Thank you very much.
As the chair said, my name is Rob Huebert. I'm a professor at the University of Calgary, but I'm also the director of the Centre for Military Security and Strategic Studies.
The focus of my five minutes is to introduce the concept of why we are actually doing NORAD modernization and how serious it is for Canada. We are seeing, since approximately 2002, efforts that have redeveloped the nuclear deterrent system. We, of course, have had the narrative that there was a peace dividend, that in fact the use of force, more or less, had been eliminated at the end of the Cold War. But if we look very closely at the developments particularly of our enemies, Russia and China, and also in terms of our ally, the United States, we will see—and it follows very closely to some of the issues that Professor Hickey just raised—that the technologies of the delivery system of nuclear weapons have fundamentally changed this balance.
Canada now faces an existential threat to the possibility of becoming engaged in a nuclear war if, in fact, a deterrent system is not maintained. What we have to understand is that the new geopolitical transformations that have been occurring since the early 2000s now mean that the nuclear deterrent system that most people have assumed existed, the idea that we will be able to detect and fire our missiles at them when they fire their missiles and that knowledge, the MAD policy, mutual assured destruction, will prevent us from ever engaging in the use of nuclear weapons against each other.... I would contend that the technological and geopolitical transformations have, in fact, fundamentally changed that to the degree that Canada now faces the reality that it must demonstrate with its allies that it has a war-fighting capability in a nuclear environment to actually act as a deterrent.
In other words, we have to show that we can actually fight our enemies in such an environment to ensure that they never engage in a fight in the first place. The challenge we are facing now is the technological challenges are vast, but even more important, there is the danger, whenever you are getting into such a sensitive system, that we may find ourselves in a war-fighting environment. This means that we not only have to worry about the deterrent forces but we also have to worry about the ability to actually fight if we find ourselves in it.
One of the contexts that is often lost in all of our discussions is that we are seeing a massive modernization of the nuclear capabilities of the Americans, Russians and Chinese along with the lesser powers. We know that China is changing from a limited deterrent stance of 300 nuclear weapons to where the United States Department of Defense now predicts at the end of the decade there will be up to 5,000 weapons. We know about the Russians in terms of some of the missile delivery systems that we have talked about already in this meeting, the hypersonics, but we also have maritime delivery systems, such as Poseidon, that are designed to be fast, stealth and undetectable, which again goes to the point.
The United States is about to entirely replace its deterrent force. They are changing from a triad system into a fourth leg of introducing air-launched nuclear-capable missiles. We also have to take into consideration not only facing our enemies, but the impact of the Trump effect which, of course, is causing serious questions over our aligned systems.
What are the main attributes of this to Canada? First and foremost, a nuclear weapon environment has fundamentally shifted, and Canada has to appreciate that if it is to ensure the security of Canadians, we are in fact willing to take up this necessity to demonstrate that we can in fact engage and stop attacks on and over Canadian soil. Russia, China and the U.S. have been rebuilding their weapons and delivery systems, and that is the real challenge Canada faces.
Deterrence now means that you need to show that you can fight a nuclear war, not merely respond to one. Ultimately, NORAD must be able to detect new delivery systems. NORAD also must show that it can respond and respond quickly. No longer is it only required that we give warning of any incoming missiles, but we now actually have to go out and be able to defend against the delivery systems that will be bringing in the hypersonics, the Poseidons and so forth. Ultimately, the system has to be as fast and of the highest level of technology possible. Even in spite of the difficulties we are having with our American ally, almost all of these systems are ultimately tied to the Americans or American technology.
Ultimately, the speed of the threat is increasing so much that, in Canada's modernization, as much as we are trying to catch up, the question still remains whether we are doing enough to avoid what many predict is to be the next war. Therefore, NORAD modernization is not just simply about getting the most recent equipment to try to show the Americans that we are a trustworthy ally; it is truly about doing what is necessary to protect Canadians from the most serious existential threat we have faced in a lifetime.
Thank you very much.