EvanL
03-25-2004, 01:22 PM
Five-year plan to 'put footprints in the snow' and assert northern sovereignty
Adrian Humphreys
National Post
Thursday, March 25, 2004
http://media.canada.com/canwest/29/20040325main.jpg
TINY HANS ISLAND, COVETED BY DANES TYPIFIES A REGION'S UNCERTAIN BORDERS: The arrow and circle at bottom right indicate Hans Island, which sits halfway between Ellesmere Island, left, and Greenlad, top right, just above the 80th parallel. Denmark has gone so far as to send warships to the island and plant it's flag on the frozen soil.
CREDIT: Canada Centre for Remote Sensing/Radarsat International
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Canada is launching an extensive five-year plan to march soldiers through all of its uninhabited Arctic territory in the largest bid yet to exert sovereignty over its northern domain, an area drawing increasing international attention and conflicting territorial claims.
A renewed northern mobilization by the army, navy and air force -- including new space-based technology -- marks a significant increase in Canadian Forces resources earmarked for the region at a time when military funding is stretched extremely thin.
The enhanced northern security and sovereignty efforts encompass both low-tech manpower and cutting-edge science, ranging from patrols by soldiers driving snowmobiles and carrying antique rifles (which are more reliable in the biting cold), to an intensive satellite surveillance system to monitor the Arctic from space, the National Post has learned.
"We're putting footprints in the snow where they are not normally put," said Colonel Norris Pettis, who as commander of Canadian Forces Northern Area is the ranking military officer in the north.
The northern push includes:
- The approval of Project Polar Epsilon, a satellite system piggy backing on a new commercial space program, designed to provide surveillance of the north, which encompasses 40% of Canada's land mass, to be operational by 2008.
- The flying of unmanned aerial vehicles this summer over Baffin Island to test their abilities in the extreme conditions of the north.
- The start in August of Exercise Narwhal, the first large-scale war game held in the Arctic involving army, navy and air force units from the south.
- A series of enhanced sovereignty patrols by regular Canadian Forces soldiers and Canadian Rangers, a military unit made up mostly of Inuit, that will see soldiers snowmobiling across almost all of the Arctic archipelago that Canada claims.
- The planning of a last-resort option of building permanent high-frequency surface-wave radar installations to monitor both ends of the Northwest Passage for unauthorized ship activity, both civilian and military. These powerful detectors penetrate out 200 nautical miles to the edge of Canada's territorial waters.
"There is always more that we could do. I would say that our activity levels today are higher than they have been in history," said Col. Pettis.
Although there was no mention of the northern military presence in Tuesday's federal budget, which announced only modest increases for foreign peacekeeping efforts, Col. Pettis said he has been given an "additional bundle of money," for the operations.
The federal budget did allocate $70-million over 10 years for seabed mapping of Canada's Arctic and Atlantic continental shelves.
"This investment will enable Canada, as a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, to achieve greater certainty with regards to its sovereignty over the Arctic and Atlantic continental shelves, and any mineral and hydrocarbon resources they hold," the budget documents say.
While many of the northern efforts remain in the planning stage, the first of several long-range, land-based sovereignty patrols departs April 1 for an 18-day, 1,300-kilometre trek from Resolute to Alert, a weather station that claims the title as the world's most northerly permanently inhabited settlement.
The journey, expected to face temperatures as low as -44 C, is the longest one-way sovereignty patrol in recent history and is the first of several patrols from Resolute that will cover almost all of Canada's Arctic islands over the next five years, said Major Stewart Gibson, commander of the 1st Canadian Ranger Patrol Group, who will lead the team of 20 soldiers. The second patrol, scheduled for next year, will send troops to Prince Patrick Island.
Each patrol costs about $500,000, he said.
The northern attention comes as international interest in Canada's claim to the far north is increasing. Climate change is bringing increased activity to the area because reduced ice cover makes it possible for ships to travel between Asia and Europe through the Northwest Passage, a far shorter route.
Canada currently has four international territorial disputes in the north, two with the United States, one with Russia and one with Denmark, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs.
The efforts also come as natural resources exploration begins.
"We have exploration going on throughout the Arctic. Oil and gas certainly; there are semi-precious and precious mineral exploration going on there as well. Diamonds, gold, silver, this type of thing," said Maj. Gibson.
The military's northern activities are being developed on a three-stage doctrine of surveillance, assessment and response.
"More important than anything else is our ability as a nation to do surveillance in the north, our consequent ability to detect and analyze what we detect if there is something of an anomaly and then our ability to respond in whatever fashion is deemed necessary or appropriate," said Col. Pettis.
