Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/122908
S Situational Awareness Captain Kurt N. Salchert, NORAD: Royal Canadian Navy, is the Canadian Liaison Officer at the NORAD Washington Office. Transforming maritime domain intelligence A maritime approaches to, the United States and Canada. Second, cross every sector of society, decision-makers are strugdeveloping a comprehensive shared understanding of maritime acgling with the complexity and speed of change in an intivities to better identify potential maritime threats to North Americreasingly interdependent world where safety, security, can security. And third, when information or intelligence raises a regulatory, environmental, political and economic interests and red flag, NORAD issues an advisory to alert national decisionconsiderations converge. There is probably no more complicated makers, or, in the event of a confirmed threat, a maritime warning. environment than the maritime domain, a vast and constantly So what does NORAD bring to the table? First and foremost, changing environment, beautiful yet deadly violent, resource-rich NORAD brings a tried and tested 55-year tradition of Canadians yet fragile and ripe for exploitation, and absolutely vital to the and Americans working side by side every hour of every day to global economy and the daily lives of billions. defend our bi-national security and defence interests. Relationships Both Canada and the United States acknowledge that perimeter are key and, over the decades, NORAD has matured relationships security is a strategic imperative to enhancing our shared security with global allies, national and regional-level mission partners from interests and accelerating the legitimate flow of people, goods and the defence, law-enforcement, safety, and regulatory communities, services between our two nations. and private sector stakeholders with whom Maritime Domain Awareness is a key enwe share a rich tradition of collaboration abler to perimeter security and is generally For more than half and mutual support. described as "the effective understanding of a century, NORAD has With the rapidly changing pace of innoanything associated with the maritime dovation and the fielding of new technolomain that could impact the security, safety, contributed to the gies, procedures and processes, through a economy or environment" – activities, inprotection of North "system of systems" approach, NORAD frastructure, people, cargo, vessels or other partners are now able to acquire, conveyances on, under, related to, adjacent America and will continue and its and disseminate in real- or near-real analyze to, or bordering the sea. to seize opportunities, time information about what is happening Skeptics might argue that navies, coast domain guards, regulatory and law enforcement outpace all threats and in the global maritimetransformand, more importantly, rapidly informaagencies of the world have always "done" remain the partner of tion into a highly refined level of decisionmaritime domain awareness to support their respective safety, law-enforcement choice with defence and quality understanding. The system works, and thankfully the requirement to warn and defence mandates. This is a tired argusecurity stakeholders. national decision-makers is a fairly rare ment, since the scale of achieving maritime occurrence. During the past 18 months, security in the 21st century has dramatically NORAD has issued just seven advisories and two warnings, none expanded. Massive amounts of data, on all aspects of maritime of which can be described because the details are classified. activity, must be collected, correlated across sources, and analyzed More than a decade after 9/11 and seven years into the Marito detect anomalies that may indicate vulnerabilities or threats to time Warning Mission, NORAD continues to adapt in order to our maritime interests. deliver the capabilities it will need to confront emerging challengTo complicate matters, the maritime environment cannot be es and threats in the decades ahead. Events such as the Deepwater looked at in isolation, and is very much connected to the aeroHorizon oil spill, the Fukushima earthquake and Tsunami, the space, land and cyber domains. groundings of the M/V Clipper Adventurer in the Canadian ArcAgainst the backdrop of the 9/11 attacks and acknowledgtic and the Royal Dutch Shell oil rig Kulluk off Alaska, the sinking ing that Canada and the U.S. are maritime nations connected to of the Republic of Korea Ship Cheonan by North Korean Forces, the world via an increasingly complex and potentially vulnerable and piracy in the Gulf of Guinea and Horn of Africa remind us intermodal global supply chain, North American Aerospace Dethat an "all-hazards" approach to information sharing is required. fence Command (NORAD) evolved to look at a broader specFor more than half a century, NORAD has contributed to the trum of threats and, in 2006, the two governments renewed the protection of North America and will continue to seize opportuAgreement to include the Maritime Warning Mission. nities, outpace all threats and remain the partner of choice with NORAD's Maritime Warning Mission has three main compodefence and security stakeholders. In the 21st century global econents. First, information sharing which consists of processing, asnomic and security environment, collaboration is indeed a stratesessing, and disseminating intelligence and information related to gic imperative. the respective maritime areas and internal waterways of, and the 20 APRIL/MAY 2013 www.vanguardcanada.com