National Defence Committee on April 29th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Kelly.

Madam Lambropoulos, go ahead for five minutes, please.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to both of our witnesses for being here to answer some of our questions today.

Based on the conversation that we're having, it seems like we don't know much because it's a domain that we don't have very much research on. Just in general, we rely very heavily on our allies in order to have a united front to protect ourselves.

What are some of the challenges or barriers specifically when it comes to an emerging domain such as this? What are the specific barriers that we have in front of us? Are there any strategies in place to make sure that we get to where we need to be in order to be effective?

[BGen Michael Adamson]

That's a great question, Mr. Chair.

I would characterize them as not necessarily barriers, but things that we're working on and things that we need to make sure that we better understand.

Space domain awareness would be a classic example. It's understanding what's going on in orbit and understanding what our adversaries and other companies are up to.

The domain is getting increasingly congested. There are far more actors in space than there used to be. It's not just nation-states that have the ability to do this now, but a significant number of commercial actors are out there. There's a lot of activity. It's about understanding what's going on and being able to prevent collisions or potential impacts out there. Space domain awareness is probably one of the larger challenges we're dealing with at the moment.

We maintain this awareness through a number of fronts. We have Canada's satellite, Sapphire, which contributes to the space surveillance network in the U.S. Sapphire contributes to the larger database, and then we get all sorts of great information in terms of global awareness of what's going on.

We're also part of an organization called joint commercial operations, which is almost like crowdfunding space domain awareness. It leverages a number of satellite observation stations on the globe, as well as radars, whether they be from academia, commercial companies or industry. All of those companies subscribe to the central database. They put all of their information in there—it's unclassified—and basically we collate all of that as one of the partnering nations. We're able to use that information to better understand what's going on in the domain as well.

It is a challenge, and certainly I don't think we'll ever say that we have too much ability to understand what's going on in the domain. From a Canadian perspective, it's these international efforts and collaboration that allow us to maintain a shared awareness.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you.

I appreciate that you brought up commercial actors. I know that Canada has an aerospace industry that is quite strong.

Ms. Mathyssen also raised this: Is there a specific way that we can get them involved in a strategy that isn't just about data and sharing data, but actually creating equipment that could eventually help us get to a better place?

[BGen Michael Adamson]

Mr. Chair, it's a great question.

I think it goes back to some of the comments that General Frawley made earlier.

We absolutely would love to collaborate more with industry and commercial entities in understanding what's going on and delivering space effects and, like I said, protecting our access to it in the face of potential adversarial actions, but that requires us to be able to have frank and at times classified discussions with our industry partners. It's something we need to work on and that we can do better here in Canada to make sure we're able to have those discussions with industry.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you.

I'll bring it to a different place. I know you touched on it a little bit once again.

What do you think an increase in launch schedules from China and Russia could potentially mean for Canada? Does it place us at a greater risk, or is there a threat to Canada? What do you think of those?

[BGen Michael Adamson]

We've seen a huge increase in launch pace over the last few years. It's gone from maybe 100 per year to hundreds of launches per year. Each one of those launches is potentially putting 50 or 60 satellites at a time in orbit. That increased pace of launch has both an upside and a downside.

There's an increased pace of launch because it's less expensive now. There's a lot of opportunity there for commercial and industry partners to take advantage of that.

Conversely, though, if it's some of our adversaries, we don't know what they're launching, necessarily. Understanding what they've launched, where they've launched, what orbit it goes into and then, when it gets up there, what it is doing are questions that we ask ourselves and work very hard to try to understand, because not all of that is necessarily for peaceful, academic or scientific use. There are, of course, activities that are nefarious in nature. We need to be able to attribute those activities.

The challenge in that regard is space domain awareness and understanding what's happening in the domain.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Ms. Lambropoulos.

I join Mr. Fillmore and Ms. Lambropoulos. We're trying to up the knowledge base of the community, and I appreciate that occasionally we'll lapse into acronyms. Perhaps you could just catch yourselves and disaggregate the acronyms for those of us who don't deal with this on a daily basis. Thank you.

Madame Normandin, go ahead for two and a half minutes, please.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Witnesses, several non-allied countries are interested in space for commercial reasons, but also for scientific reasons. Sometimes, these countries conceal military motives behind this scientific and commercial screen. China comes to mind, for instance. I'd like to hear your comments on that.

From our side, how can our military sector ensure validation of scientific and commercial projects from countries whose views are dissimilar from our own, and how do we ensure that we don't overlook something that's hidden behind a scientific or commercial screen?

[LGen Blaise Frawley]

Thank you for the question.

We don't have as much information on China as we do on other countries, and that's one of the problems. I, for one, would look at China's intentions in the Arctic, which might help draw connections with its intentions in space. Every summer, we see the Xue Long 2 going north. According to the Chinese, it's a scientific vessel. However, we're fairly certain that it's not. If we make the same connection with what they're doing in space, we really have to surmise what they're up to. What the Chinese do in space is often unclear.

[BGen Michael Adamson]

That's absolutely right.

China is not going to tell us what they're doing. They're not going to advertise and say that this is a satellite or this is a capability that we're using for this purpose. Even when they may hint at that, the fact of the matter is that we basically enter into that with the suspicion that whatever is going on is probably at least dual-purpose in nature. If it has an academic or scientific purpose, it probably has some kind of military or intelligence-gathering capability as well, because I don't think you can clearly differentiate between the two and compartmentalize those within the Chinese context. Therefore, all we can really do is to continue to watch to better understand and to try to infer from their activities and their actions what is going on.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, gentlemen.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

You have two and a half minutes, Ms. Mathyssen.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you.

