🇨🇦 Canada's Arctic Surveillance Is So Broken That The Coast Guard Is Now Doing The Air Force's Job

The Royal Canadian Air Force's MQ-9B SkyGuardian drones — the ones meant to provide Arctic surveillance — are delayed until 2028. So the Canadian Coast Guard is now deploying a Hermes 900 Starliner drone for Arctic test flights this summer to fill the gap, after a federal restructuring handed surveillance assets to the Department of National Defence, which promptly couldn't deliver. A civilian maritime agency is now providing an operational surveillance edge in the Far North because the military procurement system has collapsed under the weight of its own dysfunction.

This is Canada's sovereignty crisis in miniature. Russia and China are both expanding Arctic military capabilities at pace. Canada responds by deploying a coast guard drone as a stopgap while the air force waits years for equipment it should have ordered a decade ago. The Liberals spent fifteen years hollowing out defence procurement and now celebrate Coast Guard workarounds as innovation. The Arctic is Canada's most strategically vital territory and it is being watched by a fisheries boat with a camera strapped to it.

🍁 Maple Chronicles