It is not the SHIELD you are most likely pondering of — the one with the super-spies and flying battleships from Marvel comics and films.
In reality, the SHIELD on the centre of the upcoming evolution of NORAD — the six-decade-old North American defence pact — shares nothing with its fictional counterpart however the acronym. However these making an attempt to promote pandemic-weary, deficit-swamped governments on the proposed Strategic Homeland Built-in Ecosystem for Layered Protection could also be hoping for a bit of mirrored glamour for his or her multi-billion-dollar concept.
The present Liberal authorities dedicated to the renewal of NORAD early on; it was the highest merchandise within the first assembly between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and now-former U.S. president Donald Trump in 2017. The proposal now presents a number of thorny political and monetary issues for Canada.
The SHIELD idea is just not your grandfather’s model of NORAD — which was merely a series of radar stations throughout the North primed to warn of approaching Russian bombers and missiles.
A NORAD for now
The brand new technique was first sketched out final fall in a paper written for the Wilson Heart’s Canada Institute by the former U.S. NORAD commander, retired common Terrence O’Shaughnessy, and U.S. Air Pressure Brig.-Gen. Peter Fesler, the present deputy director of operations on the U.S. air defence headquarters.
Fesler and O’Shaughnessy argued that, confronted with a wide range of new and improved weapons — all the things from hypersonic glide autos to next-generation cruise missiles — North America wants a defence surveillance system that knits collectively area, air and land-based surveillance in actual time.
Such a system “swimming pools this information and fuses it into a typical operational image,” mentioned the paper, printed final September. “Then, utilizing the most recent advances in machine studying and information evaluation, it scans the info for patterns that aren’t seen to human eyes, serving to decision-makers perceive adversary potential programs of motion earlier than they’re executed.”
What they’re speaking about is predictive evaluation and synthetic intelligence. The SHIELD idea envisions a “international sensing grid” that may sniff out threats as they develop by drawing on information from “conventional and nontraditional sources,” comparable to civilian air site visitors management grids.
To an extent, the SHIELD idea is being put to work already by NORAD by means of operational testing of a cloud-based information fusion system known as Undertaking Pathfinder.
A tough promote
The U.S. Air Pressure signed off on the Pathfinder prototype and has ordered a manufacturing mannequin by means of an $8 million US contract, in line with Air Pressure Journal.
The NORAD refurbishment was by no means costed within the federal authorities’s 2017 defence coverage and it presents a number of challenges and hard selections for the Liberal authorities now, starting from the fiscal to the political to the navy.
The arrival of the Biden administration in Washington appears to have made government-to-government negotiations extra politically palatable in Ottawa. Many in Canada’s defence group had been satisfied there was little urge for food amongst federal officers to haggle with Trump over NORAD after the bruising expertise of re-negotiating the NAFTA commerce deal.
One of many first challenges for presidency officers will probably be to current the NORAD renewal mission to a Canadian public and political institution overwhelmed by the pandemic, mentioned one defence professional.
An financial argument
“If you happen to attempt to rapidly promote this within the context of ‘the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming,’ that’s politically problematic, I believe, notably for this authorities,” mentioned James Fergusson, deputy director of the Centre for Defence and Safety Research on the College of Manitoba.
Framing it in financial phrases — highlighting the alternatives for innovation and high-tech jobs — possible would assist, he mentioned, however the total value will probably be a problem given the injury carried out to the financial system and authorities stability sheets by the pandemic.
Estimates of the price of NORAD’s renewal vary between $11 billion and $15 billion. No matter it finally ends up costing, Canadian taxpayers could be on the hook for 40 per cent of the overall.
The worth tag is “the elephant within the room,” mentioned Fergusson, including that he is skeptical concerning the assurances he is heard from senior authorities officers that the cash for NORAD will probably be along with already-promised defence coverage funding.
Belt-tightening and BMD
He mentioned he attended a convention in Ottawa a yr in the past that heard a senior Division of Nationwide Defence (DND) official state that the division had “been promised we’ll get extra cash for NORAD …”
“No, you are not,” Fergusson added.
He mentioned he believes it is extra possible that DND will probably be requested to cowl Canada’s NORAD contribution inside its present funds — forcing the division to make cuts elsewhere.
The NORAD mission additionally guarantees to pull a reluctant federal authorities again right into a political debate over ballistic missile defence (BMD).
The latest Liberal defence coverage reaffirmed the 2005 choice by Paul Martin’s authorities to stay on the sidelines of any continental BMD effort, regardless of pleas from each the Senate and Home of Commons defence committees to rethink becoming a member of.
BMD is a non-starter for New Democrats and for some specialists within the defence group who argue that missile defence merely contributes to the arms race.
Fergusson mentioned latest advances in know-how and navy doctrine could pressure the federal government’s hand.
“The USA is shifting in a short time to combine air and missile defence into single items, relatively than have them separated,” he mentioned. “In order that has huge implications for us. We won’t merely do air defence with out having to work with or having to do missile defence.”
And embedded within the idea of a “international sensing grid” is the expectation that threats — as soon as recognized — could be taken out.
As an alternative of specializing in the missiles — the “arrows,” to make use of NORAD parlance — the expectation is {that a} defensive community would focus its response on the “archers,” or the launch platforms. Russian bombers circling far exterior of North American airspace, for instance, could be focused beneath the SHIELD technique.
“That will probably be unpalatable to the Canadian authorities,” mentioned Fergusson, mentioning that the Canadian navy does not have the long-range functionality to conduct these sorts of defensive operations.
It is a dialog Canada cannot keep away from for for much longer, he mentioned, as a result of a lot of the present North Warning System reaches the top of its operational life by 2024.
“The USA can’t defend itself with out Canada and we won’t defend ourselves with out the US.”
