[Host]: Drones are transforming modern warfare. They're precise, pretty easy to mass produce and far cheaper than the alternatives, so it's no surprise they're playing a key role in current conflicts like the war in Ukraine. Around the world, countries see them as critical for military operations. So do Canadian companies have a role to play here? We look at the state of domestic drone production and where it could and should go next.

[Host]: Kathe Ensign is CEO and co-founder of Sentinel R&D, a defence and aerospace technology company, and she joins me in studio. How are you doing, Kathe?

[Kathe Ensign]: I'm doing well. Thanks for having me.

[Host]: Your company manufactures unmanned aerial vehicles, better known as UAVs. Help me understand. What exactly is that?

[Kathe Ensign]: They're drones. Ours are a little bit fancier. Generally, we think of drones as being, you know, something, a flying thing that doesn't have pilots. Essentially ours look a little bit more like the traditional flying things that don't have pilots. So ours are what's called a fixed wing UAV, meaning that it has aeroplane like arms, which gives it a distance that, say, a quadcopter DJI type videography drone wouldn't, wouldn't have.

[Kathe Ensign]: So our recom 3.2 that's what's on the screen right now is a 3.2m wingspan drone. So somewhere around 12ft if you're thinking in freedom units and about a two metre length fuselage. What this does is that this gives it distance and endurance. So when we think about how long this thing can actually stay in the air, it's around five hours operating over 100km an hour, which gives it a range of over 500km.

[Host]: Unlike the consumer drones, which are there for really videography, looking at views, what are these drones used for?

[Kathe Ensign]: They can be used for a wide variety of applications, so everything from surveillance to decoy to electronic warfare, or even for combat applications like strike.

[Host]: Your background isn't in drones necessarily. You have a pharmacology background as well. How did you get into this space?

[Kathe Ensign]: I did a PhD in pharmacology at the University of Toronto, and then I went into a company that was very much biotech. When the war in Ukraine broke out, being Eastern European, I have a really good sense of what it's like to lose your home, to lose your country, to lose your sovereignty... My brother has always been much more defence focussed. He became much more entrenched in the goings on of the conflict... where I really started to get excited was in the scale of the business and the potential applications of the type of work that he was doing across NATO. So I became involved just over a year ago.

[Host]: Is this country actually ready to back manufacturing companies like yours?

[Kathe Ensign]: I will say that the engagement that we have had from our Department of National Defence today has been extremely positive. It's made me very optimistic about small businesses or start-ups starting a company here in Canada... while there are going to continue to be problems with things like procurement, growing pains of suddenly having an increased defence budget, I would say that I'm optimistic that Canada is serious about changing the way that we've been doing things.

[Host]: Did you know the Canadian Tank Museum in Oshawa has the country's largest collection of historical military vehicles? Rundown producer Brit Weaver visited to learn about how the region supported past war efforts and what these tanks tell us about Canada's military heritage.

[Jeremy Blowers]: I'm Jeremy Blowers, I'm the executive director of the Canadian Tank Museum. It's very important that people understand that our museum and the things that we're doing educationally in the shows is not to in any way glorify war or promote conflict. The whole purpose is so that people can have an understanding of what our veterans in the past and today served on what protects them, how the systems work. And it's more to honour their service and sacrifice.

[Jeremy Blowers]: Our collection has 163 pieces of actual military equipment. Over 150 of them are operational. That is one of the largest fleets of running military vehicles in the world. We have pieces of equipment that cover the entire mechanisation of military hardware. So everything from jeeps to trucks to engineering vehicles to armoured personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles, tanks from the Second World War to ones that are being used on battlefields today.

[Jeremy Blowers]: We have the General Motors Fox Mark one built right here in Oshawa, Ontario, in 1943. This is just one of seven that remains of the over 1400 that were built during the war. What's more interesting is that this isn't just an example of a General Motors fox. This is a veteran that was produced in 43, sent overseas to serve in the Italian campaign. And exactly 80 years later, in 2023, it was repatriated to the Canadian Tank Museum.

[Jeremy Blowers]: So in Oshawa and Durham region, this really is a hub where we have rail, we have air infrastructure, we have ports, and we also have that industrial infrastructure and know how... we have 208 volunteers on the books. About 50% of them are former serving members of the Canadian Armed Forces or our allied forces.