A Canadian innovator · Canadian-owned and controlled
Communications that hold when the network does not.
Tamarack Systems develops sovereign, integrated communications software for HF, VHF and IP over SATCOM. The software uses whichever bearers are available, delivers machine-readable data to the systems that need it, and remains under Canadian control.
- Bearers: HF · VHF · IP over SATCOM
- Sovereignty: Canadian-owned, Canadian-made, Canadian-controlled
- Data: Resides on sovereign infrastructure
- Interoperability: Open standards, aligned with Allies and partners
Our mission
Every operation depends on communications. Ours are built to keep working.
Canada has three coastlines, a remote North and long distances between the places where people live and the places where things happen. Fibre gets cut. Cell sites lose power in a wildfire or an ice storm. Satellite links are jammed, interfered with, or blocked by terrain and weather. The networks we rely on every day are usually the first to go when something serious happens.
HF and VHF radio keep working through most of that, and a satellite terminal will usually find a path even when terrestrial networks are down. What has been missing is software that treats those links as one system, carries structured data over them instead of typed text, and does not stop when the internet, a central server or a foreign-hosted service becomes unreachable. That is the capability we are building, for use in denied, degraded, intermittent and low-bandwidth environments.
It is meant for the operators who stay on the air through an outage, and for the commanders and coordinators who need what those operators are hearing, in a form their own systems can use, at the speed of operational relevance.
Capabilities
What the software does
One capability across HF, VHF and IP over SATCOM, designed to improve operational effectiveness without adding another terminal to the desk.
Bearer fusion
HF, VHF and IP over SATCOM are handled by one system. A station sends over whichever bearer is available, relays traffic for stations that have fewer options, and combines what it receives from all of them into a single picture.
Machine-readable messaging
Messages are structured and standards-based, so command and control systems can take them in directly, in the data-centric formats that Canada, NATO and Five Eyes partners are adopting. Nobody has to read a screen and retype.
Designed for DDIL conditions
The software is designed around denied, degraded, intermittent and low-bandwidth links from the start. Structured messages are encoded to fit in roughly the air time of plain text, and urgent traffic is sent ahead of routine traffic.
No central dependency
Messages, chat and position reports move directly from station to station. The software does not need an internet connection or a central server, so losing the backbone does not stop traffic.
Open interfaces
Documented interfaces connect the software to command, situational-awareness, experimentation, simulation and training systems. The design is modular, so approved security measures and new standards can be added as modules rather than by changing the core.
Sovereign control
The code is written in Canada by Canadian citizens and owned by a Canadian company. Data stays on sovereign infrastructure designated by Canada, and decisions about what the capability does next are made in Canada.
Our conviction
Software that carries Canadian traffic should be under Canadian control.
We started the company because the alternative was continuing to depend on communications software that is owned, hosted and directed somewhere else. Everything we build is owned here, can be hosted here, and is steered by the people in Canada who use it.
Potential
Where the capability can go
The core is the same whether it is running at a coastal station, an Arctic outpost, aboard a ship, on a training range or in a command post. That makes it a base for several things we intend to build on it.
Pan-domain message sets
Message definitions are configuration rather than code. A message set defined for one community can be extended to land, maritime, air, space and cyber users, and to intelligence, logistics and medical services, without rebuilding the software.
Experimentation, simulation and wargaming
Simulation and training environments connect through the same interfaces as fielded stations. A scenario drawn from a real event can be rehearsed with the same software and the same message traffic.
Decision support
Because all traffic is held in one structured model, it is already in the form that data fusion, intelligent prioritization and real-time decision support tools require. Those tools can be added when Canada chooses, without reworking the data.
Interoperability with Allies and partners
Interoperability is achieved through open standards rather than through a particular vendor's software. The result is a Canadian reference implementation that Allies and partners can connect to and that Canada continues to direct.
Who we are
Founded by operators
Tamarack Systems was founded by radio operators with years of experience passing traffic over HF and VHF during outages and exercises. That experience with legacy systems, and with what they could not do, is the reason the company exists.
Tamarack Systems is a wholly owned subsidiary of VCOMM Group Inc. The company is Canadian-owned and Canadian-controlled, part of Canada's defence industrial base. All staff and operations are in Canada, and all staff are Canadian citizens.
The name
Why Tamarack
The tamarack is a Canadian conifer found from the Yukon to Newfoundland. It is one of the few conifers that drops its needles each fall, after they turn gold, and it grows where other trees do not, in cold, wet ground.
It grows well in hard conditions, which is what we want from the software that carries its name.
Contact
Get in touch
We are glad to hear from the defence and security community, government and public-safety organizations, Allies and partners, industry, and procurement staff. Write to info@tamaracksystems.ca. For procurement enquiries, please include the reference number in the subject line.
Email Tamarack Systems- info@tamaracksystems.ca
- Address
- 1611551 B.C. Ltd. DBA Tamarack Systems
2990 Panorama Dr., Suite 20
Coquitlam, BC V3E 2W5
Canada