We are substantially increasing our surveillance capability. I've talked about some of the measures of doing that from a space-based process. Situational awareness is the foundation of understanding what's going on in the region. We are increasing the rate of activity and the complexity of the operations we're doing.
One of the comments I heard from the colonel was that we're not operating in the high north in bad weather in the winter. We just finished an exercise at the end of March in the high Arctic--it's one of three that we run on an annual basis--called Operation Nunalivut. We're not only increasing our capacity to survey through space-based systems and integrating underwater sensors with that; we're increasing the presence in the north.
One of the government announcements was on the intention to increase the size of the Canadian Ranger program fairly substantially. It had fewer than 4,000 people, and the intent is to increase it to 5,000. We have five Ranger patrol groups and only one of them is actually in the Arctic itself--1 Canadian Rangers Patrol Group. We have over 1,600 rangers in that program now. The intent is to increase it by just over 450 people. We have 56 communities in which rangers are based. We're opening five new locations. The rate of that increase is growing very rapidly. In the last six months, 122 rangers signed on, and another 35 will complete training in June.
I think you should understand that the Ranger capability for us, from a sovereignty perspective, is a force multiplier. The numbers are substantial, but people don't quite understand that these are community leaders who also serve.