String of radar stations in Canadian Arctic nearly obsolete — and modernizing them will cost billions

David Pugliese, Ottawa Citizen

The radar sites detect potential threats entering North America's airspace and transmit a stream of data to military command centres in the south

CAMBRIDGE BAY, Nunavut — The white domes that rise from the tundra look innocuous enough, and yet they play a critical role in protecting millions of Canadians and Americans thousands of kilometres away.

Inside, where photographs are forbidden, they are like a time capsule from the late 1980s, the décor still reflecting the late Cold War era when the Canadian and U.S. governments established the North Warning System, the chain of mostly unmanned radar sites of which the Cambridge Bay facility is a part. Spanning Canada's northern coastline across the Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Labrador, the radar sites exist to detect potential threats entering North America's airspace, transmitting a stream of data to military command centres in the south.

At the Cambridge Bay site, dozens of civilian contractors — employees of Raytheon Canada — work around the clock to keep the installation operating in temperatures that can dip to -60 C in January or February. At times during the winter, Arctic storms almost completely cover some of the sites in snow, requiring contractors to climb through hatches in the roofs of the buildings to conduct maintenance work.

But the North Warning System now faces a threat greater than the harsh Arctic environment. In seven years the radar system is expected to be obsolete. The Canadian and U.S. governments are trying to figure out how to upgrade the radars for modern times — opening the door that the sensors could be plugged in to the Pentagon's missile defence system as well as be modernized so they can track a new generation of Russian cruise missiles.

Canada and the U.S. are trying to figure out technological improvements for the early warning system and are in the midst of discussions on the topic. A joint study on continental defence is expected to be finished by next year, Department of National Defence spokesman Dan Le Bouthillier told Postmedia. “Following the completion of the study, Canada and the United States will determine the next steps for the replacement of the NWS and update the project timelines accordingly,” he added.

But that could emerge as yet another point of contention between Canada and the Trump administration in the U.S., which has already admonished Canada for not spending enough on defence.

The last time the U.S. and Canada modernized the radar system was during the tenure of U.S. President Ronald Reagan, when relations between the two nations were on a solid footing.

“Negotiating with the Trump administration is going to be a lot different than with the Reagan government,” explained defence analyst Martin Shadwick. “Trump will be the wild card.”

Shadwick said details about funding and what the radars need to do in the future could become sticking points.

The Liberal government has recognized it has to do something about what it calls the capability gaps in the North Warning System. “While the current NWS is approaching the end of its life expectancy from a technological and functional perspective, unfortunately the range of potential threats to the continent, such as that posed by adversarial cruise missiles and ballistic missiles, has become more complex and increasingly difficult to detect,” the government's defence strategy, released last year, pointed out. But the Liberals did not include funding for the modernization of the NWS in that policy, saying it would come later.

Canada is currently responsible for 40 per cent of the cost of the North Warning System, with the remaining 60 per cent falling to the Americans. Canada owns the sites and provides the site operations and maintenance while the U.S. owns the radar and radio equipment.

Ernie Regehr, a senior fellow in Arctic security and defence at The Simons Foundation, has found that while the cost for upgrading the North Warning System is unknown at this time it can be expected to run into the billions of dollars.

Canada and the U.S. share the responsibility for a credible contribution to the defence of North America, Regehr pointed out. “And the American definition of credible is the one that counts,” he wrote in a March briefing for the Simons Foundation.

Full article: https://nationalpost.com/news/modernizing-warning-radars-in-the-arctic-will-cost-canada-and-the-us-billions-of-dollars