The Cold War-era defense system will be upgraded to counter Russia, China

Norad was a central part of the US and Canadian Cold War deterrence strategy against the former Soviet Union. The surveillance system, consisting of satellites, ground radar and air force bases located mostly in Alaska and the Canadian Arctic, was designed to provide military allies with a notification of any imminent attack from the north.

The system, once state-of-the-art, has since become obsolete. New missiles launched by Russia and China can travel more than five times the speed of sound and fly much farther than their predecessors, which would overwhelm the existing surveillance network, said Michael Dawson, who was a Canadian political adviser under Norad. from Colorado. from 2010 to 2014.

In addition, a melting polar ice cap once leaves the Arctic Ocean impassable without ice for longer periods of time, creating new vulnerabilities for the United States and Canada, say current and former military officials.

“The Arctic is no longer a fortress wall, and our oceans are no longer protective ditches; now there are ways to approach advanced conventional weapons, ”retired General Terrence O’Shaugnessy said during his March testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

President Biden made a clear reference to Norad in his public remarks after Tuesday’s meeting, Mr Biden’s first bilateral meeting with a foreign election leader. He said the countries had agreed to modernize the system, which is jointly controlled by both governments.

Mr Biden also said he expected NATO members, including Canada, to spend at least 2% of their economic output on defense, as outlined in a 2014 commitment by members of the transatlantic alliance. Canada’s annual defense spending is about 1.5%, according to the latest NATO figures.

The White House and a Pentagon spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. On Friday, the US State Department listed the defense system as one of the priorities of the US-Canada bilateral relationship, ahead of a meeting between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Mr Trudeau along with other senior officials.

“We welcome Canada’s enhanced commitment to Norad as we modernize the command to meet new global security challenges,” the department said in a fact sheet ahead of Mr Blinken’s video conference with Canadian officials on Friday.

Norad also appeared during a January 22 call between leaders, stressing the importance the US attaches to modernizing a surveillance system that was first developed in the 1950s.

U.S. military and political leaders such as Senator Jim Inhofe (R., Okla.), A senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, see the Arctic warning system as an important tool to keep up with China’s growing military presence. and Russia in the Arctic region. . Russia has developed ports along the North Sea Route, a shipping route that winds along the Siberian coast. President Vladimir Putin has also begun military construction in the region, adding new airfields, air defense facilities and bases.

China, which sees the Arctic as a major shipping route, according to government documents, and has tried to invest in northern mines that give the country access to minerals such as zinc, nickel and gold, has partnered with several Arctic neighbors. . It carried out icebreakers in the region and declared itself an “almost arctic state”.

Although Canada pledged to increase defense spending by 70 percent in 2017 over a decade, Mr. Trudeau’s government has not set aside any special money to upgrade the Arctic Warning System, a project that could cost the country $ 6 billion – about 40 % of the estimated cost of $ 15 billion, said James Fergusson, deputy director of the Center for Defense and Security Studies at the University of Manitoba.

This money would represent a major commitment for Canada, whose total annual defense budget of $ 19 billion is less than 3% of the $ 700 billion defense budget.

Canadian officials have publicly acknowledged the importance of the updates.

“Now is the time to really pick things up,” said Canadian Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan in a late January interview. Mr Sajjan also discussed modernization with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin during a January call.

Mr. Sajjan said Canada has begun some of the work, citing new Arctic and offshore patrol vessels that began arriving last year, with five more on the way and the deployment of new satellite technology to improve surveillance of Arctic and maritime activity.

Since coming to power, Mr Trudeau has focused on threatening climate change for indigenous Arctic communities. A comprehensive Arctic plan, launched by Mr Trudeau’s government at the end of 2019, called for investment in new infrastructure and healthcare improvements to serve local indigenous communities.

Among the key initiatives mentioned by the Canadian government was the upgrade of the Northern Warning System, or NWS, a chain of nearly 50 unmanned radar stations in the Arctic and Alaska. Canadian government documents indicate that the system will reach the end of its life by 2025 and the technology will have to be replaced.

Behind the scenes, officials from both countries have been working on projects to best update the technology needed to protect the continent’s airspace, said John McKay, a Canadian lawmaker and co-chair of the Standing Joint Committee on Defense – a US-Canada group which advises the country’s leaders in the field of North American defense. The problem in recent years, Mr. McKay said, has been the lack of political direction from Washington.

“The previous administration was not as interested as Norad should have been, and it was therefore difficult to get the attention of the Americans,” Mr McKay said.

However, a former Trump administration official in charge of national security responded that Arctic security was a defense priority for the former president’s team, noting that the Department of Defense released a review of the Arctic strategy in June 2019, restoring the second fleet for operations in the North Atlantic and Arctic and has repeatedly called for more funding for missile defense.

—Michael R. Gordon contributed to this article.

Write to Vipal Monga at [email protected] and Paul Vieira at [email protected]