Canadian satellites vulnerable to cyberattack: internal Defence note
Satellites vital to Canadian military operations are vulnerable to cyberattack or even a direct missile strike — just one example of why the country’s defence policy must extend fully into the burgeoning space frontier, an internal Defence Department note warns.
The Canadian military already heavily depends on space-based assets for basic tasks such as navigation, positioning, intelligence-gathering, surveillance and communications. Canada is also working on the next generation of satellites to assist with search-and-rescue and round-the-clock surveillance of maritime approaches to the country, including the Arctic.
But those important roles could be endangered as technological advances and lower costs allow more countries, including adversaries, to cause trouble in orbit.
Powers such as China and Russia are developing the ability to wage technological attacks in space, the note points out.
“Easier access could also open the door to nonstate actors or to failed states with nothing to lose from disrupting space.”
Canada’s new defence policy underscores the importance of space, creating a need for “innovative investment” to ensure National Defence has the tools and know-how to fend off threats, the internal document adds.
A copy of the note, Space Technology Trends: Threats and Opportunities, was recently obtained by The Canadian Press through the Access to Information Act.
Several sensitive passages were stripped from the note, prepared last November for the deputy minister of National Defence.
In a statement, the department called the intention to protect and defend military space technology a “very important change” in the new policy.
“What ‘defending and protecting’ these assets means in practice will evolve, as technology and international discussions mature.”
Despite public perception, the militarization of space actually happened decades ago, said Dave Perry, vice-president and senior analyst at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.
“Militaries the world over depend on an extraordinary amount of infrastructure that’s spacebased, even if there are no physical weapons in space,” he said in an interview.
“Space is well-emerged, but we keep calling it emerging.”