Cancelled Canadian radar program is Sri Lanka's gain

A high-tech radar capable of monitoring small boats operated by drug dealers and terrorists and developed with Canadian tax dollars is being installed in Sri Lanka after the federal government decided it couldn't use the system.
The high-frequency surface wave radar, developed at a cost of $39 million by Ottawa defence scientists and Raytheon Canada Limited, had been hailed several years ago by federal officials as the only one of its kind in the world and a major boost for domestic security.
The federal government set aside $43 million to build and operate eight radar sites on the East and West Coasts as part of its push to improve security in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks on the U.S.
But the government has shut down the existing experimental radar sites in Newfoundland and the program has been cancelled. The project was derailed after one complaint was received that the radar interfered with civilian communications. The experimental radars had been operating for 10 years without a complaint.
But Raytheon Canada, which builds the high-frequency surface wave radar, is pushing ahead with marketing the system to other nations. It has sold the radar to Sri Lanka with the help of the Canadian Commercial Corporation, a Crown agency that helps firms market their products overseas. Other international customers are being lined up, said Raytheon Canada vice president Denny Roberts.
"The technology works," said Roberts. "Other countries don't seem to have a problem with it."
Roberts said the U.S. State Department informed the company on Jan. 15 that the high-frequency radar is not subject to U.S. government regulations since it is designed to track vessels within a nation's own waters and because of that is not considered military equipment.
In the past the State Department has prevented sales of Canadian defence products to other countries by citing regulations which can limit where equipment with U.S.-made parts might be sold.
Raytheon Canada, which is owned by a U.S. parent corporation, will now boost its marketing efforts on the high-frequency radar. "Now that means that all my people in Raytheon will be clued in to sell it worldwide," Roberts said.
Other nations besides Sri Lanka have expressed an interest in purchasing the radar.
The radar is unique in that it can track ships at much greater distances than regular surveillance systems. It can detect objects as far away as 200 nautical miles (370 kilometres) from Canada's coasts.
The information gathered by the radar network was to have been fed into the navy's surveillance centres in Halifax and Esquimalt, B.C. and shared with various federal agencies.
Canada has been leading development in the area of surface wave radar technology. The British government built a surface wave radar system during the Second World War, but it had limited range.
The technology had not been fully exploited in the aftermath of the war, but with recent advances in computer processing, scientists from Defence Research and Development Canada's Ottawa laboratories decided to revisit the idea.
DRDC Ottawa, one of the Defence Department's research branches, played a key role in developing the new radar system.
The system transmits high-frequency waves that follow the curvature of the Earth to detect and track objects hundreds of kilometres over the horizon. Regular radars are restricted to objects in their line of sight on the horizon. To gain its advantage, the high-frequency surface wave radar uses the ocean as a conducting surface to increase its range.
The main problem according to defence officials, is that Industry Canada is concerned the frequency the radar operates on could interfere with civilian communications. Under international communications agreements, the Canadian government has little choice but to deal with the matter and cannot simply ignore the problem, according to military officials.
But some defence analysts and industry representatives have said the easy way around that is to set aside higher frequencies, not used that often for civilian communications, exclusively for security use.
Industry officials said that the government may fund a research program in the coming months to try to work on getting the radars operating for Canadian use.
The Canadian navy had been hoping the radars would cut down on surveillance costs, in particular the flying time of Aurora maritime patrol planes. The radar could be used to pinpoint suspicious ships, after which Aurora aircraft could be directed to those vessels to conduct further surveillance

-David Pugliese, Ottawa Citizen