Canada Not Equipped to Monitor Potential Russian Missile Threats in Arctic: Senate Committee

A Russian Yars RS-24 intercontinental ballistic missile system rides through Red Square during the Victory Day military parade in Moscow on May 9, 2017. (Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP/Getty Images)

There are “serious questions” surrounding Canada’s capacity to monitor potential threats of Russian hypersonic missiles in the Canadian Arctic, says the Senate National Security Committee.

Sen. Tony Dean, the committee’s chair, spoke to reporters during a press conference in Ottawa on June 28 about a report the committee tabled that day, titled “Arctic Security Under Threat: Urgent needs in a changing geopolitical and environmental landscape.”

Dean told reporters that Russia has reopened a number of Cold War-era Arctic military bases over the past 10 years, and more than 10 are “operational.”

Dean said Russia stations nuclear-powered submarines at those bases and has “an arsenal of hypersonic missiles, which combine the maneuverability of cruise missiles with the range and speed of intercontinental ballistic missiles.”

Dean went on to say there “are serious questions about NORAD’s capacity to monitor these threats and to thwart them.”

“Tracking these weapons will require upgraded, space-based satellite surveillance systems operating alongside new ground-based, over-the-horizon radar systems,” Dean said.

The Senate committee’s report recommends that the federal government urgently procure these new systems.

“Aging infrastructure and out-of-date technology are undermining the protection of Canada’s sovereignty and the defence of North America from such new threats as long-range cruise missiles and hypersonic missiles,” reads the report.

“These potential vulnerabilities are among the most significant concerns identified during this study, and they need to be addressed as soon as possible.”

Needed Upgrades

NORAD officials have also previously called for upgraded surveillance systems.

Lt. Gen. Alain Pelletier, deputy commander of NORAD, told the House of Commons Standing Committee on National Defence last November that NORAD’s North Warning System is outdated and “very limited” in its capacity to detect threats.

Pelletier said Ottawa should invest in upgrading NORAD’s surveillance equipment as quickly as possible, and noted that NORAD doesn’t expect to have the technology in place until later this decade.

The federal government previously announced that it plans on investing around $5 billion over the next several years to modernize NORAD’s defence systems, as part of Ottawa’s larger plan to invest about $40 billion into NORAD over the next 20 years.

While attending a meeting in Iceland with leaders of Denmark, Finland, Sweden, and Norway on June 26, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters that the nations discussed the growing risk of China’s “interests in development, exploration, and perhaps the eventual installation of natural-resource platforms” in the Arctic.

The prime minister said the discussion came amid ongoing talks between Canada and its Nordic allies about “the central Arctic Ocean and the responsibility all of us have as Nordic countries to make sure that we’re setting clear rules that will protect the public ocean” and discourage “military uses” in the area.