Introduction

The Canadian landscape, once thought invulnerable due to both distance and proximity to the United States, now potentially faces a plethora of 21st century threats: ballistic missiles, hypersonic cruise missiles, stealthy drone swarms, and manned aircraft equipped with a variety of high-velocity projectiles. Moreover, Canadian Forces serving in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) face the same threat. So Canadian Forces (CF) personnel in both the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) and NATO are having to come to grips with an overarching approach to Integrated Air and Missile Defence (IAMD), which will be essential to the defence of Canadian Forces both at home and abroad as potential adversaries develop longer-range, faster, and more complex weapons. Ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and now the Middle East are demonstrating how the combination of missiles and unmanned aerial systems (UAS) have increased in capability and have created a significant asymmetry in which the cost of attacking has become significantly less than the cost of defending against them. For Canada, this creates an added impetus to both modernize and improve its ability to deter potential adversaries, while doing so in a way that is also as cost effective as possible.

The Policy Framework

It is within this context that the most recent Canadian 2024 Defence Policy Statement, Our North Strong and Free, committed to "further contributions to the integrated air and missile defence of Canada and North America". The growing variety and complexity of threats demands an increased investment in IAMD at home and abroad to ensure the CF is still able to operate effectively and contribute to collective security.

The NATO Example

The 2025 NATO policy statement on IAMD provides a useful example of the four functional areas needed in creating a viable system, namely: Air Surveillance, Battle Management Command, Control, Communications and Information (BMC3I), Active Air and Missile Defence, and Passive Air and Missile Defence. Moreover, effective coordination and integration among each of these functional areas is essential for a seamless and comprehensive IAMD posture, in order to minimize the consequence of any attack.

Air Surveillance

Threat detection is essential for the activation of appropriate defensive measures. The detection and tracking of all potential air and missile threats from a 360-degree perspective is a top priority to ensure sovereignty and territorial integrity. Robust continuous air surveillance is a precondition for adequate situational awareness and is crucial for effective IAMD. Therefore, the air surveillance architecture must be designed to provide persistent coverage, to detect and track any air and missile threats early in their trajectory, continuously monitor them, identify and assess their characteristics and predict their flight trajectories from surface to space, thus providing more time for appropriate responses and interception.

Such an air surveillance capability must now consist of a combination of a wide range of active and passive, static and deployable, military and civilian networked sensors employed to cover all ranges and altitudes. Both space-based data and other types of sensor data must provide early essential detection and tracking capabilities in particular now against low- and slow-flying threats.

Capable surveillance data fusion and analysis methods, including potentially using Artificial Intelligence (AI), advanced algorithms and machine learning techniques, are also critical for providing a coherent and accurate picture of the potential battlespace.

Battle Management, Command, Control, Communications and Information (BMC3I)

The IAMD system must be able to respond robustly to challenges of varying degrees of complexity and size requiring BMC3I, in particular Air Command and Control (Air C2) capabilities that can be both forward-deployed, employed, and sustained wherever and whenever required. The development, implementation and employment of the Air C2 capability must aim to ensure synergy between centralized control, allowing for strategic and operational direction and allocation of resources, and decentralized execution, allowing for flexible and responsive actions at tactical levels.

Network centric operations and information sharing are essential to achieving a common operational picture and enhanced situational awareness. The Air C2 capability must be able to facilitate seamless integration of sensors, operators and decision-makers across multiple structures, forces and platforms. The Air C2 construct must also be designed with resilience and redundancy to withstand disruption or attack.

Active Air and Missile Defence

IAMD has to include a comprehensive approach that combines various systems and technologies, able to operate at different ranges and altitudes, in order to provide a layered defence against all types of air and missile threats, thus increasing the overall effectiveness of defence by providing redundancy and improving the probability of successful interceptions.

The threat now posed by the Class 1 unmanned systems with a mass lower than 150 kg presents yet another set of challenges to operate in a multi-domain environment, within both domestic and deployed operating environments.

Active air and missile defence comprises the mission areas of airborne and surface-based IAMD, supported by other available means as appropriate. Any IAMD approach must be capable of executing both airborne air defence and ground or sea-based air and missile defence activities simultaneously, employing a modular, adaptable and reconfigurable mix of airborne and surface-based platforms.

Airborne defence requires assets with an all-weather, day or night capability. In addition, enabling capabilities such as electronic warfare, airborne early warning and control systems and air-to-air refuelling are required to enhance the overall effectiveness and flexibility of these defences.

