Vanguard Magazine

NAVAL www.vanguardcanada.com AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019 33 3M Science. Applied to Life. ™ 3M ™ PELTOR ™ ComTac ™ NIB Headset Advanced hearing protection. Natural communication. Help improve soldier efficiency. The new 3M ™ Peltor ™ ComTac ™ VI NIB Headset helps protect your hearing, improves situational awareness and communications in noisy environments. With new technologies such as Natural Interaction Behaviour (NIB) and Mission Audio Profiles (MAP), 3M ™ Peltor ™ ComTac ™ is packed with new, advanced features. Contact our 3M Peltor Communications Specialist (Gwen MacDonald) at 705-715-7043 for additional information. 3M, 3M Science. Applied to Life., ComTac and Peltor are trademarks of 3M. Used under license in Canada. © 2019, 3M, All rights reserved. 1902-14201 E TM BRAND patched to provide assistance. Fortunately, there were no casualties and only minor en- vironmental damage. One could argue that the best way to do search and rescue is to prevent accidents in the first place. Modern marine charts will certainly contribute to reduce the possibili- ty of more grounding. The Akademik Ioffe was the third cruise ship to run aground in the Canadian Arctic after the MV Clip- per Adventurer in 2010 and Hanseatic in 1996. With increasing activity in poorly- charted areas, our luck may soon run out. When Coast Guard vessels are dispatched for a search and rescue mission, they may not be available to support the essential annual sealift to the Arctic communities. A delay in delivering the annual sealift for a lack of icebreaking support will cost the shipping companies. If the sealift cannot take place, there will be significant impacts. Last summer, when a multi-year ice plug blocked some of the resupplying of a few western communities, some construction projects had to be delayed by one year and the cost of airlifting the essential goods was in the millions of dollars. The AOPS will be patrolling the Arctic. Would it not be great if they could carry out both opportunistic and targeted hy- drographic surveys while patrolling in arctic waters? When operating in poorly surveyed areas, those ships could be proceeding for- ward at slow speed. It seems to be one of the tailor-made tasks for those ships. Accurate charts will bring significant ben- efits. More efficient routing for the resup- ply of communities will reduce the cost for operators and reduce the environmental im- pact by reducing ship emissions. It would allow those ships to circumvent ice block- ages safely using alternative routes surveyed and charted. Search and rescue could be done faster by allowing ships to take more direct routes and to proceed safely at opti- mal speed. Accurate charts would contrib- ute to the commitments made by Canada to improve its search and rescue capacity under the Arctic Council's Agreement on Cooperation on Aeronautical and Maritime Search and Rescue in the Arctic. The Royal Canadian Navy has helped in the past with temporary MBES systems on the Kingston Class Marine Coastal De- fence Vessels. That could be an option for the AOPS, except that towed systems have limitations especially in heavily iced waters. They would similarly require modifications to the brand new vessels to mount the required hardware. Inboard systems, de- signed and installed during ship building, are by far the preferred solution. The patrolling and mapping of the wa- ters in the Arctic Archipelago will also have an important sovereignty dimension. This article was originally published in the Hill Times on June 10, 2019 and is re- published here with permission. Please note that it has come to our understanding that since the article was published the Cana- dian Coast Guard is looking to include the MBES as part of the modifications of the two AOPS for the CCG. Colonel (Retired) Pierre Leblanc is a former Commander of the Canadian Forces in the Canadian Arctic. www.arcticsecurity.ca

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