Navigating the Ice: Canada's Arctic Defence in an Era of Melting Barriers

The Arctic was once our shield — a vast, frozen silence that kept the world at bay. I'm going to show you how it's cracking open.

Each summer, satellites catch the same unsettling scene: the white lid of the North shrinking into blue. The Northwest Passage — the mythical route that lured explorers to their deaths — is no longer a fantasy or a cautionary tale. It’s becoming a shipping lane. Icebreakers and freighters slip through waters that once crushed steel, their wakes carving through a region once defined by inaccessibility.

And beneath the hum of engines and the creak of thawing ice lies a truth that Canadians have been reluctant to face: the Arctic is open for business, and open for conflict.

China calls itself a “near-Arctic state.” Russia has militarized its northern coastline. The United States claims rights of passage through what we call sovereign waters. What used to protect us — distance, cold, remoteness — now works against us. The ice no longer guards the gate. It reveals it.

The question is no longer whether the Arctic will open, but who will control it once it does.

The Current State: A Shield with Cracks

For decades, Canada has claimed ownership of the Arctic in the same way one might claim ownership of the moon — confident, symbolic, and largely untested. The sovereignty maps are clear. The reality on the ground — or rather, the ice — is anything but.

The Canadian Armed Forces are racing to close that gap. Operation LATITUDE, launched in the summer of 2025, is part of a quiet but significant shift: persistent patrols in the Western Arctic, closer coordination with the United States Coast Guard, and long-term plans for deeper cooperation with Indo-Pacific allies who increasingly see northern shipping as part of their future.

On paper, it’s a national assertion of presence. On the ground, it’s something more primal — a contest of endurance against a landscape that doesn’t forgive weakness. At remote outposts, soldiers track the wind chill in double digits below zero while radar operators scan for aircraft that might never appear. The mission is deterrence through visibility — to remind the world, and perhaps ourselves, that Canada is still watching.

But the cracks are visible.

The country’s next great leap in Arctic surveillance, the Arctic Over-the-Horizon Radar (A-OTHR) system, is years away from full deployment. When complete, it will peer thousands of kilometres beyond the horizon, extending NORAD’s watch into skies previously blind. The technology, developed with Australia, could redefine early warning. But it’s not here yet. Construction won’t finish until the decade’s end.

In the meantime, Canadian defence planners are forced to play chess on an incomplete board. We patrol what we can, when we can, with aging aircraft, overstretched personnel, and limited infrastructure. Between our scattered radar sites, vast stretches of sea remain unmonitored. A single submarine could glide undetected beneath the ice for days.

And yet, when a poll released in early 2025 revealed that over 40% of Canadians now rank Arctic infrastructure as a top national concern, it marked a subtle shift — a recognition that “sovereignty” isn’t a philosophical question anymore. It’s a practical one.

How long can a country claim to own what it barely occupies?

The Northwest Passage: The Door That Won’t Stay Shut

For centuries, the Northwest Passage was the stuff of legend — an idea that drowned men and broke ships. Now it’s the opposite: a map line being redrawn in real time, visible from space, debated in boardrooms.

Every year, the ice retreats a little further, and the world creeps closer. The legal argument is simple but explosive. Canada says the passage is internal water. The U.S. calls it an international strait. Both can’t be right.

As melting accelerates, so does traffic. Commercial shipping projections suggest transits could triple within a decade. That means not only cargo and tankers, but research vessels, “scientific” expeditions, and state-sponsored monitoring disguised as environmental study.

China’s Polar Silk Road strategy, for example, is couched in economic language — development, partnership, exploration. But beneath the rhetoric lies a pattern: dual-use missions, data collection, seabed mapping. When Chinese icebreakers like the Xue Long cruise through Arctic waters, they aren’t just studying ocean currents — they’re recording routes, signal strengths, and geospatial anomalies that could one day aid submarine navigation or satellite alignment. One of my friend's "P" is married to a BC Coast Pilot, and has never been asked to guide an artic vessel. I find that concerning. Some other countries, that follow along our same latitude, are more blatant. Its Northern Fleet has turned the Arctic into a testing ground for hypersonic missiles, while its massive nuclear icebreakers operate year-round. Every voyage shortens the distance between Siberia and the North Atlantic — and pushes influence closer to Canadian shores.

