Can the army stand on guard in the arctic?
‘Control of land — Canadian land — actually requires soldiers on the land’
Almost a year ago NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg capped a visit to the air force base at Cold Lake, Alberta, by emphasizing Russian and Chinese military challenges to our Arctic. Russia for example has established a new Arctic command, which includes significant naval, air, army and special operations forces.It has also built new infrastructure such as Nagurskoye airbase, 500 kilometres closer to Canada’s strategic listening post at Alert than a less-capable Canadian base at Iqaluit. As for China, its 2018 Arctic policy paper declared it a “Near Arctic State,” and they will complete one of the world’s largest icebreakers in 2025, part of the Belt and Road Initiative to expand China’s reach world-wide.
Responding to challenges such as these, and pressure from our NATO allies, principally the United States, Canada has announced Arctic defence initiatives that focus almost exclusively on the air force and navy. This is understandable: historically the preferred way to control the vast Arctic land mass and seas has been by air and, when the ice melts sufficiently, by sea. The air force role became much more important during the Cold War, when Soviet bomber and missile attack over the North Pole loomed large, countered by extensive early warning radar and fighter interceptors. We shouldn’t be surprised then that our Arctic initiatives include over-the-horizon radar, F-35 fighters, surveillance aircraft, and ice-capable patrol ships. The cost of these initiatives is staggering: just one program, over-the-horizon radar, is conservatively estimated to cost $ 1 billion and will take years to implement.
How does our army fit into these initiatives? Historically the army has lagged behind the other services. In the early 1970s for example the army literally wandered around the Arctic in small groups of about 100 personnel, surviving harsh conditions in order to show the flag, soldiers on snowshoes pulling toboggans while Inuit drove by on snowmobiles. In the mid-1980s, the brigade in Petawawa responsible for defence of Canada developed a new concept for Arctic defence. Conventional wisdom, quoting the 18th century French writer Voltaire, was that no adversary wanted a “few acres of snow” in Canada.
