Genocidal Weapons Showcase at CFB Suffield, Alberta
Israeli weapons companies are being featured at a Department of National Defence (DND) arms showcase that opened May 27 and runs to June 21 at Canadian Forces Base Suffield in southern Alberta. CFB Suffield is hosting a demonstration of Israeli weapons made by companies who sell arms used by the Israeli Occupation Forces against Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank. Canada hosting this showcase of Israeli weapons even as the International Court of Justice has issued its ruling demanding that Israel immediately cease military operations in Rafah is shameful and unforgivable.
The DND website
promoting the event aims to attract guests ready to
try out drone prototypes on anti-drone systems made by 15
companies
from Canada, the U.S., the UK, Australia and Israel. These
companies,
dubbed by DND as "innovators," are selling anti-drone systems
equipped
to detect and/or
destroy uncrewed aerial drone weaponry. The DND list includes
Israeli
company Twenty20Insight Inc., which is demonstrating the Smash
Hopper system, and the U.S./Israeli collaboration Sentrycs with
their
Counter Uncrewed Aerial Systems.[1]
Participants in the weapons testing event are promised "[u]p to five days of your free, personal full-time use of our fully equipped Counter Uncrewed Aerial Systems (CUAS) test range including targets." DND calls on "Innovators" to "[bring] your A-game to beat our Red Team drones" as they compete for "[m]onetary prizes for selected Sandbox game-changers."
Presenting this event where merchants of death gather to best one another with their "toys" as akin to a jovial video game gathering shows the depths of depravity and shamelessness to which Canada and its military have descended.
Sindhu Sundarakumar, a guest at the DND 2022 Sandbox event, is featured in a promotional video on the site. She explains that CFB Suffield's southern Alberta location, with its wide-open skies and 360-degree sight lines, is ideal for such testing.
While they "play" with weaponry and listen to sales pitches, participants can also chit chat with "subject matter experts" from branches of the Canadian military and the RCMP, as well as the U.S. Department of Defense Irregular Warfare Technical Support Directorate.
The website The Maple describes the real life use in Palestine of weapons being tested in Canada:
"The 'Smash Hopper' is a remote control weapon system developed and manufactured by Israeli arms company 'Smart Shooter,' whose technology is deployed by the Israeli military in fortifications that are used to suppress Palestinian dissent in the occupied West Bank, as well as in military hardware currently being used in Israel's assault on Gaza.[...]
"Last December, Smart Shooter CEO Michal Mor, a former employee of Israeli missile maker RAFAEL, boasted that her company's goods, which include high-tech rifle optics as well as remote control turrets, were being used by the Israeli military in Gaza in both face-to-face combat and to take out drones.[2]
While the DND site speaks of "anti-drone" capabilities, in fact the Smash Hopper is designed to also attack "ground targets" such as "dismounted hostiles and moving vehicles" -- that is Palestinian men, women and children. The Israeli military claims that Smart Shooter's rifle optics technology quadruples its soldiers' chances of hitting their targets in Gaza.[3]
Smart Shooter's marketing of its products as battle-tested on Palestinians during the latest war is a typical practice among Israeli arms companies. For example, Elbit Systems has been advertising the "key benefit" of a new precision-guided 120mm mortar bomb called the Iron Sting that is used in Gaza, being its "high lethality and precision."[4] The Iron Sting is promoted as one of the weapons that "aids IDF troops in eliminating enemies with precision."[5]
The
claims of "precision" strikes are clear statements of genocidal
intent in the targeted killing of Gaza's doctors and other
health care
workers, top scholars, historians, scientists, writers, poets,
artists,
aid workers, journalists, and their families, and the mass
killing of
more than 37,300 Palestinians in Gaza, with 11,000 missing
people and
more than 85,000 wounded.
Another Israeli-based company participating in the "sandbox" event is Sentrycs, which offers an "autonomous and integrated counter-drone solution providing detection, tracking, identification, and mitigation."
Despite the extravagant claims about the overwhelming advantage of these high-tech weapons, the resistance has found ways to use homemade attack drones to outsmart Israel's high-tech defence systems. For example, the Gaza border fence was deemed "impenetrable."
The event is a disgusting display of the Canadian government's enthusiasm to fully integrate with the U.S./Israeli war project specifically and the U.S. war machine and economy as a whole. Philippe Hebert, Director General, Defence Research and Development with the DND, also appears in the promotional video, where he expresses his hopes that the event will let participants know about "our role in terms of supporting innovation for the Canadian Armed Forces as a research and development establishment."
Canadians say No! to the Canadian Armed Forces acting as salesman for weapons used in the commission of crimes against humanity!
This article was published in
Volume 54
Number 37 - June 18, 2024
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2024/Articles/MS54375.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca