Angry in the Great White North

The Canadian military is looking at unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as a key component to fulfilling the mission set out by Prime Minister Stephen Harper that Canada assert its sovereignty over the Arctic:

The Canadian military plans to buy a fleet of remote-controlled aircraft to patrol the Arctic, an official told CBC News.

Lt.-Col. Wade Williams said the drones, known as unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, will be equipped with cameras, radar, radios, electronic sensors and possibly even weapons.

They will fly day-long surveillance flights over water, land and ice while being piloted by an air crew stationed on the ground at a control station that could be thousands of kilometres away.

One question will be, of course, who will provide the UAVs. This might be a bit tricky. The Americans have the Predator and the Global Hawk and many other UAV models. But the problem is that when it comes to Arctic sovereignty, and in particular the question of sovereignty over the waterways between Arctic islands, Canada and the United States are at odds.

Canada treats these straits in the Arctic Archipelago as internal waterways, while the US treats them as international waters.

Will the US intervene to keep American firms from providing cold-weather-capable UAVs that are destined to be used by Canada to enforce that contentious claim?

I wouldn't blame the Americans if they did, but it would damned inconvenient.

Certainly we could avoid the problem (and perhaps score a few points with Washington by not even forcing the issue) by getting UAVs from Europe.

Better yet, we could develop our own capability. A new Avro Arrow for Canadian engineers to design and build. It would take longer than just buying UAVs off the shelf, and that might be a problem, but if we can afford the time, the idea certainly appeals to me.

But this time, should we decide to go down this path, let's not have the same disappointing end to the story.