Even allies have blurred the lines. American officials, while cooperating through NORAD, have openly questioned Canada’s control of the passage, hinting that “freedom of navigation” extends north of Baffin Island. Tension is thick: the country that guarantees our continental defence also challenges our maritime sovereignty.

The consequences are more subtle than invasion. They manifest in erosion — legal, diplomatic, psychological. Each transit that goes unchallenged makes our claim weaker. Each unmanned crossing, each data buoy planted by a foreign vessel, eats away at the idea that this is “our” North.

And then there’s the danger we don’t see. The hybrid kind. Cyber intrusions into weather networks. GPS spoofing of aircraft signals. A sudden loss of communication from a radar site that turns out not to be a glitch, but a test. The Arctic, with its vast gaps and thin infrastructure, is the perfect theatre for grey-zone warfare — acts of aggression just subtle enough to avoid triggering a response.

The ice isn’t the only thing melting. So is the boundary between peace and conflict: 9,984,670 sq km land: 9,093,507 sq km water: 891,163 sq km

The Future: Machines in the Cold

If the 20th century Arctic was a story of exploration, the 21st will be one of automation.

Canada’s next line of defence isn’t more soldiers — it’s smarter sensors. Trials are already underway for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) capable of roaming beneath the ice for weeks, mapping terrain, detecting subs, and relaying data back to satellite uplinks. Imagine a silent fleet of robotic scouts drifting through the depths — invisible, tireless, immune to frostbite.

The same transformation is coming to the air. AI-assisted radars, like the A-OTHR, could soon merge data from satellites, drones, and sea buoys to detect patterns invisible to human eyes. In the near future, NORAD operators might not wait for radar blips — the algorithms will tell them what’s coming before it even enters the radar field.

That’s the promise by our current government.

The danger is dependency. Every layer of automation opens another door for interference. Hack one data node, and the network trembles. Spoof one algorithm, and a harmless vessel could be flagged as hostile — or worse, a real threat dismissed as noise.

And Canada’s northern infrastructure, already fragile, will have to support these high-tech systems in some of the harshest environments on Earth. The Polar Over-the-Horizon Radar (P-OTHR), scheduled for 2032, will need resilient power grids, secure communication towers, and reliable supply routes — things the North doesn’t yet have.

Technology can extend our reach, but it can’t replace presence.A radar tower can’t shake hands with an Inuit community leader.A drone can’t refuel in a blizzard.

To build security, Canada must also build permanence — the airfields, ports, and communities that make the Arctic livable, not just defensible. Otherwise, every new piece of equipment is just another outpost on borrowed ground.

Charting a Steadier Course Forward

The Arctic is changing faster than Canada’s policies can adapt. And that’s the real crisis.

Our traditional approach — patrol in the summer, retreat in the winter — is outdated. Melting ice means new lanes, longer seasons, and new types of risk. A year-round presence is no longer optional. It’s existential.

That presence must be dual-use: military and civilian. Ports that host navy vessels in August should serve cargo ships and supply missions in February. Airfields that launch surveillance drones should also evacuate medical emergencies from northern hamlets. Every dollar spent on defence infrastructure must double as an investment in community resilience.

Because sovereignty isn’t just enforced by radar — it’s lived by people. The communities that have endured the Arctic for millennia are Canada’s first line of observation, and too often, they’re treated as logistical challenges rather than strategic allies.

True Arctic security means putting Indigenous leadership at the centre — not as symbolic advisors but as operational partners. Their knowledge of currents, ice movement, and terrain has kept humans alive in this region longer than any drone battery could. Integrating that wisdom isn’t charity; it’s strategy.

