The Rotary Club was delighted to welcome Jaret Giesbrecht to our meeting today. Jaret is a Defence Scientist, Autonomous and Radiological Technologies Section at the CFB Suffield. He was introduced to the meeting by his father-in-law, Rotarian Alain Guerard who knows a lot about him, but didn't share too much!
Jaret gave a brief summary of his background and then showed a few of the examples of drones that they work with at the base. He spoke about the history of unmanned or unpiloted flight, and some of the history that got us to the place we are in.
Jaret showed some Youtube video's of the current conflict in the Ukraine, where drone technology has become a significant part of the arsenal of the combatants, and definitely displayed how they can become a deadly battlefield device.
Between the history lessons and the amazing modern technology was the "horrors" of war. Jaret spoke about his particular field of study and that was how to defeat these devices. That involved some novel use of similar technology, as well as almost science fiction examples of ray guns and other unbelievable devices. Jaret explained how reasonable easy the drones are to construct and fly, how they are quite accurate and changing the face of combat on several fronts.
Unfortunately we all learned a lot about modern warfare, and Jaret took time to answer a number of questions about the technology and other aspects of his work.
President Mike Christie presented Jaret with our traditional "thank you" coffee mug from Medalta, and expressed our appreciation for the presentation and the work Jaret performs in the interest of keeping us all safe.
