BY JAMES CARELESS

Safran Electronics & Defense chose Ottawa to host its first-ever Canadian Industry Day on October 2, 2025 — underscoring both the company’s growing defence ambitions and Canada’s pivot towards European partnerships. Held at the Rogers Centre, the one-day event featured experts looking at key aspects of the Canadian defence environment, plus displays of Safran products.

In his opening comments, Safran Electronics & Defense EVP Alexandre Ziegler noted that Safran has been in Canada for 70 years. “But let’s face it: When most of you think about Safran, you think about our commercial aviation activities,” he said. “And yet defence has always been part and parcel of our DNA and it’s actually a growing part of it. In 2025, defence activities will represent around 20% of our global revenue; around 6 billion Euros. Half of it will be due to propulsion — fighter jet engines and military helicopter turbine engines. The other half will be defence electronics.”

LEVERAGING SPACE TO BOLSTER CANADA’S DEFENCE

The first panel of the Safran Industry Day was entitled “Space as a Warfighter Domain”.

Panelist Major-General Jeff Smyth, the RCAF’s Chief of Air and Space Force Development, opened the discussion by underlining Canada’s vulnerability to exterior attacks. “The Russians have missiles that they can launch from Russian airspace that can fly into Canadian territory and strike Canada,” he said. “Obviously we can’t put Canadian radars in Russia to be able to detect them. So we need to be able to use things like space.” MGen Smyth then outlined four main mission areas for space as a warfighting domain: • Space-based Communication (SATCOM) and Precision Navigation and Timing (PNT). • Sensing from Space (e.g., space-based radars, electro-optical sensors). • Sensing in space or Surveillance of Space (understanding the space environment, adversary activities). • Space Control and Effects (using electronic warfare or other effects to achieve control of the domain).

MGen Smyth’s conclusion: “Obviously it’s critically important for us to think of space as a warfighting domain and not just a place where we can use to get a better telephone call or a radio signal.” This being said, adding more Canadian surveillance satellites won’t solve the problem if the result is too much information to process. “You’re going to want to pinpoint the signals that are going to require human intervention,” said Leslie Westfall, Safran AI’s Head of Business Development and Partnerships. “So that’s where AI comes in, leveraging all of the data that is collected, characterizing patterns, and raising alerts so that you can track those events that need further investigation.”

TARGETING DEFENCE WORK IN CANADA

During a session entitled, “Canada–France Defence Relationships: Alexandre Ziegler and Philippe Errera (Safran’s EVP of International Development and Government Relations) detailed the value that Safran sees in working with Canada.

Canada has two particular assets that other countries don’t have, Errara said, which has attracted Safran to work with Canadian firms. “One of them is having major groups like Bombardier,” he said. “The second is having such a concentration of gray matter of really topnotch capacity in the R&D field.” Canada’s R&D excellence is why Safran developed its Skyjacker counter-UAS (CUAS) defence system here in Canada, noted Errera. While 95% of Safran’s R&D spending is in France, Canada is one of the few countries where the company conducts significant R&D, specifically in AI and navigation.

Safran’s civilian business has established a strong base in Canada, Ziegler added. “We already have industrial partners with which we’ve built relationships over the past decades,” he told the audience. “They know us, we know them; they trust us, we trust them. So on the day when they say, ‘Hey, now we have to expand to defence [together]’, it’s going to be easy because we just know each other.”

SAFRAN’S MANY CAPABILITIES The latter half of the Safran Industry Day was spent detailing the company’s many defence capabilities. Take drones and counter-drone technologies: Safran’s core technological strengths in electronics (sensors, detectors, image processing, and full electronic sighting system design) and Position, Navigation, and Time (PNT) gyro technologies and inertial navigation systems (INS) allows its drones to consistently locate targets — even in areas where GPS is being jammed. “We are able to do that thanks to our mastering of the technologies,” said Laurent Duer, Safran’s VP of sales and marketing. “We have 40 years of experience in that.” Safran’s counter-drone technology can fool and foil drones in a number of ways, which is why its Skyjacker CUAS systems protected Paris during the 2024 Summer Olympics. The company also makes the PASEO XLR extra long-range naval optronic identification and fire control system. PASEO XLR can identify, track, and counter-attack incoming drones, thanks to its ability to simultaneously control several guns of different calibres. All told, the first-ever Safran Industry Day was a well-programmed, information-packed one-day event. The sessions were detailed and expertly delivered, resulting in attendees sticking around to the very end.

James Careless is CDR’s Ottawa Bureau Chief Safran Showcases Defence Ambitions at First Canadian Industry Day