Just to build on what we were talking about before and in terms of the private side and our arms trade treaties, we've talked a lot about China, but what about the other players around the world? Could you expand more on North Korea, Iran and India?

Canada does a lot of trade with countries like Israel in terms of the space domain. We've now put forward a motion to really heighten our arms trade controls and those arms trade treaties. Within two minutes, can you speak to that and to what that means in terms of space and those other players on the world front?

[BGen Michael Adamson]

Thank you for the question, and I wish myself luck.

It's a great question. I'm not sure I can speak to a lot of that.

At the moment, we're concentrating our efforts in the space division on working closely with our allies to understand the near and present threats from a military perspective. The obvious answer to that would be China. Russia would be another one, and we haven't talked a lot about Russia.

Russia is really a space power in decline. It continues to launch, but not nearly at the rate it did in the past, and I think certainly not at a rate it will continue to enjoy. I think the sanctions and the activities and the illegal conflict in Ukraine are having adverse effects on Russia's abilities to do all of that. Certainly it's losing commercial customers in terms of launch because of its activities in that regard. We are watching it carefully. It continues to field significant capabilities to deny us use of the domain, but we don't see it using the domain in nearly the same way or being nearly as reliant as we have been seeing.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

You have 30 seconds.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

I mentioned Israel, and you didn't respond. Do we share satellite space intelligence with them, and does the Arms Trade Treaty apply to them? How do we navigate that?

[BGen Michael Adamson]

I can't speak to that. The CF Intelligence Command is the organization with the Canadian Armed Forces that does any work in that regard. That's not something that we work in at all.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Mr. Bezan, you have five minutes.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank both of our witnesses for being here.

It's good to see you again, General Frawley. It's always great to have NORAD at the table.

General Adamson, welcome to the committee.

Just to drill down more on the nuclear weaponization of space, the U.S., back in the 1960s, did a number of nuclear tests. I think there were five under Operation Fishbowl. Knowing the impact back then, if Russia decided to target satellites, how big of a blast area would we potentially be talking about, and how many communication satellites and other satellites that we have in space would be impacted at the various levels? Has anybody done that analysis?

[BGen Michael Adamson]

Mr. Chair, that's a great question.

There are a lot of variables in the answer. It would really depend on the size of the weapon. That would obviously be something we would be interested to understand, if this were in fact a reality.

Where on orbit it would then be detonated is also a concern—low earth orbit, medium earth orbit, geostationary or somewhere in between—as it would certainly affect the blast pattern, or the blast radius, if you will. Whether or not those effects would then reach across various orbital domains would also be something we'd be interested to try to understand, as well as the long-term effects.

Obviously there would probably be destructive effects with those satellite vehicles that would be in the direct line of sight of such a blast. The follow-on concern then becomes the irradiated space that would exist afterwards, again depending on the orbital domain, that other satellites might be going through over the next period of time, whether that would be hours, days, weeks or what have you.

The expectation is that it would have a deleterious effect. Whether that would result in the destruction of those satellites or a reduced lifespan or would have no effect at all remains to be seen. Certainly when those tests were done in the 1960s, there wasn't nearly the on-orbit activity that we have now, so it would be kind of hard to assess that at the moment.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

I appreciate that. My understanding is that in one of those tests in particular, over a third of the satellites in orbit at that time were impacted because of both the after-effect plus the immediate blast. Given the exponential growth in satellites that are currently in our space, it would have a much greater impact and would impact the way we do business, as everybody relies on satellite communication.

Speaking about that satellite communication, we talk about NORAD modernization and we talk about the F-35s coming online. The DPU talks about having advance warning aircraft and command—AWACS.

What do we need in space to enable those platforms to do the NORAD mission, particularly in the Arctic?

[LGen Blaise Frawley]

Obviously, anything linked to ISR—intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance—is critical for us, especially polar over-the-horizon radar. Given where it's going to be, it'll communicate through SATCOM to get its information back to our headquarters.

Certainly with regard to SATCOM communications, as I said earlier, we have huge, gaping communication holes over northern Canada and over the Arctic. If we're going to reach out and touch the Russian bombers before they launch their cruise missiles, which is our goal, then we're going to have to be able to get a long way north, so we need communications that cover the entirety of the northern pole.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

I appreciate that, because I've seen the map that shows where we actually have our north warning system and how the entire interior of northern Canada and the entire Arctic archipelago, with the exception of Alert and maybe Resolute Bay, are completely bare naked. There is no surveillance there at all, so the over-the-horizon radar is important.

What about using LEOs—low earth orbit satellites—to help inform our early warning system as well? Is that something NORAD is looking at? Is that part of the intelligence gathering that space command is going to be needing?

[LGen Blaise Frawley]

What I can say, Mr. Chair, from a NORAD perspective, is that NORAD doesn't do space; we rely on space.

We describe what our requirements are. Then, on the U.S. side, the U.S. Space Command and the U.S. Space Force will determine the best way to deliver that. On the Canadian side, it would be DG Air and Space Force Development.

Again, we very clearly highlight what we need and where our shortcomings are, but we don't actually determine what is best suited, whether LEO, GEO, highly elliptical orbit, etc.