it has access to essential capabilities without necessarily having to rely on suppliers from outside the country.
“Uncrewed systems are changing the nature of warfare,” Lieutenant-General Darcy Molstad, commander of the Canadian Joint Forces Command, said in an interview. “They are making it so that, in some cases, expensive and exquisite capabilities can be neutralized by very low-cost attributable systems.
“We need those capabilities to be able to fight in a modern context.”
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Traditional project-based procurement doesn’t lend itself to technologies such as drones that require constant iteration, testing and adaptation to keep up with a rapidly changing battlefield. The goal with a supply arrangement is to cut down procurement or vetting time and to ensure the technologies remain relevant through upgrades and modernization.
Canada’s drone industry is evolving with many players looking to build manufacturing capacity, but it remains a sector largely comprised of assemblers rather than component and parts makers. This initiative aims to help with that, creating the demand signal from government for industry to invest in building a more sovereign supply chain, Lt.-Gen. Molstad said.
“We have businesses, suppliers, vendors and innovators in Canada that have such incredible potential that we haven’t quite yet tapped into, and this is going to be a mechanism to tap into that,” he said.
Ottawa’s Buy Canadian policy, which doesn’t necessarily exclude foreign-owned subsidiaries, “may apply” to requests put out through the initiative, according to the federal government. But the ultimate goal of the initiative is to establish a marketplace of Canadian suppliers, Lt.-Gen. Molstad said.
“The intent is, to do that, a gated procurement process where we have companies demonstrate their capabilities over time, and we determine which ones are going to be the highest potential to deliver, as well as to scale up,” he said.
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The aim is not to procure and stockpile drones, as these technologies can easily be obsolete in a month or two. Rather, the point is for the Canadian Armed Forces and Canadian Coast Guard to be able to call upon a select group of suppliers on short notice to offer a solution and produce it at scale, Lt.-Gen. Molstad said.
“It will take a bit of time, but we also can learn from our allies and partners. Yes, we are targeting Canadian suppliers in this supply arrangement, but these may provide opportunities for different types of partnerships, perhaps co-productions for relevant allies and partners in the future,” he said.
For Josh Ogden, chief executive officer of the Fredericton-based drone company Aerial Vehicle Safety Solutions Inc., it’s the clearest sign yet that there is demand in Canada for domestic companies.
“This is a signal to the market that, ‘We are getting ready to buy. We just need to know who to buy from,’” he said.
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To start, the military is looking for companies who can provide low-cost drones for surveillance and reconnaissance, uncrewed ground or maritime drones, munitions and strike systems for drones, and low-cost counter-drone interceptors. Other capabilities will be requested over time.
Companies looking to apply can qualify through five streams, which include communications, uncrewed systems, testing, evaluation and training, among others. The various streams are meant to support “end-to-end capability,” according to Lt.-Gen. Molstad. This means, for example, the Armed Forces can not only procure a physical drone through the marketplace, but also the training services they need to use it, or the communications infrastructure they need to ensure it’s interoperable across various branches of the military.
The request for supply arrangement will be open until Aug. 14 and will be reopened every three months in the first year, to allow new suppliers to enter. After the first year, it will likely reopen every six months. The supply arrangement lasts for five years from its date of issuance.
Mr. Ogden said his company will be applying to three or four of the streams. Next, he’ll be watching how quickly government can take this pool of qualified suppliers and actually start buying from them.
“There’s clear intent, and now as much as industry has to execute, so does the government on timeliness.”
