Canada earmarks $133 million for beefed-up Arctic surveillance

Cambridge Bay’s CamMain North Warning site, with its radar bulbs, is set to be upgraded by 2025. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

Ottawa plans to spend $133 million over five years to research and develop a new surveillance system to improve Canada’s Arctic surveillance in the air, on the land and underwater.

This system should be “effective, persistent, resilient, sensitive and cost efficient.”

That’s according to a recently-posted description of the Defence Research and Development Canada’s “All Domain Situational Awareness S&T Program.”

“Surveillance solutions explored will support the Government of Canada’s ability to exercise sovereignty in the North, and will provide a greater whole-of-government awareness of safety and security issues, transportation and commercial activity in Canada’s Arctic,” says the online program description.

“All Domain Situational Awareness” program wants to achieve more awareness of maritime traffic and “sub-surface” activity in the Arctic, and to improve its “strategic surveillance of airborne traffic and aerospace warning.”

“A greater awareness of the potential challenges posed by foreign military and commercial activities in the Arctic region is also essential for Canada,” the Department of National Defence agency says.

This awareness will involve upgrading the North Warning System by 2025, announced in 2015 by the United States and Canada, but the DND is looking for other ways to keep a better eye on the Arctic.

“Starting work now to define cost effective solutions that would provide the situational awareness capabilities required into the future is critical for the defence of Canada, and the United States, against continuously evolving potential adversary systems and threats,” says Defence Research and Development Canada.

The call, put out earlier this month for information requests, says any solution proposed must be able to work in the Arctic with limited power sources, limited access and re-supply, harsh weather, limited communications and “vulnerability to capture.”

Government departments, academia, industry and allies will help develop those new solutions, Defence Research and Development Canada.

The need for better surveillance is driven by climate change which is making the North more accessible, increasing economic activity and international interest in the Arctic, the agency said.

In 2016, that accessibility includes the Northwest Passage transit of the huge Crystal Serenity cruise ship, which has raised security and safety concerns.

Those concerns will likely continue in the coming decades, upping the need for search and rescue, emergency response and environmental monitoring, said Defence Research and Development Canada.

Ballistic missile defence and beefed-up international military co-operation are likely to be part of a new solutions.

By using a network of satellites and land-based stations, a ballistic missile system located in the Arctic would detect nuclear missiles or other airborne threats aimed at North America and dispatch interceptor projectiles to knock them down.

The ballistic missile defence plan has been around since the early 2000s, when Inuit in Canada and Greenland reacted to the U.S. plan for anti-ballistic missile radar and communication systems in several places across the Arctic, including the U.S. Air Force base in Thule, Greenland.

The idea was to defend the U.S. against nuclear missile attacks from so-called “rogue” states such as North Korea and Iraq by missiles launched from ships or land, as well as lasers fired from modified aircraft.