"New Sats Will Give Canada 'Complete Picture' of Maritime Activity"
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| Public domain image courtesy of http://pnt.gov/public/images/. Links verified 11/9/2015 |
Soon After the events of 9/11 the U.S. Coast Guard joined the CIA and the NSA in the "National Intelligence Community", a statutorily defined group of mostly three letter agencies responsible for U.S. intelligence. The Coast Guard's intelligence function was to establish and maintain "Maritime Domain Awareness" or MDA. MDA is simply the ability to know who and what are out there on our domestic waters out to the edge of our EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone). After the attacks in India which have been proven to be launched from the sea all coastal states have shown an increased interest in MDA. Canada is no exception and is preparing to create a three satellite system that will help Canada's maritime authorities establish and maintain deeper and broader levels of MDA. No one system gives a complete picture, vendor hype aside. Intelligence is a cooperative, and analytic endeavor that requires information form all sorts of sources. But the overhead view is always very comprehensive and can always stand improvement. DEFENSE NEWS .COM published the story that we link you to below describing Canada's most recent move into 21st century MDA.
FROM DEFENSE NEWS.COM
VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA — Canada’s military plans to boost its maritime surveillance capability by orbiting a new satellite constellation by 2018.
The Canadian government announced in late January that it would proceed with the Radarsat Constellation Mission (RCM), a constellation of three radar-imaging satellites that will keep eyes on maritime and Arctic areas and help monitor forestry and agriculture resources.
The Canadian Space Agency has let a CAN $706 million (US $691 million) contract to pay MDA of Richmond, British Columbia, to build, launch and initially operate the RCM.
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