How cutting edge military tech tested in the Arctic could change northern warfare

Technology will be a key piece for the military to defend Canada's Arctic sovereignty from threats. W5's Jon Woodward on the hardware.

This is the fourth part of a multi-part series by CTV W5, embedded in the Canadian military’s Operation Nanook, as international interest by adversaries in Canada’s Arctic ramps up.

Canadian troops participating in military exercises in the harsh Arctic climate are also pushing the bounds of another frontier: new technology.

New devices and tactics including cutting edge cold weather all-terrain vehicles, new reconnaissance drones, and field medical techniques could all prove crucial in defending Canada’s North in the future.

On Parsons Lake in the Northwest Territories, Canadian Armed Forces Capt. Vincent Lemelin shows off what could be a new winter cavalry in the Canadian Armed Forces: a snowmobile with a gun mount.

“This is the Canadian standard C6, which is the NATO standard for machine guns,” he said as he maneuvered the firearm around on the mount.

“The driver would unlock his weapon, and would start engaging. So that would provide suppressing fire,” Lemelin said.

He was speaking from what was known as the “ICE PPR” camp, which stands for International Cooperative Engagement Program for Polar Research.

Members of militaries from countries including Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Sweden spent over a week on the ice to explore how some of this technology could be used in the field.

• Part 1: Canada faces dual adversaries on its northern frontier
• Part 2: ‘The cold doesn’t like you': soldiers test gear and mettle in Arctic exercises
• Part 3: How the Canadian and U.S. militaries turned a frozen lake into an airstrip for an enormous plane

The personnel demonstrated the militaries working together, even amid the international upheaval sparked by U.S. President Donald Trump, who has embraced Russia in Ukraine and has mused about turning Canada into the 51st state while launching a trade war.

“I want everyone to know that the Arctic is an extremely important part of our world,” said Maj. Matt Hefner, an American leading the team.

“It’s also a very poorly understood part of our world, and the only way we’re going to get good in this environment is by training up here,” he said.

As Maj. Hefner stood on the snow and ice of Parsons Lake, he showed W5 he was wearing one of the devices they seek to test: a sensor that reads the body temperatures of soldiers on the ice and relays them to their commanders in real time.

“You can come and read that person and say, ‘oh, your hand is two degrees Celsius, you’re in trouble,‘” he said, saying it could be an early warning system for medics.

“Every time one of my soldiers goes down, it pulls two more people off the battlefield,” he said.

Drones tested in Arctic Ocean and Arctic air

Inside tents on the frozen Arctic Ocean off Tuktoyaktuk, Canadian and Belgian divers pushed the limits of their equipment.

Divers submerged themselves in a triangular hole cut through more than a metre of ice, as divemaster Jon Savoie explained to W5 how the mission to retrieve objects could train divers to spot mines or fix problems with military equipment.

The cold temperatures could lead to freezing equipment, which makes a complex operation even more difficult, he said.

“This climate is very unforgiving. So it’s something we have to take into very careful consideration,” he said. “Combat diving is a specialty we hold within our trade.”

The divers were sharing the water with a drone, which was recording video of them and also peering upwards to see the divemaster – as well as our cameras recording it.

But a device to operate the drone’s sophisticated hardware is a device many civilians would be familiar with – a controller for the popular video game platform, the Xbox.

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” quipped the drone operator. “It works perfectly fine as a controller.”

Just outside Inuvik, another team was testing a diesel powered drone, which would avoid the tendency of electric batteries to lose power in the cold.

It was equipped with an infrared video camera, which can spot what everyone gives off in the Arctic cold: body heat.

As a soldier in white camouflage was hiding in the snow, switching to infrared showed an orange patch, clearly moving slightly.

“I found one of the guys,” the drone operator called out during the exercise. “His head moved a little – there was a warmer pocket.”

Another medical innovation being tested in the field is dried blood plasma, said medic Thomas Williams.

“The idea is that every person will have one of these,” he said. “If they get shot, you take it out, use theirs for them.”

The plasma has to be reconstituted with liquid, which is kept from freezing by Williams’ own body temperature.

“We put it together, we’ve got instant plasma,” he said. “I can see this saving lives, 100 per cent in any environment, whether it’s the desert or the Arctic. I’m really excited to see this used.”

For tips on Arctic security, or any other story, please email Jon Woodward