Some of Canada's most promising defence capabilities already exist across Canadian companies. The opportunity is bringing those technologies and expertise together so they can work within the complex systems and operational environments of the Canadian Armed Forces.
The new Northstar Defence Lab, developed by Calian in partnership with Invest Ottawa at Area X.O, is designed to help create that environment. Northstar brings Canadian defence and technology companies together so legacy and emerging technologies can be integrated, orchestrated, tested and technically validated as part of a broader system of systems.
As a founding ecosystem partner, ADGA will contribute the defence engineering, systems and data integration, operational expertise and complex solution delivery needed to help turn that collaboration into integrated capability.
“Canada has exceptional defence and technology expertise across companies of every size, and there is enormous potential in bringing those capabilities together around the needs of the Canadian Armed Forces. Northstar gives us an environment where we can work collaboratively, apply the engineering and integration expertise needed to connect different technologies and demonstrate how Canadian solutions can contribute to larger operational capabilities,” said LGen Jean-Marc Lanthier (Ret’d), CEO, ADGA Group.
“There is enormous potential in bringing Canadian capabilities together around the needs of the Canadian Armed Forces.”
— LGen Jean-Marc Lanthier (Ret’d), CEO & President, ADGA Group
Collaboration with an Operational Purpose
Northstar is being built by Calian as a defence orchestration environment powered by its ATHORA™ platform, with Invest Ottawa providing the advanced infrastructure and innovation environment at Area X.O. Its founding partners bring complementary Canadian capabilities across communications, data fusion, artificial intelligence, cyber, sensing, robotics and operational decision support.
Bringing that expertise together creates opportunities that can be difficult to realize when companies develop and demonstrate their technologies independently. A sensor may generate valuable information, an artificial intelligence capability may help interpret it, a communications solution may move it and a decision-support tool may help turn it into action, but within an operational environment those capabilities depend on architectures, interfaces, data, security and other systems that allow information to move reliably across the mission.
The ability to understand and engineer those connections is central to ADGA’s contribution to Northstar.
The Role of Canadian Industrial Collaboration
For nearly 60 years, ADGA has supported the Canadian Armed Forces across defence engineering, C5ISRT and mission systems, security, simulation and training, and complex program delivery. Within Northstar, we will apply that experience alongside other partners to help identify integration requirements, connect systems and data, work through interoperability challenges and support the technical validation of integrated solutions.
Learn how we integrate and modernize complex C5ISRT and mission systems: C5ISRT & Mission Systems