North America’s Arctic radar shield is due for an upgrade

THE VAST spheres rest on a desolate ridge at Cape Kiglapait in Labrador, one atop a tower and two others on the ground like a toppled snowman abandoned by giants. Each is a radome enclosing radar antennae that spew invisible waves across the Labrador sea. They are the electromechanical sentries of the Arctic. Strung across the northern fringes of Canadian territory from Labrador to Yukon, then into Alaska, the Kiglapait station and its many siblings form a picket line known as the North Warning System, or NWS (see map).

Since the early days of the cold war, Canada has served as North America’s first line of defence from Russian bombers and, later, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), whose quickest path to North America lies over the poles. To detect such threats, the United States and Canada jointly built a line of radar stations in the 1950s that stretched 5,000km (3,100 miles), known as the Distant Early Warning (DEW) line, and established a North American Aerospace Defence Command (Norad) in Colorado. The DEW line was replaced with new radars in the late 1980s, creating the NWS. Now the two countries are contemplating its renewal. That is far from simple.