Surface-based IAMD requires a mix of short, medium and long-range systems, ground-based or maritime-based, able to provide mutual and complementary support to mitigate the limitations of each system defence, and aiming to create a multi-layered defence that can address various types of air and missile threats, from small, low and slow-flying UAS to all types of cruise and ballistic missiles, including hypersonics.

Passive Air and Missile Defence

Passive air and missile defence measures must also be in place in order to minimize the vulnerability of critical infrastructure to air and missile threats, as a complement to active measures.

Passive air and missile defence measures include, but are not limited to, hardening and protection, camouflage, concealment, dispersion and redundancy features. A broad and systemic perspective needs to be adopted as regards the potential passive air and missile defence measures for any nation's critical infrastructure and assets, by considering resilience as a whole and not just the survivability of separate key elements.

An Integrated Air and Missile Defence for Canada

Efforts already underway in NORAD Modernization mirror this NATO policy construct as evidenced by projects such as Over The Horizon Radar (OTHR), Airborne Early Warning (AEW), Enhanced Satellite Communications Project Polar (ESCP-P), Future Combined Air Operations Centre Capability (FCC) and Ground Based Air Defence (GBAD) projects hopefully all being brought together in a multi-domain approach that integrates capabilities from all domains: air, land, sea, space, and cyber. The variety, complexity and potential volume of the threats necessitate a command-and-control system that leverages advanced capabilities, such as cloud architecture and AI, to facilitate seamless integration of sensors, effectors and decision-making processes across multiple structures, forces and platforms. Achieving an effective IAMD is as much about data integration as it is about the various active platforms being used. It also mandates continued close coordination and integration with the US given the 360-degree nature of the threats. Crucially, as recognized by the Government of Canada in 2025, this must also include Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) if it is to be effective.

Designing and building an improved IAMD in Canada requires a clear assessment of what it is that needs to be defended. This is defined as the Critical Asset List (CAL) which includes key infrastructure, facilities and resources that must be protected due to their strategic importance. While it includes traditional military infrastructure such as basing and command and control nodes, it also includes port facilities, power generation facilities, energy storage facilities and critical transportation routes, as demonstrated by Iran in the Middle East. In the Canadian context, that would include infrastructure like ports, nuclear power plants, oil refineries and other structures along our coasts and the St. Lawrence Seaway.

With the CAL established, it then becomes a question of priority and allocation in terms of both active air and missile defence, layered and diverse effectors to target incoming threats, and passive air and missile defence, camouflage and concealment, hardening, redundancy, with an intent to strike the right balance between infinite risk at one extreme and infinite cost at the other. Not everything in a nation as large and diverse as Canada can be actively defended, which means it is about choices. Making those choices in terms of identifying the most critical and at-risk assets allows for the creation of a Defended Asset List (DAL), which is a subset of the CAL, and facilitates a determination as to how best to defend them.

Canada's current IAMD capabilities consist of limited ground-based sensors and armed fighter aircraft augmented by US and NORAD sensors. Whether it be UAS, low-observable cruise missiles, hypersonic missiles or ballistic missiles, not even advanced sensors that provide full domain awareness from seabed to space will permit Canada to deny or defeat the scale and complexity of an attack like those being seen today in both Ukraine and the Middle East with our current capabilities. Without being able to deny or defeat, there is no deterrence. Achieving that deterrence will require a layered and multi-domain approach that includes air, land and sea-borne weapons based in Canada. Equally as important, the ability to leverage advanced sensors and platforms being delivered will require the design and fielding of a robust digital architecture that supports data movement and data fusion integrated with a command and control network that ensures that threats are seen and acted upon in increasingly reduced timelines and that any weapon used is the one best suited for the threat. As evidenced in the Middle East today, the use of a $3M missile against a $60K drone puts the defender on the wrong side of the cost curve and gives the attacker the advantage in the long run. That suggests that the full spectrum of systems must be introduced to the Canadian inventory and those systems would best enhance Canada's defensive capabilities if they are considered within both the domestic and deployed context. The IAMD required to protect the Canadian-led battle group in Latvia needs to be capable of doing the same things while integrating within the NORAD IAMD. The problem being solved is the same, the solutions applied should also be similar.

The Way Ahead

The complexity and 360-degree nature of the threat necessitate a continued and deep relationship with the United States and NORAD on IAMD. Whatever Canada leverages to improve IAMD in Canada, and its contribution to continental security, is equally as applicable to its efforts within NATO and the Indo-Pacific region. The IAMD threat in all theatres is varied and complex and solving it will require an integrated solution across multiple domains and nations. Canada's investment in IAMD will make Canada safer while better contributing to collective security and is essential to being able to deter, detect, deny and defeat any potential adversary.