The Canadian Armed Forces created a new occupation this summer for non-commissioned members letting them join and build a career as space professionals. Brig. Gen. Chris Horner shared the detail and other information on a recent podcast, alongside Telesat’s Mike Adamson.
Horner appeared alongside Adamson, a retired brigadier-general who held Horner’s current position — Commander of 3 Canadian Space Division and Joint Force Space Component Commander — before leaving the military. The episode, from the CGAI Podcast Network’s Defence Deconstructed on Sept. 4, centred on the Enhanced Satellite Communications Project – Polar, the roughly $2.3-billion contract the Defence Investment Agency awarded Telesat and MDA Space in August for military satellite communications in the Arctic. SpaceQ has covered ESCP-P and the underlying strategic partnership between Telesat and MDA Space since it was announced in December.
New space trade for non-commissioned members
Horner said the Canadian Armed Forces stood up the occupation this summer, letting non-commissioned members “enroll as space professionals from the very beginning and build a career in that space community,” rather than transferring in from another trade. He described it as one of the “little things that didn’t get announced” alongside the government’s public space announcements this year.
Horner had flagged this as a possibility over a year earlier. In a keynote at Space Canada’s Horizons 2025 conference on June 4, 2025, he said the Canadian Armed Forces was doing “an analysis to see whether or not we need to stand up an occupation or career field or career pathway for pure space professionals,” so recruits could “come into the Canadian Forces, and have, from day one, they become space professionals and have a career as space professionals.”
WildfireSat’s possible military use
Horner said the Department of National Defence is in conversations with the Canadian Space Agency about WildfireSat, a satellite program developed with Natural Resources Canada to detect forest fires earlier by measuring heat from orbit. He said the same kind of sensor could serve a second purpose: “I also like to find warm things in cold places,” he said, adding that he “wouldn’t mind having another sensor that could detect something that’s burning a fossil fuel in the Arctic and has a heat signature” that other sensors might miss.
How DND is splitting its space spending
Horner offered a rough breakdown of how the department is now acquiring space capability, which he called “a notional ratio across the board depending on what we’re doing”: about 80 per cent commercial data or commercial acquisition, 15 per cent capability developed with partners and allies, and five per cent on what he described as high-end, expensive, military-only capability.