Calgary’s Denvr and Ottawa’s Dominion Dynamics have announced a partnership to develop a sovereign simulation environment for unmanned drones that fly alongside crewed fighter jets.

…

“We believe Canada can be a world leader in building autonomous systems that operate in extreme environments,” Eliot Pence, CEO of Dominion Dynamics said in a March 25 statement. “By partnering with Denvr, we will create a secure, Canadian-owned simulation environment to train and validate an autonomous wingman for the Canadian Armed Forces and our allied partners.”

That simulation environment is designed to assist the Royal Canadian Air Force in testing concepts of operations against different types of ACPs, according to Dominion. During simulation, operators can test things like propulsion speed, altitude, and endurance across different types of mission objectives to evaluate how the ACP systems perform.

…

“Integration with the Canadian Armed Forces is core to how the system is designed, tested, and ultimately operated,” Pence said.

The partnership between the two companies comes on the heels of Dominion’s announcement of a $50-million investment toward developing autonomous drone capabilities. The joint simulation environment will aid in the development of those capabilities and contribute to NORAD modernization, arctic defence, and Canadian Armed Forces readiness, according to Dominion.

…