Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for your invitation, I would like to point out that I am appearing before your committee on the 85th anniversary of Canada's Air Force.
Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to speak about NORAD in general, and in particular, about the events of 18 February 2009 involving Russian military aircraft that approached Canada and the United States.
The members of Canada's military, working in a myriad of roles to defend North America, appreciate your interest and continued support.
Before I go into detail about the February 18 incident, I feel that it is important to provide some background on NORAD, on my mission as commander of the Canadian NORAD region, and on some of the differences between sovereign air space and the Canadian Air Defence Identification Zone, CADIZ.
NORAD has a long history of success as an integrated by-national command, providing aerospace warning and aerospace control of North America. We are now in our 51st-year, and the Command continues to serve as an excellent example of the close and cooperative relationship between Canada and the United States in ensuring the defence of North America.
Prior to the events of September 11, 2001, NORAD was focused primarily on the air approaches to North America, concentrating its attention on defending Canada and the United States against threats from foreign militaries. However, as demonstrated on 9-11, there are threats that come from organizations and actors other than nation-States, using non-conventional tactics and weapons. We call this the asymmetric threat, and it has increased NORAD's attention on the interior of North America, even while we maintain our vigilance outward for classic symmetrical military threats.
During the last renewal of the NORAD Agreement, the governments of Canada and the United States decided to enhance NORAD to include a maritime warning mission alongside our aerospace control and aerospace defence role. The maritime warning mission leverages NORAD's long-established command and control mechanisms and information-sharing arrangements between Canada and the United States to ensure the security of the maritime approaches to North America.
I command NORAD'S Canadian region, working alongside my partners in the NORAD Alaska region and in the continental U.S. region. I am responsible to the commander of NORAD, General Gene Renuart, who answers to the Government of Canada through the Chief of Defence Staff and to the American government through the Secretary of Defense.
The NORAD agreement-mandated aerospace warning mission requires the detection, validation, and warning of attack against North America by aircraft, missiles, and space vehicles. This is achieved by the processing and assessing of information on global aerospace activities. Our areas of interest are not geographically bound by this mission, as threats could originate anywhere in the world. The aerospace control mission includes the responsibility to monitor and address all unwanted and unauthorized objects approaching or operating within North America. This requires a range of capabilities to enable detection, tracking, interception, identification, shadowing, and in the extreme, diversion or destruction of manned or unmanned air vehicles that are assessed to pose a threat to North America.
When airborne objects are detected approaching Canada or the United States without correlated flight information, actions are taken to validate NORAD systems to ensure that they are performing correctly and to research the identity of the contact in real time. This is conducted through coordination with civilian agencies, such as NAV CANADA and the U.S Federal Aviation Authority, along with law enforcement agencies and allied militaries. When these efforts cannot determine an object's origin or intent, military fighters are used to provide visual identification. Once an approaching aircraft has been identified by NORAD, it may be shadowed from the air or monitored from the ground to ascertain intent and to prevent unauthorized and unwanted aircraft from entering North American air space or interfering with safe commercial flight activity.
In its most extreme form, NORAD's mission includes the application of deadly force to destroy approaching or dangerous objects and aircraft when specifically authorized.
Canada's sovereign airspace includes the airspace above Canada's territory, territorial seas, archipelagic and internal waters. Both Canada and the United States claim 12 nautical miles from land as territorial seas in accordance with international law.
Our sovereign airspace differs from what we describe as the “air defence identification zone”, or ADIZ. The ADIZ is an area encircling the continental land mass of Canada and the U.S., established to facilitate NORAD's efforts to monitor the approaches to North American. It is primarily within this zone that the identification, location and control of perspective unknown and/or unauthorized aircraft are performed in the interest of national security.
The Canadian Air Defence Identification Zone, or CADIZ, generally extends further from land than the 12 nautical miles claimed as sovereign airspace. The exception to this is in the Arctic Archipelago, where the outer boundary of the CADIZ follows the 72nd parallel and thus positions the CADIZ entirely within sovereign airspace.
The boundaries of the CADIZ and requirements for transit are openly published in recognized and internationally available flight planning publications. However, these requirements are not legally enforceable beyond the limits of sovereign airspace. Our actions within the CADIZ, but outside the 12-nautical-mile limit, cannot interfere with other aircraft operations, unless there are indications of hostile intent.
However, Canada and the United States have internationally recognized responsibilities to ensure the safe and effective use of international airways that approach and transit North America. It is only through timely, advanced coordination via accepted channels, using recognized procedures, that aircraft can operate safely.
The internationally recognized process—the ICAO or International Civil Aviation Organization and the FAA or Federal Aviation Administration procedures—for notification of a flight into international airspace in proximity of another nation's boundaries is via a flight plan filed with a recognized air traffic control authority. In Canada, this is NavCanada. A flight plan will ensure that other airspace users, be they civil or military, will be aware of the activity. For a pilot, situational awareness of other aircraft is a basic tenet for aircraft safety.