"We have strengths and weaknesses in all areas.
"Right up front, we have a significant weakness in our ability to survey because right now our surveillance is largely dependent on human beings and that is not a terribly efficient way to conduct surveillance in the space age," he said.
The military is looking to Project Polar Epsilon to fill the void. It will buy time for frequent and regular surveillance over the Arctic from a commercial satellite, starting in 2008, he said.
It will monitor water and land activity.
"Our forces are limited in their ability to respond to incidents in the north. We have some limited parachute capability but to expect us to drop 100 people in to a remote area of the north without any significant way of sustaining them isn't really realistic," Col. Pettis said
"Our navy is not ice capable."
A response in the future might be left to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles if tests planned for this summer prove successful, although he had no idea when such planes might be fielded.
To prepare for larger-scale responses, the Department of National Defence is holding a two- to three-week joint force exercise, code named Exercise Narwhal, off the coast of Baffin Island in August. Expected to cost about $5-million, the war game will involve 200 infantry soldiers, the frigate HMSC Montreal, with its complement of 220 sailors, five helicopters and the Twin Otter fleet.
Even further in the future is the possibility of radar installations in the north that look out across the water, rather than in the air as is the traditional use of radar.
An installation in Tuktoyaktuk monitoring the Beaufort Sea in the west and another on the coast of Baffin Island monitoring the Davis Strait in the east would alert the military to any sea incursions, Col. Pettis said.
The current situation is much more down to earth.
There are about 150 regular force troops in the Northern Area; 100 of them army and 50 airforce personnel supporting four Twin Otter aircraft. They are supported by about 1,500 Rangers, reservists drawn from local aboriginal communities.
Dr. Rob Huebert, an Arctic and maritime law specialist with the Centre of Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary, lauded the attention.
"The fact that we have an effort to develop an overall surveillance capability with a limited response capability are very important first steps and absolutely overdue," said Dr. Huebert.
Col. Pettis hopes it is only the beginning.
"As economic development in the north improves and other conditions bring more people into the north there are a lot of good things that flow from that and there is a lot of potential for bad things," said Col. Pettis.
"While the Department of National Defence is not the first in line to deal with all of these issues, we are pretty high on everybody's Who-You-Gonna-Call list if there is trouble."
© National Post 2004
Adrian Humphreys
National Post
Thursday, March 25, 2004
http://media.canada.com/canwest/29/20040325main.jpg
TINY HANS ISLAND, COVETED BY DANES TYPIFIES A REGION'S UNCERTAIN BORDERS: The arrow and circle at bottom right indicate Hans Island, which sits halfway between Ellesmere Island, left, and Greenlad, top right, just above the 80th parallel. Denmark has gone so far as to send warships to the island and plant it's flag on the frozen soil.
CREDIT: Canada Centre for Remote Sensing/Radarsat International
ADVERTISEMENT
Canada is launching an extensive five-year plan to march soldiers through all of its uninhabited Arctic territory in the largest bid yet to exert sovereignty over its northern domain, an area drawing increasing international attention and conflicting territorial claims.
A renewed northern mobilization by the army, navy and air force -- including new space-based technology -- marks a significant increase in Canadian Forces resources earmarked for the region at a time when military funding is stretched extremely thin.
The enhanced northern security and sovereignty efforts encompass both low-tech manpower and cutting-edge science, ranging from patrols by soldiers driving snowmobiles and carrying antique rifles (which are more reliable in the biting cold), to an intensive satellite surveillance system to monitor the Arctic from space, the National Post has learned.
"We're putting footprints in the snow where they are not normally put," said Colonel Norris Pettis, who as commander of Canadian Forces Northern Area is the ranking military officer in the north.
The northern push includes:
- The approval of Project Polar Epsilon, a satellite system piggy backing on a new commercial space program, designed to provide surveillance of the north, which encompasses 40% of Canada's land mass, to be operational by 2008.
- The flying of unmanned aerial vehicles this summer over Baffin Island to test their abilities in the extreme conditions of the north.
- The start in August of Exercise Narwhal, the first large-scale war game held in the Arctic involving army, navy and air force units from the south.
- A series of enhanced sovereignty patrols by regular Canadian Forces soldiers and Canadian Rangers, a military unit made up mostly of Inuit, that will see soldiers snowmobiling across almost all of the Arctic archipelago that Canada claims.
- The planning of a last-resort option of building permanent high-frequency surface-wave radar installations to monitor both ends of the Northwest Passage for unauthorized ship activity, both civilian and military. These powerful detectors penetrate out 200 nautical miles to the edge of Canada's territorial waters.
