Canadian Shield builds a fleet of uncrewed carriers across Air, Ground, Water and Underground, and converts selected existing fleets into optionally uncrewed configurations under Canadian design authority. A screened enquiry starts the conversation.
Two lists bound this door: the ministries and agencies Canadian Shield works with, and what it does not offer any of them. The scope is fixed before a conversation starts, and it is the same for every buyer.
Human safety comes first, on every line. A person starts the machine on Responder and civil work, every session. On Defender the machine may be started on a remote command from the stand-off station, over the tether, on ground closed to everyone the job does not need and with nobody at the machine; the authorization, the wired stop and the manual release are unchanged by it. These limits hold on every profile, in every configuration: permanent unattended fitment, public-traffic work, and a guaranteed production rate or response time. The limits the fleet itself carries, in every domain, are set out on Doctrine.
A ministry buys platforms before it buys a retrofit. Both lines run under Canadian design authority, and one enquiry can name either.
Canadian Shield builds a fleet of eleven programs across Air, Water and Underground, and CDNS KAOS on the ground. Every one of them is a carrier: no warhead, no fuze, no energetic material, and nothing in the fleet operates a weapon. No Canadian Shield design carries a radio or a GPS receiver. Nothing in the fleet transmits by radio, and nothing guides on a link. Jammed radio and denied GPS are the conditions an allied procurement body scopes for, and neither is a dependency of this architecture. The lead program is Goose CS-110, an unpowered pneumatic interceptor round in the Air domain, and its launch chain is set out on CDNS UAV Platforms; how a platform guides with nothing in the spectrum is set out on Technology. The whole roster opens by domain at the fleet.
CDNS Autonomy converts selected existing fleets into optionally uncrewed configurations. The product proposition is not that it drives any machine. It is a machine-specific conversion pathway, built on removable interfaces to a machine's own controls, independent perception, local compute and independent safety authority. The unit sits in the seat and works the machine's own controls. It never connects to the machine's CAN bus, ECU or firmware; a fused accessory feed is the only wire. It lifts out in minutes, and the machine's physical stop and manual release always remain. It takes its work in one of three ways: loaded and sealed at the dock; a fibre tether to a person at a stand-off station; its own perception inside the same rules. One hardware family is programmed apart into two profiles, and the line has a front door of its own at CDNS Autonomy.
Safety's authority is independent of the task software. The independent safety layer removes energy and holds the machine to a safe state without depending on the task computer or the AI. AI proposes and sequences the work; it can never directly energize an actuator or grant itself safety authority.
Fire ground, structural collapse, hazmat, and flood and wildfire earthworks, with rubble and route clearance, for civil agencies.
Defender takes the seat for earthworks, berms and revetments, obstacle reduction, route and rubble clearance, remote handling and driving, on the ground and the machines defence engineering already runs, military-pattern vehicles included — each surveyed, fitted, calibrated and recorded like any other machine. Never operates a weapon. Never fires anything. The profile is set out on Defender.
Design authority, software authority, manufacturing, service and the supply chain stay under Canadian control, set out in full on Sovereignty. The shop the fleet is built in is set out on Manufacturing, and the Forward Manufacturing Cell has its own page. Where local assembly or manufacture is strategically appropriate, an allied production partner path exists.
Government and defence requests fall into a small number of shapes, and each shape has its own next step and its own verdict.
| Request | What follows | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| A Canadian ministry or agency scoping a machine-specific conversion evaluation | A screened enquiry, then a capability brief | Where it starts |
| A Canadian ministry or agency scoping a fleet platform in Air, Ground, Water or Underground | A screened enquiry, then that program's or platform's own record | Where it starts |
| A civil-resilience or emergency-management agency's hazard response — fire ground, flood, hazmat, structural collapse | The Responder CS-810 profile | Strong |
| A defence staff lead scoping earthworks, route clearance, obstacle reduction or remote handling, away from personnel | The Defender CS-820 profile | Strong |
| An allied ministry's optionally-uncrewed fleet pilot | A country-specific conversion pilot, following a Canadian reference | Assess |
| A machine outside the supported conversion families | An engineering survey and qualification first | Assess |
| A weapon | The line's one refusal: it never operates a weapon and never fires anything | Refused |
| A guaranteed production rate, or a price quoted before scope | A quote follows scope; nothing here is an offer | Refused |
Nothing here is an offer, and two things are refused outright: a weapon, and a price before scope.
The line is designed, configured and hosted under Canadian authority. An allied ministry's pilot follows a Canadian reference program, in that order.
