Yes, sir, the words we would use would be “situational awareness”. How would you know what's going on in the area over which you claim jurisdiction? There are a number of means by which we do that. I have no doubt that there are some very substantial projects coming online, some of them already here, some of them still on the books, but a fairly aggressive timeline of bringing them on.
I already made some of my comments about how vast this area is, so there's a great deal of emphasis being placed on initially space-based programs. Polar Epsilon is a project to provide space-based situational awareness. We have recently gained access to a second satellite that has been launched, RADARSAT-2, which we have already validated through some of the exercising that we're doing, one as late as earlier this month, Operation Nunalivut.
There's an intent to progress that Polar Epsilon project to a phase two. That would see the launch of three more satellites. The first launch is in 2014, and we would anticipate a full operating capability to be online by 2017. By “full operating”, I mean there would be persistent coverage of the area above 65 degrees north. So from a space-based surveillance system, there are some fairly aggressive programs being brought online.
We're also conducting at the moment a technology demonstration phase of one of the things I heard a previous witness talking about, and that is choke point operations. There's a technology demonstrator under way in Gascoyne Inlet called Northern Watch, which is attempting to determine how we can bring together a series of sensors, space-based and underwater sensors, as well as surveillance forces that we would deploy on a periodic basis, to be able to establish a more coherent surveillance picture as to what's going on above and under the water. That technology demonstrator is approaching the stage of going to a second stage of operational input later this year.