Sensing the Arctic: Situational awareness and the future of northern security
| Author | Benjamin T. Johnson |
| DOI | 10.1177/00207020211048424 |
| Published date | 01 September 2021 |
| Date | 01 September 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Scholarly Essay |
Scholarly Essay
International Journal
2021, Vol. 76(3) 404–426
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/00207020211048424
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Sensing the Arctic:
Situational awareness and the
future of northern security
Benjamin T. Johnson
Department of Politics, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada
Abstract
This article considers the role of surveillance within security concerns related to the
Arctic in Canada and North America. More pointedly, it examines how surveillance
contributes towards situational awareness and the current emphasis on technological
research and development to meet current and future security requirements. The
article argues that Canada’s focus on surveillance within the Arctic offers a flexible
strategy that navigates the complex and evolving security environment in addition to
the political and fiscal realities of our time. However, the article warns that emphasizing
the role of novel technology within strategic considerations risks undermining sound
policymaking as the potential for new technology to transform defensive capabilities
remains speculative. The article illustrates this approach to security by analyzing
Canada’s Arctic surveillance capabilities and goals under the All Domain Situational
Awareness (ADSA) program. Further, it links Canada’s efforts to North American
defence by theoretically examining the role of surveillance in the Strategic Homeland
Integrated Ecosystem for Layered Defence (SHIELD) concept and the recent NORAD/
USNORTHCOM strategic outlook.
Keywords
Arctic, Canada, surveillance, security, technology, situational awareness
Corresponding author:
Benjamin T. Johnson, York University, Political Science, 4700 Keele Street, Ross Building North, Room
783, Toronto, ON M3J 1P3, Canada.
Email: bjohn050@yorku.ca
The Arctic has returned as a regional focus for Canada with increasing saliency in public
discourse, mainly because climate change may transform the North into a strategic zone and
potential battlespace over resources and transport routes.
1
Whiletherehasbeenasurgein
the literature on Arctic security, there has been minimal effort to capture Canada’s current
Arctic policy relating to the state’s focus on developing its surveillance capacity.L ike other
states, Canada is bolstering investments and directing it s efforts towards enhancing sit-
uational awareness in the Arctic by focusing on technological research and development.
Surveillance capacity and the enhancement of situational awareness are critical yet
under-scrutinized aspects of Canada’s broader Arctic defence strategy. This article
begins attending to this gap by demonstrating how a focus on enhancing surveillance
offers a coherent pathway to meeting Canada’s security requirements presently and in
the future. The state’s focus on surveillance capacity can achieve this in three principal
ways. First, surveillance technologies and practices simultaneously occupy multiple
capacities and disciplinary categories, specifically within scientific, security, and
military fields (conventionally understood as their “dual use”character). The ability of
surveillance technologies to encompass multiple capacities is necessary because
Canada recognizes that several types of threats pose a danger to the Arctic and its
communities outside of narrow military considerations. Second, the ability of sur-
veillance technology to perform tasks outside of military practices contributes towards
a holistic approach to security by facilitating a system-of-systems, or more starkly, an
ecosystem model of defence. While a system-of-systems defence model involves the
pooling of dedicated resources (such as sensors) into a complex network of inter-
operable components that amplifies the performance of the system as a whole, an
ecosystem model theoretically goes beyond this and expands the scale of interoperable
and integrated components to those outside of dedicated systems. Lastly, surveillance
favours several practical considerations concerning financial and political constraints.
Financially, the dual-use character of surveillance technology supports the Canadian
government’s whole-of-government (WoG) approach to the Arctic through burden-
sharing. Politically, surveillance technologies and practices may be more palatable to
the Canadian public than other cost-intensive efforts or those with a weaponized
character. Surveillance technology may also reduce the risk of provoking escalation
through military spiral when those technologies remain within a defensive posture.
There has been a long history of research and development geared towards surveillance
efforts in the Canadian Arctic, particularly during the Cold War. More recently, several
surveillance-based projects have been put into motion within, and peripheral to, security
concerns. For example, there is a great deal of sensor architecture in place that monitors
environmental phenomena, including ice floes and atmospheric di sturbances . Canada’s
Department of National Defence (DND) has deemed these civilian-based sensors im-
portant for inclusion based on security considerations. More evidently, there are many
research and development efforts currently underway exploring both evolutionary and
1. See Rolf Tamnes and Kristine Offerdal, eds., Geopolitics and Security in the Arctic: Regional Dynamics in
a Global World (London and New York: Routledge, 2014).
Johnson 405
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