In August, a small team from Sentinel Advanced Military Solutions sat in the California desert for two weeks, printing drone chassis, assembling components that arrived in kits, and flying missions alongside a partner unit. 

It was the first field test of a system the Châteauguay, Que., company had spent four years building. The list of fixes coming out of it was short.

"You're never going to come back from a first-of-type test without some modifications, but the list is relatively short," said Ed Zimmermann, Sentinel's chief technology officer. 

His team is now building a second-generation version, targeting production around mid-October and aiming to capture more than 95 per cent of the initial operating capability requested by evaluators.

That test was one data point in a much bigger announcement. Sentinel, a wholly owned subsidiary of contract manufacturer CMP Advanced Mechanical Solutions, unveiled an integrated defence technology consortium at CANSEC 2026, anchored by its StarForge platform. 

The consortium includes a research partnership with the University of Alberta and a $10-million Industrial and Technological Benefits contribution from Lockheed Martin, tied to the Canadian Army's HIMARS rocket system acquisition under the Long-Range Precision Fires Project.

"Imagine arriving at a remote Arctic outpost or a forward operating base where traditional supply chains no longer exist," said John Soares. "Within hours, you have command and control, secure communications, autonomous surveillance, deployable power and the ability to manufacture mission critical components on site."

The origin story predates any of that. About four years ago, CMP was working with Lockheed Martin on the commercial side, commercializing GridStar, a flow battery energy storage system, under an Industrial and Technological Benefits program tied to a Western Canadian oil and gas producer. The technology was deployed to Fort Carson, a U.S. military installation in Colorado, and performed well.

Then Lockheed shelved it, judging the industry wasn't ready. But the relationship, and CMP's engineering base in modularized infrastructure and rapidly deployable power systems, didn't go anywhere. Zimmermann and his colleagues had already identified defence as a market worth pursuing, betting that legacy primes would struggle to compete in an industry now driven by speed and adaptability rather than long procurement cycles.

Lockheed, which knew CMP well and had ITB obligations coming from the HIMARS deal, proposed a program that became StarForge: a system of systems combining expeditionary manufacturing, deployable C4ISR for battlespace surveillance, and interceptor drones for a counter-UAS role.

StarForge breaks down into three components, the most mature of which is ForgeX, a deployable manufacturing capability. Rather than the shipping-container 3D printer setups other companies have pitched to militaries, Zimmermann said Sentinel built something closer to an actual factory: onboard power generation and storage, additive manufacturing hardware co-developed with a British Columbia partner, and software to manage quality control and maintain what the company calls a secure digital stockpile of parts and drone designs.

"Every NATO country is struggling to some extent to keep legacy equipment in the field, because supply chains have atrophied and lead times are long," Zimmermann said, pointing to sustainment challenges reported among NATO battalions in Latvia as one example of a broader pattern. 

He said Sentinel's approach is meant to give highly procedural organizations like the Canadian Armed Forces the documentation and quality assurance that distributed, improvised manufacturing setups in Ukraine don't need to provide.

The second component, Apex, is a deployable C4ISR platform with hybridized power meant to reduce thermal and acoustic signature while operating without reliable resupply. It uses mast-mounted radar and optical sensors to monitor for drone incursions, with Lockheed Martin's Calgary-based Skunk Works office contributing its VCSi command-and-control software and sensor fusion expertise. 

The third component, the digital stockpile of interceptor drone designs, feeds both the manufacturing and surveillance sides, letting Sentinel produce the specific system a mission calls for.

"Our long-standing presence has evolved well beyond supplying military equipment," said Kristen Leroux, Lockheed Martin's vice-president and regional executive for Canada and Latin America. "Today, our Lockheed Martin teams are deeply integrated into the country's aerospace, defence and technology sectors."

Sentinel operates out of a 25,000-square-foot facility in Châteauguay with a direct team of about a dozen, but draws heavily on CMP's larger vertically integrated manufacturing operation. Batteries come from Quebec, gensets from Ontario, printers and optics from British Columbia, software from Alberta, and drone components from partners in Atlantic Canada.

The University of Alberta's contribution centres on RF systems, antenna design and materials science, supporting field-manufacturing strategies for radar cross-section reduction and thermal signature management, alongside work on communications resiliency in contested electronic warfare environments.

Zimmermann said Sentinel has briefed senior Canadian Armed Forces stakeholders on UAS adoption and held discussions with European counterparts, though he declined to detail parallel conversations with U.S. stakeholders. For him, the pitch comes down to a single idea he repeats often.

"If we develop an understanding of the challenge in front of us but expect to meet it by relying on how we've always done things, we're sorely mistaken," he said. "Readiness today is about flexibility, speed, and a high degree of collaboration and interoperability with our allies."