Military scrambled over foreign sub sighting
The following news article – published in last Friday’s Globe and Mail – completely supports Marport’s long-standing position that Canada needs to invest in establishing “persistent and pervasive” underwater surveillance capabilities for its Arctic waters.
Michael Harvey, Marport’s Vice President for military and offshore recently published a white paper entitled “Mission Incapable or Perhaps Mission Impossible – Canada’s Newest Class of Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships” The white paper discusses how Canada’s new fleet of Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships may be negatively impacted due to the lack of underwater sensing and communications capability aboard the vessels. As such, the vessels may be unfit for service to Canada due to their inability to conduct some of the most important surveillance and support missions for which they are intended or could be potentially employed. As currently defined, and with the exception of a simple navigation depth sounder, the proposed vessels have no underwater surveillance equipment fitted.
The white paper (in PDF format) can be downloaded from here.
Military scrambled over foreign sub sighting
Forces tried to keep August sighting, explosion in High Arctic under wraps
STEVEN CHASE
From Globe and Mail - March 20, 2009 at 4:02 AM EDT
OTTAWA — The Canadian Forces quietly scrambled an investigative team to the High Arctic last August to probe what it considered a “reliable” report of a foreign submarine sighting near the eastern entrance of the Northwest Passage – all the while trying to keep a public-relations lid on the matter, documents show.
The sub sighting occurred kilometres away from the location of a mysterious explosion that had been reported to authorities 10 days earlier and made news across Canada.
Today, the military refuses to discuss what it found last summer after probing the sub incident, citing operational security. Its silence on the possible underwater incursion – of a sort Canada is relatively powerless to detect or stop – stands in stark contrast to the clamour Ottawa makes when NORAD detects and intercepts approaching Russian bombers.
The sub sighting is a reminder of Canada’s difficulty with enforcing its sovereignty in the increasingly contested Arctic. The incident occurred even as officials in Ottawa were planning a trip for Prime Minister Stephen Harper to the region. It was only three weeks later that he tried to reassert Canada’s claims over the Passage and Arctic, announcing Ottawa would now require foreign vessels entering Canadian waters to report their presence.
Documents obtained by The Globe and Mail under access to information law say it was hunters – rather than Canadian authorities – who spotted the sub and relayed it to the Canadian Rangers, lightly armed reservists paid to keep a lookout for foreign intrusions.
The vessel was spotted at the northern end of Baffin Island near a hunting camp early on Aug. 9, and the hunters were adamant about what they saw, the military was told. “[They] reported it was very close and [there] does not appear to be any thoughts on the part of the person reporting that it was not a sub,” one soldier’s e-mail said later that day.
The sighting took place only days after the explosion was witnessed in the same area – an incident that was reported across the country after Parks Canada staff talked to journalists. The report of this July 31 detonation in the waters off Borden Peninsula came from a location only 10 to 15 kilometres away from the later submarine incident, one military e-mail said.
A husband and wife team of hunters who witnessed the July 31 explosion said their “whole cabin shook” from the blast and thick black smoke – “the type … seen at a garbage dump” – rose from the water.
But as the Canadian Forces fielded questions on the explosion, the military was careful to try to keep the later sub sighting under wraps, documents show. It rewrote planned responses to journalists about the explosion to remove references to the submarine – “we are separating the two incidents” – and instructed staff to be in “reactive … posture” on the vessel sighting, meaning they only were to broach the issue if asked directly about it.
Yesterday, naval Lieutenant Jordan Holder, a spokesman for Joint Task Force North, said he could not divulge what soldiers found during their probe of the sub sighting. “I am not at liberty to discuss the investigation or results.” However, he said no link was found between the submarine sighting and the earlier explosion.
Rob Huebert, associate director of the University of Calgary’s Centre for Military and Strategic Studies, said it’s possible U.S., British, Russian or even French subs could have been operating in the area.
“Nobody wants to face up to the fact that in the Arctic we’re starting to see everybody resuming naval operations again,” he said.
Last summer, Russia announced plans to increase the “operational radius” of its northern sub fleet.
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