Diplomacy must evolve, too. The NORAD renewal is crucial, but it can’t be our only card. Alliances with Japan, South Korea, and Nordic states are becoming more relevant as the Arctic joins the Indo-Pacific theatre of competition. These countries have as much to lose from an unstable polar region as we do — and often, more capability to help secure it.

The North is no longer remote. It’s connected — technologically, climatically, geopolitically. The melting ice isn’t a curtain rising on opportunity. It’s a warning flare.

The world is moving into Canada’s backyard. If we don’t anchor ourselves there — with presence, partnership, and resolve — we’ll wake up one day to find that the Arctic didn’t just melt. It moved on without us.

By John Heisler, ICBM Magazine Independent Canadian journalism on national defence, technology, and security innovation.

Bibliography

Canada. Department of National Defence. "Canadian Armed Forces Deploy on Multiple Arctic Operations This Season." News release. Ottawa: Department of National Defence, August 10, 2025.

Canada. Department of National Defence. "National Defence Announces Progress on the Arctic Over-the-Horizon Radar Project." News release. Ottawa: Department of National Defence, July 17, 2025.

Canada. Department of National Defence. "NORAD Modernization Project Timelines." Ottawa: Department of National Defence, 2025. Accessed October 5, 2025.

Canada. Office of the Prime Minister. "Reinforcing Canada's Security and Sovereignty in the Arctic." Backgrounder. Ottawa: Office of the Prime Minister, March 18, 2025.

Landriault, Mathieu and Jackson Walling. "Survey Finds Canadians Overwhelmingly Support Building Arctic Infrastructure." The Conversation, January 20, 2025.

L'Observatoire de la politique et de la sécurité de l'Arctique (OPSA). "Northerners See Trump's U.S. as Greater Threat to Arctic Than Russia: Poll." Global News, October 3, 2025.

U.S. Navy. "Northern Edge 2025 Kicks Off Across Alaska." News release. August 19, 2025.

U.S. Department of Defense. "U.S., Canada Strengthen Presence in Bering Sea." Defence Blog, September 1, 2025.

Yang, Jian. "China Launches the Polar Silk Road." Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). February 2, 2018.

References

 U.S. Department of Defense, "U.S., Canada Strengthen Presence in Bering Sea," Defence Blog, September 1, 2025.

 Canada, Department of National Defence, "National Defence Announces Progress on the Arctic Over-the-Horizon Radar Project," news release, Ottawa: Department of National Defence, July 17, 2025.

 Canada, Office of the Prime Minister, "Reinforcing Canada's Security and Sovereignty in the Arctic," backgrounder, Ottawa: Office of the Prime Minister, March 18, 2025.

 Mathieu Landriault and Jackson Walling, "Survey Finds Canadians Overwhelmingly Support Building Arctic Infrastructure," The Conversation, January 20, 2025.

 U.S. Navy, "Northern Edge 2025 Kicks Off Across Alaska," news release, August 19, 2025.

 Canada, Office of the Prime Minister, "Reinforcing Canada's Security and Sovereignty in the Arctic," backgrounder, Ottawa: Office of the Prime Minister, March 18, 2025.

 Canada, Department of National Defence, "Canadian Armed Forces Deploy on Multiple Arctic Operations This Season," news release, Ottawa: Department of National Defence, August 10, 2025.

 Jian Yang, "China Launches the Polar Silk Road," Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), February 2, 2018.

 Yang, "China Launches the Polar Silk Road."

 L'Observatoire de la politique et de la sécurité de l'Arctique (OPSA), "Northerners See Trump's U.S. as Greater Threat to Arctic Than Russia: Poll," Global News, October 3, 2025.

 Canada, Department of National Defence, "NORAD Modernization Project Timelines," 2025, accessed October 5, 2025.

 Canada, Department of National Defence, "NORAD Modernization Project Timelines," 2025, accessed October 5, 2025.