ALERT Technology Development Program

Operators Control Station Concept for ALERT TDP

The Advanced Linked Extended Reconnaissance and Targeting (ALERT) Technology Development Program is directly related to GD Canada’s and Defence R&D Canada’s further development of the Reconnaissance and Surveillance capability for the Canadian and Allied Armies.

Building on the very successful Coyote Mission Equipment Package (MEP) which has been fielded for a decade, the aim is to add critical capability elements to the MEP resulting in a sharply improved, more responsive reconnaissance capability for operations from theatre of War to Peacekeeping operations.

The component parts of the program include investments in collection planning, automatic target detection and recognition, use of UAVs to provide the third dimension in reconnaissance operations as well as developing and providing analytical tools to enable junior level commanders to extract timely and critical information. As emphasized in the overall Reconnaissance capability, the goal is to produce “Actionable Intelligence”, in a very responsive manner, conducting the collection, collation and interpretation phases of the intelligence cycle as far forward as possible, and disseminating it to those who can profit from it accurately and quickly.

The results of this TDP will be folded into the up-coming Coyote “Life Extension” program which will provide a very significant increase in reconnaissance capability, and convert the Coyote from a stand-alone collector of imagery to part of a networked, tightly integrated ISTAR system, delivering actionable intelligence.