Maritime surveillance: What the expanded NORAD will build on
Marine Security Operations Centres will an important Canadian contribution.
Best-known for tracking the skies for Soviet bombers, NORAD has a new responsibility: the oceans: Canada and the U.S. worry about terrorist threats along the coasts...
It's 8 a.m. on a weekday and representatives from Canada's front-line security agencies have huddled in the navy's Pacific headquarters at Esquimalt, B.C., to discuss looming threats confronting the country.
The object of their interest? Ships. Some 500 of them found in the waters off Canada's west coast at any given time — fishing boats, passenger ferries and mammoth cargo ships laden with containers that move the world's commerce...
And a nondescript office building at Canadian Forces Base Esquimalt promises to be the new front line for the decades-old defence alliance that once protected the continent from the threat of Soviet bombers. This building houses a marine security operations centre, one of two in Canada...
Each weekday morning, representatives from National Defence, Transport Canada, the RCMP, the CBSA, the Coast Guard and the fisheries department gather at the operations centre to discuss the possible threats...
Another team does the same job in Halifax for the Atlantic Ocean and eastern Arctic. At any given time, the two centres are monitoring some 1,000 ships of all sizes.
(A third centre, overseen by the RCMP and likely to be built somewhere in the Niagara Region, will keep vigil over the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway, which were actually flagged by the Senate defence committee as having the "greatest potential for terrorist activities.")..
The new emphasis on maritime security comes almost three years after the Senate defence committee sounded the alarm about Canada's unguarded coastlines, warning "they are vast, they are vulnerable, and, unfortunately, they are largely unattended."..
Best-known for tracking the skies for Soviet bombers, NORAD has a new responsibility: the oceans: Canada and the U.S. worry about terrorist threats along the coasts...
It's 8 a.m. on a weekday and representatives from Canada's front-line security agencies have huddled in the navy's Pacific headquarters at Esquimalt, B.C., to discuss looming threats confronting the country.
The object of their interest? Ships. Some 500 of them found in the waters off Canada's west coast at any given time — fishing boats, passenger ferries and mammoth cargo ships laden with containers that move the world's commerce...
And a nondescript office building at Canadian Forces Base Esquimalt promises to be the new front line for the decades-old defence alliance that once protected the continent from the threat of Soviet bombers. This building houses a marine security operations centre, one of two in Canada...
Each weekday morning, representatives from National Defence, Transport Canada, the RCMP, the CBSA, the Coast Guard and the fisheries department gather at the operations centre to discuss the possible threats...
Another team does the same job in Halifax for the Atlantic Ocean and eastern Arctic. At any given time, the two centres are monitoring some 1,000 ships of all sizes.
(A third centre, overseen by the RCMP and likely to be built somewhere in the Niagara Region, will keep vigil over the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway, which were actually flagged by the Senate defence committee as having the "greatest potential for terrorist activities.")..
The new emphasis on maritime security comes almost three years after the Senate defence committee sounded the alarm about Canada's unguarded coastlines, warning "they are vast, they are vulnerable, and, unfortunately, they are largely unattended."..
posted by Mark, Ottawa at 7:59 a.m.
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