Stevie's drones . . .

THINGS ARE HEATING UP, and the Arctic is turning, well, slushy — and Vladimir Putin is getting all excited about creating more vodka outlets. Actually, they're going to be bases for "combined arms": army navy airforce. According to an article in WIRED by Robert Beckhusen, "Russia and Canada Gear Up for Arctic Non-War", 

On Monday, Russian Security Council chief Nikolai Patrushev said Russia is planning to build a string of new naval bases in the Arctic. The bases are intended to be “key double-purpose sites” for warships “in remote areas of the Arctic Seas.”

— Russkies —

Still, Russia wants to catch up on the Arctic front. In late June, Russian President Vladimir Putin took up the Arctic boosterism while overseeing the construction of another Borei-class nuclear submarine, of which Russia plans to have eight by 2020. ”Obviously, the Navy is an instrument to protect national economic interests, including in such regions as Arctic where some of the world’s richest biological resources, mineral resources are concentrated,” Putin said.

Well, Stevie's paying some kind of attention, as the article proclaims

— Stevie Drone —

Canada is also getting in on the binge. On Monday, Canada’s military was revealed to be planning a billion-dollar drone buy. The drones — intended to be armed — are reportedly focused (but not exclusively) on protecting Canada’s claims to the Arctic. The drones were last peddled by Canada’s Department of National Defence during the Libya war. With that war over, the looming Arctic war has moved in to fill the gap.

What those drones will be doing out there is anyone’s guess. Canada is also building new ships, and we shouldn’t forget about our neighbor’s plans to build stealth snowmobiles in case of an invasion of the tundra.

Check out the article and the links within it. Trust Stevie to pick a drone that was never designed for Arctic conditions. And stealth snowmobiles, go figure.

The Mulroney question

#Cdnpoli - 

It took a shortage of parkas, winter tents and basic all round cold weather gear for it to finally sink in.

Six years after the Harper government declared the Arctic to be a new operations area for the Canadian military, the army has struggled to find enough parkas, cold-weather tents, lanterns and heaters to equip forces that take part in its annual summer exercise.

The "critical equipment shortfalls" were so bad last year, the head of the army approved a request by area commanders to buy missing gear themselves, say internal briefing documents.

University of Calgary Associate Professor, Rob Huebert, who pays keen interest to Canadian Arctic operations was, well, shocked. (Emphasis mine)

"The most likely scenarios they need to respond to are a ship going aground and an airliner going down up there. I mean, that can occur any day now, and so to say we don't have enough equipment, even to keep our own troops warm, says a lot about the priority the government places on the Arctic."

And then the Mulroney shot.

"Are we back to Mulroney's time period, when it was a lot of talk and no action?" said Huebert.

Actually, Mr. Huebert, the current crop of self-adoring Conservatives are much worse. The Mulroney gang didn't parade about in uniforms they hadn't earned or take salutes to which they were not entitled. 

Another Harper procurement fiasco

#Cdnpoli - 

They keep on coming and now, after totally screwing up the Joint Support Ship project, we have one of Harper's own hobby-horses being stuffed into the quicksand and now it's the navy looking want. (Emphasis mine)

The Conservative government's list of troubled multi-billion-dollar military procurement projects continues to grow as a plan to obtain a fleet of armed vessels to patrol Canada's Arctic waters has been hit with a three-year delay.

The Defence Department had been expecting to take delivery of Canada's first of between six and eight Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships in 2015.

But documents tabled in the House of Commons on Tuesday show the timeline has been pushed back to 2018. In addition, the $3.1-billion project is now expected to cost $40 million more than anticipated.

Well, isn't that brilliant? Here's something you probably didn't know: There is no real statement of requirements for these ships because the RCN really didn't want them. Until Harper invented the idea, the RCN had no requirement for an ice-breaking fleet.

Ice-breaking in the Arctic is a Coast Guard function. The RCN is a war-fighting, deep water, deterrent force. They project power. Constabulary, patrol and navigation safety responsibilities in the Arctic fall within the province of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the RCMP Marine Section and the Canadian Coast Guard.

Surveillance and defence? The Canadian Armed Forces do that.

What's the worst possible way to do that? A surface ship crunching through Arctic ice, occasionally ice-bound, often unable to go where it needs to go. Not to mention that even new Arctic ice can be deadly to protruding electro-acoustic transducers and pressure transponders - the stuff that makes a warship a high tech detection system.

But that didn't matter to the one-dimensional thinking Harperistas. Some clot in Calgary envisioned a light grey ship in the middle of an ice-floe with an off-the-shelf gun mounted on the focsle and it became "policy".

A permanently fixed passive acoustic surveillance network would ultimately provide the best early warning system in the Arctic but that has not worked for the same reason an Arctic patrol ship would not have serious effect. The ice is continually moving and it eats everything in its path, including the antenna required to forward a signal.

That means that the best way to patrol the Arctic, with the assurance of detecting any activity, is a submarine capable of under-ice operations. Canada doesn't have any and it was a Conservative government which cancelled the only program which would have provided them. 

