Vanguard Magazine

A R C T I C www.vanguardcanada.com OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2025 21 rapidly changing Arctic environment. Cue- ing and complementary data from satel- lites, Allied surface ships, submarines and aircraft, networks of acoustic arrays in the approaches and at carefully selected choke- points, and mobile sensors on UUVs and autonomous underwater vehicles for pur- suit will be keys to success. The surveil- lance solution will require a high level of equipment and operational investment to make it work; it remains to be seen whether the government will back its promises for northern sovereignty with allocation of the necessary resources. References: 1. An unmanned (or uncrewed) under- water vehicle (UUV) is any vehicle that can operate underwater without a human occupant. 2. Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, "Arctic charting," in Nautical Charts and Services, last modified 17 May 2023. https://www.charts.gc.ca/ arctic-arctique/index-eng.html. (Ac- cessed 11 September 2025.) 3. Ron Weber, Globe and Mail, 6 De- cember 2011, https://www.the- globeandmail.com/news/national/ from-the-archives-russian-maps- suggest-soviet-subs-cruised-canadian- arctic/article4180292. (Accessed 10 Feb 2020.) While the assertions of this article are possible, it is considered unlikely that information from covert Soviet deployments would make its way to unclassified charts in the public domain. 4. For example, the Blackwing UAV can be embarked in US SSNs. Blackwing employs an advanced, miniature electro-optical and infrared payload, an anti-spoofing module GPS and secure digital datalink. Cmdre Larry Hickey RCN (Ret'd) is a vet- eran of both the RCMP and the RCN, hav- ing commanded submarines, a frigate, and the Canadian Atlantic Fleet. He is a licenced Master Mariner and holds a PhD in Marine and Coastal Environmental Management. He remains active as a sea-going ship mas- ter, carrying out multi-beam hydrographic charting in the Arctic, as well as areas of the U.S. and Canadian eastern seaboard. and poor visibility, and may lack the power and endurance to stem the strong currents in shallow channels. Underwater Surveillance Technologies Undersea operations should be viewed in terms of undersea families of systems and distributed networks. Conceptually, net- works of crewed and uncrewed sensors from the ocean bottom upwards through the water to the space above would form a single system of systems. As such, sub- marines being part of this system would increasingly need to shift from being front- line tactical vessels to being co-ordination platforms that can host other elements of surveillance technology. For example, sub- merged submarines are now capable of co- vert deployment and control of uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs). 4 Large UUVs and other smaller, less de- tectable systems increasingly may be used rather than submarines for tactical mis- sions in the Canadian Arctic. These mis- sions would include coastal intelligence gathering, surveillance, and electronic warfare. For survivability, sophisticated counter-detection technologies need to be developed for UUVs that complement host submarines. The technology of traditional naval sen- sors (radars and sonars) has come a long way in the past 30 years, becoming ever more sensitive and discriminating, and in- habiting much wider spaces of observation from space to ocean depths. Advances in in- formation systems (especially automation, networking, and digital data management/ communications) have made it possible to handle and integrate massive amounts of data. As well, increasing miniaturization of sensing and motive technology means that very capable and small platforms can under- take missions only previously possible with crewed vehicles. At the same time, some technologies or sensing mechanisms identi- fied during the Cold War still seem yet to be unrealized or at least are of marginal utility in modern anti-submarine warfare. Apart from the fleeting opportunities of- fered by submarines exposing themselves, such technologies as Infra-Red, ELINT, radar and optical seem to offer little val- ue, and especially relative to a submarine presumed to be under ice. Other sensing technologies such as turbulent wake de- tection, LLTV, gravimetry, and chemical detections require close proximity to the target and may only be useful with pre- cise cueing. LIDAR has some promise as a confirmation sensor by aircraft but will be limited over ice. This leaves as the work- horses of submarine detection, active/ passive acoustics and Magnetic Anomaly Detection (MAD). Notwithstanding the challenging Arctic acoustic environment, these methods of detection are continuing to advance in sensitivity and deployability, offering novel approaches to the underwa- ter surveillance problem. Climate Change Predictions suggest that the present rate of melting will result in an ice-free Arctic for some part of the summer by the mid–2030s to 2040s. The Arctic Ocean will continue to refreeze in the winter months, but this ice will be first-year ice as opposed to the multiyear or permanent ice cover, and thus thinner and softer. This new accessibility will lead to increased marine traffic in pas- sages that have seldom, if ever, seen ships and will add to the complexity of the sur- veillance problem. Of greater concern for land-based systems and those with shore- terminations for sea-based structures, cur- rent models predict that the extant area of permafrost will decrease by 37 to 81 per cent by end of the century. This melting will alter surface hydrology and groundwa- ter regimes and negatively affect landscape processes. Thawing of submerged perma- frost creates an unstable seafloor in which sinkholes can develop rapidly and unex- pectedly, potentially disrupting arrays or cabling buried there. Methane, stored in the permafrost and in crystallized form on the seafloor, accelerates global warming, in turn causing more thawing of permafrost, methane release and instability of terrain and seabed. Conclusion The future of Arctic underwater surveil- lance lies in system-of-systems integration combining space, surface, subsurface, and seabed systems, with its constituent parts constrained by the frequently harsh and Polar Bear in Davis Strait summer 2024 (Photo by author)

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