Canadian Shield develops Canadian-controlled autonomous and optionally uncrewed defence systems for contested and remote environments, with domestic engineering, manufacturing, validation and sustainment at the centre of the architecture. The defence and responder line is hosted here, under Canadian design authority.
For a Canadian ministry, the offer is a Canadian machine-conversion evaluation program, answering a need for sovereign capability and rapid field evaluation. For an allied ministry of a NATO partner nation, the offer is a country-specific conversion pilot, following a Canadian reference: allied-supported legacy-fleet autonomy, with local operation. That conversation is most useful early, while requirements can still shape the program.
Sovereignty here means control and recoverability rather than the nationality of every component, stated as commitments against named dimensions of control.
Every defence enquiry is screened before anything is discussed. Every shipment of export-controlled goods leaves Canada under its own permit.
Controlled goods leave Canada only under permits issued per shipment by Global Affairs Canada, under the Export and Import Permits Act, and a permit cannot be pre-committed by Canadian Shield. Export posture is counsel-first. Work involving controlled goods is arranged so that every requirement of the Controlled Goods Program is met before a unit is assembled or examined.
What is public is capability, sanitised architecture, and manufacturing and sovereignty posture. Past that, disclosure moves in four tiers. The same four tiers run behind every door, and Procurement's data room sets them out for every reader.
| Tier | What it carries |
|---|---|
| T0 · This site | Capabilities, programs, architecture and manufacturing — everything on this site. |
| T1 · On request, after screening | Program briefs, sanitised interface descriptions, and a supplier and production overview. |
| T2 · Under agreement | Machine configuration records, test plans and results, integration requirements, and cyber and support material. |
| T3 · Under NDA, export and security controls | Drawings, bills of materials, detailed hazard analyses, vulnerabilities and restricted technical data. |
Public first, controlled last. Moving between tiers is an agreement, not a click.
Your enquiry opens a dialogue, not an order. Nothing submitted creates an obligation, and no order exists until a contract does.
The exchange runs by email and by meeting, and it covers doctrine fit, integration and scope in that order. Every response is made against the published record for the platform concerned: its own program page. A ministry can name a fleet program, the Responder CS-810 profile, the Defender CS-820 profile, or a machine outside the supported conversion families, in the same enquiry.
Name the ministry, the fleet, and the machine work. Nothing submitted creates an obligation.
The enquiry is screened before anything is discussed.
A capability brief opens the T1 tier behind it: program briefs, sanitised interface descriptions, and a supplier and production overview.
A machine outside the supported families is surveyed and qualified first: the kit is adapted to it, calibrated against it, and recorded as its own configuration.
No order exists until a contract does. A permit, where controlled goods are involved, is issued per shipment.
An Allied ministry reaches this desk the way a Canadian one does, and it can also meet us on the routes the Alliance publishes for industry. Whichever way it arrives, the sequence above is the sequence it walks.
The CDNS Autonomy line is offered Canada first, then to the Alliance of 32 members, and Allied government procurement is its customer class: engineering, logistics and protected-support fleets, the commands that run them, and the primes acting for them. From the buyer's side there are two ways in, and they end at the same desk. The first is a letter: a screened enquiry naming the ministry, the fleet by class and the work, answered against the published record and moved through the tiers above. The second is one of the Alliance's own channels, where a force or its procurement staff meets a Canadian supplier: the NATO Front Door for Industry and its engagement calendar, the Innovation Ranges and DIANA for trials and experimentation, the Innovative Solutions Catalogue that maps available solutions against capability targets, the NATO Support and Procurement Agency for multinational acquisition and the NATO Engine pilot it manages, and the consultations of the NATO Industrial Advisory Group. Each is a route open to a Canadian supplier, and a place a force meets industry. The conversation it opens still starts with a screened enquiry, and controlled goods still leave Canada under a permit per shipment.
NATO and Allied forces sets out the market, the routes and the eight steps at full depth, and the CDNS Defence Platform carries the seven families a ministry's fleet resolves into.
A screened enquiry starts it, and what the enquiry names decides what comes back.
Whether the reader is a Canadian ministry or an allied one, the conversation starts the same way: a screened enquiry, read by the people who run the program, answered against the published record for the platform concerned. What follows depends on what is named — a fleet program in one of the four domains, a capability evaluation, the Responder CS-810 profile, the Defender CS-820 profile, or a machine outside the supported families that needs an engineering survey first. Nothing on this site is a commitment or a representation to any government body.