The navy, having never asked for these ships, has another problem. There are no crews. Unless the Harper government increases the established personnel strength of the RCN, the only way to staff these mythical ships will be by way of the naval reserve who have no Arctic capability, no ice-breaking expertise and most definitely do not possess the refined professional qualifications to operate a full-time flotilla of 21st Century warships. (That's not knocking the RCNR. The reservists do a great deal of the current maritime coastal defence work). Can the reservists be trained? Sure they can. But at that point you might as well make them regulars because it will take at least three years to develop a properly trained force, in full time training and then fully employ them.

Of course a big part of the plan to build magical Arctic patrol ships included building an Arctic base from which to operate. So much for that idea.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's much-ballyhooed plan to build a naval facility at Nanisivik, Nunavut shrank dramatically last month, when Department of National Defence officials told regulators about big cutbacks to the project.

"The planned changes result in a significant reduction of the site layout and function plan that was submitted for review in 2011," DND's project manager, Rodney Watson, said in a Feb. 24 letter to the Nunavut Impact Review Board, which is now screening the project.

Under DND's new scheme, the Nanisivik naval facility on Baffin Island would become a part-time summer-only fuelling station for Ottawa's proposed fleet of Arctic offshore patrol ships, along with other federal government vessels.

"The facility will only be operational during the navigable (summer) season. All facilities will be shut down and secured when not in use. On-site support will likely be reduced to an as-needed basis," Watson said. 

The Harperites talk large. They deliver something completely different. Nothing.


Hat tip Kevin. (Yes ... we in the swamp are a team).

Dragon's Den ? ? ? ?

Michael Byers has an excellent analysis on China, the Arctic, oil and international relations in today's Al Jazeera:

The dragon looks north

China grows hungry for Arctic resources and shipping routes as northern ice melts.

_______________

Snubbed by Arctic countries

China's laissez-faire approach to Arctic legal disputes has, however, been shaken by the recent actions of Arctic countries.

In 2009, China applied for permanent observer status at the Arctic Council, a regional organisation composed of Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the US. It was a reasonable request, since countries as distant as Poland and Spain had already been accorded that status.

However, the Chinese request came at the same time as one from the European Union, which was caught up in a dispute with Canada over restrictions on the trade of seal products. When Canada retaliated by blocking the EU's request for permanent observer status at the Arctic Council, China's application was collaterally suspended - and has remained so ever since.

_______________

China is respecting international law and has legitimate interests in the Arctic. Its request for permanent observer status should be granted forthwith.

Dragons, even well behaved ones, do not appreciate being snubbed.

Indeed . . . .

Arctic aviation . . .

ACCORDING TO WIRED, airships are coming to the Arctic. Might help with the logistics in a big way.

British airship manufacturer Hybrid Air Vehicles has announced a major contract with Canada’s Discovery Air Innovations to build airships capable of lifting as much as 50 tons, delivering freight at one-quarter the cost of other alternatives. Though various militaries have expressed interest in airships, this is HAV’s first commercial contract. The first ship is expected by 2014.

Stevie's Arctic Wonderland . . .

ACCORDING TO JANE GEORGE at the Nunatsiaq News, Stevie is making Arctic Noises, with a new, improved Arctic foreign policy statement delivered by Larry Cannon, the Minister for Foreign Affairs: “The Arctic is part of us. Was. Is. And always will be". Sumbitch impressive, eh what?

Poking a bear with a stick

The next time Petey MacKay raps on about unwarranted and unprovoked incursions by Russian aircraft into the North American Air Defence Identification Zone he might want to keep this in mind:

Federal officials are confirming to The Canadian Press that Canada's Arctic mapping flights have ventured beyond the North Pole into areas claimed by Russia.

The flights are the first step towards building a case that Canada's Arctic sovereignty could reach past the Pole despite Russia's determination to extend its own northern footprint.

Arctic experts say the extended overflights are a sign that Canada has no intention of backing down in the face of Russian claims.

Scientists are now examining data from the flights to see if there's enough support for Canada's case to justify more detailed seafloor mapping on the other side of the Pole.

Other countries including the United States, Norway and Denmark have challenged Russia's claim to a section of the Arctic shelf believed to contain significant energy reserves.

And just to be clear here, I don't disagree with the exploration, although any claim made by Canada to extend territorial sovereignty beyond Geographic North is going to go exactly nowhere.

(I'm assuming it was Geographic North referred to in the article. There are, after all, three distinctly different North Poles.)

In the past few days I've had some conversations with people who have some interesting views on this. Hopefully I'll get the opportunity a little later to extract their main points and put them onto a page.

In the meantime, it looks like the warming of the Pole is moving along at about the same pace as the revival of the Cold War.

Perhaps Canada's best option is just to send a bunch of Canadians to an ice floe at the geographic North Pole with seal blood dripping from our chins. That seems to make everyone else squeamish and sends them running away, puking.

Hat tip reader Cat