Arctic surveillance

The Auditor General uncovers serious gaps

The case for having adequate domain awareness in Canada’s Arctic waters is easy to make, as Arctic Ocean ice coverage rapidly recedes under the impact of climate change, geopolitical competition ratches up, and as a mineral rich region becomes increasingly open to exploitation. Domain awareness is a test of Canadian sovereignty. It also a contribution to a Canadian effort to try to ensure that the Arctic remains a peaceful and cooperative zone in an increasingly riven global system.

But there is more involved than flying the flag and being a good international citizen. Domain awareness will be crucial to preventing illegal fishing, to protecting the fragile Arctic environment, and to conducting difficult search and rescue missions.

We may not need full domain awareness now. It will be a must-have in the near future.

The federal Office of the Auditor General has just released a ‘performance audit’ that points to some significant and long-standing shortcomings in Canadian capabilities.

https://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/internet/docs/parl_oag_202211_06_e.pdf

It should be a clarion call to action. Alongside current surveillance gaps, is the problem of aging surveillance infrastructure, from senior-citizen icebreakers and patrol aircraft, to satellite systems that will whizz past their end dates well before replacement capabilities are in orbit.

We can think of the long list of gaps in Arctic domain awareness in two baskets—software (human) and hardware.

On the software side, there is no current overarching strategy to guide the development of Arctic domain awareness. The most recent strategy is over a decade old. Research endeavours seem to lead nowhere. A six year project on Arctic surveillance, led by Defence Research and Development Canada, an applied research arm of the Department of National Defence, was completed in 2021, but led to no changes in operational capabilities. The main fusion centre for the collection and sharing of domain awareness information in Arctic waters is the Marine Security Operations Centre (MSOC). But it is based in far-away Halifax, has more priority areas to cover (the Eastern maritime approaches) and seems to be not much good at fusion. An independent review of the Halifax MSOC has stalled.

The hardware problems are even worse. At their heart they involve aging systems and slow procurement. The key capability operates unseen and is little known to Canadians-this consists of the sophisticated radar satellites known as Radarsat-2 and the Radarsat “Constellation Mission’ (a trio of three smaller satellites). Radarsat-2 is a space grandfather. It was launched in 2007 with an expected operational life span of 8 years. Fortunately it is still functional. The Radarsat Constellation Mission is much newer, launched in 2019 with maximum functionality beginning to erode around Spring 2026. But even if these space platforms continue to function well beyond their planned life-cycles, Canada could well face significant satellite imagery gaps in the future, because of slow progress on future replacement planning. In the stark language of the AG report, “National Defence and other federal organizations could be left with limited Canadian surveillance capabilities in the Arctic for years.” (p. 18) In any case the system is already over-stretched and cannot fulfil all the imagery demands currently placed on it.

From a future of burnt-out satellites, we can turn to some depressing realities about surface ship capabilities, another key component of maritime domain awareness. The Canadian Coast Guard’s current icebreaker fleet (6 ships) are between 35 and 53 years old. Efforts are being made to build a new icebreaker fleet at Canadian shipyards, but progress has been slow, with the first new icebreaker not scheduled to be delivered until 2030. In other words the current fleet could rust out before its replacement is at sea, particularly if there are construction delays. Only 3 of the promised 6 Royal Canadian Navy Arctic and Off Shore patrol vessels have been delivered.

The situation with regard to air assets is no better. Transport Canada has one dedicated surveillance plane (a Dash 7) that operates out of Iqaluit for five months of the year (July to November). It has to rely on the availability of rental hangar space. The RCAF operates a fleet of upgraded Aurora long-range patrol aircraft but their (much extended) life-expectancy could run out before a replacement is available. There is a project to develop a RCAF drone capacity for Arctic surveillance, but it is still on the drawing board. A parallel Transport Canada drone surveillance project waits on the delayed completion of hangar facilities at Iqaluit.

The AG notes in particular that the much touted deep water Arctic naval base at Nanisivik is likely to be more or less useless because of budget cuts. Ships will only be able to refuel there for about 4 weeks per year because of the lack of capacity to maintain heated fuel depot tanks. (I think that deserves an exclamation point !)

Note for spy-watchers. The Audit did not address surveillance capabilities to detect submarines in Canada’s Arctic waters. Let’s hope that it is somehow better off than the rest of the domain awareness architecture.

The only part of the domain awareness system that is likely to be robust and of increasing value gets too little attention in the report. This is the network of Inuit monitors who have been trained and equipped to track vessel activity in coastal areas. As with the Canadian Rangers, the protection of Arctic sovereignty and safety may increasingly rely on the Inuit monitors, while we ever so slowly build the fancy hardware for domain awareness.