While it is possible to operate aircraft safely in international airspace without filing such a flight plan, it requires technological support to guarantee safe separation from other aircraft operating under such procedures. This can be in the form of on-board radar systems, as is the case with airborne early warning aircraft, or of radar control from other support units, such as an aircraft carrier. Such flight operations are said to be operating under legally required “due regard”, and they require the organizations using them to ensure safe operations. Where aircraft operate without the on-board systems or support to maintain safe separation from other traffic, their conduct is characterized as unsafe.
“Due regard” is a recognized procedure applicable to military aircraft, first promulgated in the Chicago Convention of 1944, article 3, and endorsed by ICAO, NavCanada, and the FAA.
In the absence of a filed flight plan for aircraft flying in proximity to another nation's boundaries, there is no way to ensure the required information reaches all military and civilian participants involved in aerospace and air traffic control to ensure flight safety.
For example, the bilateral Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), signed between the United States and the then Soviet Union in 1991, includes a provision for the United States and the Russian Federation to provide each other notification of the relocation of air-breathing nuclear weapons platforms—such as long-range bombers—between named bases in each country within a set period of time after the aircraft has been moved. I repeat: after the aircraft has been moved, not before.
However, this does not in itself constitute flight notification of aircraft approaching North America, nor does it answer to the need for improved flight safety, as movement of other aircraft types and other flight activity are not required under START. START does not provide advance notification of flights, nor does it provide the details of destination, routing, timing, altitude and air speed necessary to permit identification and deconfliction with other aircraft activity. The treaty was not intended to address real time actions by either nation. It is a method of accounting for nuclear forces and was designed as a confidence-building measure in the waning days of the Cold War.
It is not unexpected for foreign militaries to conduct flight operations outside their sovereign airspace in the pursuit of training and execution of assigned missions. Canada also conducts flights in the international airspace beyond our 12-nautical-mile limit, in support of operations in the high seas, transit to overseas theatres, and in the conduct of training.
As stated at the onset, it is NORAD's mission to respond to all unidentified or unauthorized flight activity approaching or operating within North America, whether the flight turns out to be accidental or intentional, military or civilian, allied or non-allied. Until the identification and intent have been determined, we do not have the complete picture of who or what we are dealing with and must treat all incidents equally. That is NORAD's mission.
The flight by two Tupolev 95 Bear H on February 18, 2009 is typical of flights conducted by Russian Federation strategic long-range aviation (LRA) aircraft since the resumption of out-of-area patrols, as announced in August 2007 by then-president Vladimir Poutine.
The aircraft entered the CADIZ at approximately 5:22 p.m. Ottawa time without a filed-flight plan or other coordinating information. As is our mission, NORAD CF-18 alert fighters were committed to identify the traffic. Typically, NORAD fighters are tasked to determine aircraft type and nationality, and to assist in providing information necessary to determine whether the traffic constitutes a threat.
The NORAD intercept confirmed the aircraft as Russian Tu-95 Bear H, and identified two aircraft flying in a lead-trail formation, with the aircraft in the rear three nautical miles behind the one in front, on a course towards Canadian territory. Following identification, the CF-18s maintained a safe distance of approximately 10 nautical miles, and were soon instructed to return to base. As the fighters were preparing to depart the scene, they were tasked by NORAD ground controllers to make three formatted radio calls to the Russian aircraft pursuant to the 1991 Canada-Russia Agreement on the prevention of dangerous military activities. A radio call was made warning "CLOSE TO TERRITORY" at approximately 5:33 p.m. Ottawa time, after which the Russian aircraft were observed changing their course towards the west.
The CF-18s continued their flight back to base as the Tu-95 H aircraft continued west through the CADIZ, monitored by ground radar sites. At 6:05 p.m., the aircraft departed the Canadian ADIZ and entered the Alaskan ADIZ, at which time monitoring continued by the Alaskan NORAD region.
Once they were identified, it was clear these aircraft did not pose a military threat to North America. Their closest approach to the Canadian land mass was 41 nautical miles, or approximately 76 kilometres. The conduct and airmanship of the air crew was very, very professional.
I must point out that 41 nautical miles at the speed of the Bear represents anywhere from three to five minutes from our domestic territorial air space.
However, we wish to see this professionalism extended to the timely and transparent communication of flight activities that approach or operate near the sovereign territory of North America. The commander of NORAD, with the support of both the Canadian and American governments, has engaged his Russian military counterparts in the past to encourage the exchange of flight information. While there is no international legal obligation to require the Russian Federation to provide this information, we believe it is in all of our nations' interests to contribute to flight safety, particularly when operating in an environment as austere and difficult as the Arctic region.
As commercial traffic increases in the area, all three countries, along with the other Arctic nations, share responsibility for search and rescue activities, as well as a moral obligation to do all we can to protect this fragile environment. The Canadian Forces, along with our American partners in NORAD, look forward to cooperating with our Russian counterparts, as we continue to assess the effects of the changing global climate on the Arctic. However, any decision to pursue a formal agreement on the exchange of flight information will be a decision by the government involved—not by NORAD or the Canadian Forces.
Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, the men and women of NORAD on both sides of the border stand ready 24/7 to respond to all incidents—north, south, east, and west—to ensure the security and defence of North America.
I'll be happy to take your questions.
