Canadian Armed Forces | More than 60 million for balloons

Balloons in the sky? It’s not from yesterday! And Canada has its share of aerostatic stories. Here are a few.

Andre Duchesne

The Press

Since 2009, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) has spent $62.6 million on the purchase and maintenance of a Permanent Surveillance System (PSS), including aerostats (tethered balloons), intended to ensure the detection and the observation of threats.

These systems ensure the protection of military installations, but also that of other so-called critical infrastructures. The CAF notably used them during the Vancouver Olympics in 2010, at the G20 summit in Toronto in 2010, near their bases in Afghanistan as well as at the G7 Summit in June 2018 in Charlevoix.

“The initial contracts were for approximately $26 million combined. Since that time, we have combined and modified the systems to meet the changing needs of the CAF. The total value since 2009 is approximately $62.6 million,” the Armed Forces said in an email exchange with The Press.

Initially, the CAF did business with Thales Canada and Rheinmetall Canada (formerly Oerlikon), which remains the sole supplier. The army has eight SSP units in stock¹.

The balloons used by the CAF are not stratospheric like the one shot down by an American F-22 on February 4 from 18,300 meters (60,000 feet) above Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Far from there ! These systems are in fact made up of an “aerostat equipped with an electro-optical sensor operating at 300 meters above the ground” and a “permanent surveillance tower of 32 meters mounted on a trailer at the end of which an electromagnetic sensor and a radar (optional) are installed,” reads Rheinmetall Canada’s website.

The type of balloon employed by the CAF is said to be captive. “The aerostats are attached to a docking station and are recoverable,” we were told, adding that they had never lost a single one of these systems.

Canadian Space Agency

Since February 10, 11 and 12, when suspicious flying objects were shot down over North America, everyone has been able to understand that spy balloons and weather balloons and other aircraft used to various searches were very many in the sky.

In Canada, the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) notably uses stratospheric balloons and makes annual launches².

According to the CSA, these balloons, as high as the Eiffel Tower, can reach 42,000 meters in altitude, and this, at a cost up to 40 times lower than that of a satellite. Moreover, the CSA allows scientists to use these flights for experiments.

This was the case for Yves-Alain Peter, full professor in the engineering physics department at Polytechnique Montréal. “We had placed our gas sensors on one of these balloons,” he said. For us, it was necessary to cross a certain layer of the atmosphere to see the differences in composition and to measure gaseous concentrations at different altitudes. »

In recent years, Environment Canada has also used weather balloons. During the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games, weather balloons were released four times a day in Whistler and CAF Base Comox, Vancouver Island.

Media reports broadcast in 2018 and 2019 also indicate the use of weather balloons by the federal agency.

And the intelligence services?

The Press also contacted the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) to find out if they were concerned about the spy balloon issues and what their means of action were.

CSIS spokesman Brandon Champagne replied that the organization uses all the powers conferred on it to investigate threats to national security.

His colleague Evan Koronewski of the Communications Security Establishment said: “CSE is working with its national security and intelligence partners, including the Canadian Armed Forces, to support the Government of Canada in relation to recent events concerning objects observed at a very high altitude. Canadian national security officials are working closely with our American counterparts on this issue. »

As for the working techniques used, they are a matter of secrecy.

In 1962, a CIA balloon fell in New Brunswick

In the fall of 1962, David McPherson, a lumberjack in New Brunswick, discovered a mysterious fiberglass box attached to a balloon in a forest near Lutes Mountain, northwest of Moncton. It took 55 years to solve the mystery; it was a CIA spy balloon intended to fly over the USSR.

This was reported by journalist Shane Fowler in a report by CBC News released in July 2017¹. A few days before, the CBC had published a report indicating that the mystery of the discovery of Lutes Mountain remained unsolved. Among other things, there was a photo of the gondola-shaped box. Very quickly, listeners made the right connections.

The 181 kg box looked unmistakably like those used by the CIA for the “Genetrix Photography” project which, for a few years from 1956, was intended to photograph different sites in several communist countries.

Dated April 12, 1956, a declassified CIA memorandum, which The Press viewed online, says the targets to be photographed were in the USSR, China, Poland, Bulgaria, Iraq, Yugoslavia, North Korea, Albania and other countries under surveillance. Some elements of the document remain redacted.

The army on the case

The Press also found in the archives an article with a revealing title from The Canadian Press published on December 5, 1962 in the daily The right : “A mysterious object found in New Brunswick”.

We read in the text that “the device bore no distinguishing mark of its nationality”, but that it was equipped with “radios and cameras” and that it was attached to “a decaying parachute”.

But beware ! A Canadian Army major reported that “one of the radio parts appears to be British or North American made”.

The Canadian army? Yes, as soon as it got wind of the case, the army sent a team to quickly recover the box for analysis.

According to the CBC report, the military appears to have tried to steal the box and then promised the McPherson family to explain its origin in exchange for its return. But the answers never came.

The balloon carrying the spy box may have drifted from its run to the USSR. But it may also have been one of the prototypes tested in 1955 by the American intelligence services.

With CBC