"There is always more that we could do. I would say that our activity levels today are higher than they have been in history," said Col. Pettis.
Although there was no mention of the northern military presence in Tuesday's federal budget, which announced only modest increases for foreign peacekeeping efforts, Col. Pettis said he has been given an "additional bundle of money," for the operations.
The federal budget did allocate $70-million over 10 years for seabed mapping of Canada's Arctic and Atlantic continental shelves.
"This investment will enable Canada, as a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, to achieve greater certainty with regards to its sovereignty over the Arctic and Atlantic continental shelves, and any mineral and hydrocarbon resources they hold," the budget documents say.
While many of the northern efforts remain in the planning stage, the first of several long-range, land-based sovereignty patrols departs April 1 for an 18-day, 1,300-kilometre trek from Resolute to Alert, a weather station that claims the title as the world's most northerly permanently inhabited settlement.
The journey, expected to face temperatures as low as -44 C, is the longest one-way sovereignty patrol in recent history and is the first of several patrols from Resolute that will cover almost all of Canada's Arctic islands over the next five years, said Major Stewart Gibson, commander of the 1st Canadian Ranger Patrol Group, who will lead the team of 20 soldiers. The second patrol, scheduled for next year, will send troops to Prince Patrick Island.
Each patrol costs about $500,000, he said.
The northern attention comes as international interest in Canada's claim to the far north is increasing. Climate change is bringing increased activity to the area because reduced ice cover makes it possible for ships to travel between Asia and Europe through the Northwest Passage, a far shorter route.
Canada currently has four international territorial disputes in the north, two with the United States, one with Russia and one with Denmark, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs.
The efforts also come as natural resources exploration begins.
"We have exploration going on throughout the Arctic. Oil and gas certainly; there are semi-precious and precious mineral exploration going on there as well. Diamonds, gold, silver, this type of thing," said Maj. Gibson.
The military's northern activities are being developed on a three-stage doctrine of surveillance, assessment and response.
"More important than anything else is our ability as a nation to do surveillance in the north, our consequent ability to detect and analyze what we detect if there is something of an anomaly and then our ability to respond in whatever fashion is deemed necessary or appropriate," said Col. Pettis.
"We have strengths and weaknesses in all areas.
"Right up front, we have a significant weakness in our ability to survey because right now our surveillance is largely dependent on human beings and that is not a terribly efficient way to conduct surveillance in the space age," he said.
The military is looking to Project Polar Epsilon to fill the void. It will buy time for frequent and regular surveillance over the Arctic from a commercial satellite, starting in 2008, he said.
It will monitor water and land activity.
"Our forces are limited in their ability to respond to incidents in the north. We have some limited parachute capability but to expect us to drop 100 people in to a remote area of the north without any significant way of sustaining them isn't really realistic," Col. Pettis said
"Our navy is not ice capable."
A response in the future might be left to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles if tests planned for this summer prove successful, although he had no idea when such planes might be fielded.
To prepare for larger-scale responses, the Department of National Defence is holding a two- to three-week joint force exercise, code named Exercise Narwhal, off the coast of Baffin Island in August. Expected to cost about $5-million, the war game will involve 200 infantry soldiers, the frigate HMSC Montreal, with its complement of 220 sailors, five helicopters and the Twin Otter fleet.
Even further in the future is the possibility of radar installations in the north that look out across the water, rather than in the air as is the traditional use of radar.
An installation in Tuktoyaktuk monitoring the Beaufort Sea in the west and another on the coast of Baffin Island monitoring the Davis Strait in the east would alert the military to any sea incursions, Col. Pettis said.
The current situation is much more down to earth.
There are about 150 regular force troops in the Northern Area; 100 of them army and 50 airforce personnel supporting four Twin Otter aircraft. They are supported by about 1,500 Rangers, reservists drawn from local aboriginal communities.
Dr. Rob Huebert, an Arctic and maritime law specialist with the Centre of Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary, lauded the attention.
"The fact that we have an effort to develop an overall surveillance capability with a limited response capability are very important first steps and absolutely overdue," said Dr. Huebert.
Col. Pettis hopes it is only the beginning.
"As economic development in the north improves and other conditions bring more people into the north there are a lot of good things that flow from that and there is a lot of potential for bad things," said Col. Pettis.
"While the Department of National Defence is not the first in line to deal with all of these issues, we are pretty high on everybody's Who-You-Gonna-Call list if there is trouble."
© National Post 2004