Richard Sanders

Richmond-based MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates (MDA) is selling off its space divisions to a US war industry giant called Alliant Techsystems (ATK). It got a whopping $1.325 billion (in cash) and its stock immediately skyrocketed.
Just before Christmas, MDA’s pride and joy, RADARSAT-2, the world’s most advanced “synthetic aperture radar” satellite, was finally blasted into space.
MDA has been the proud owner and controller of RADARSAT-2, since the Government of Canada generously handed this publicly-funded satellite over to the company. About 90 percent of this satellite system’s $1 billion cost, including $500 million for RADARSAT-2 alone, was paid for by Canadian citizens. Then, thanks to the Liberal government’s obeisance to the god of privatization, RADARSAT was generously transferred to MDA.
This isn’t the first time MDA has been owned by US war industry. Back when (then Liberal) David Emerson was on MDA’s board of directors, the company was owned by a US “missile defence” rocket maker called Orbital Sciences.
ATK, the new owner of “Canada’s” satellite, touts itself as “an advanced weapon and space system company.” ATK has its fingers in everything from “missile defence” rocket motors to small arms. It says it’s America’s “largest producer of commercial and military ammunition and a leading provider of gun systems.” And now, it will control RADARSAT-2, which is likely Canada’s single greatest technological contribution to the US war machine.
But Canadians have little sense of their real role in the US wars. In fact, most Canadians still suffer from the delusion that their government said “no” to Ballistic Missile Defence and the Iraq War. Canadians don’t even know how much MDA paid for RADARSAT-2 because MDA’s contract with the Government of Canada is secret. In a parliamentary committee in 2005, Liberals and Conservatives voted against an NDP-Bloc motion to allow MPs to view the contract. That would be bad for business, the Liberals said; the Conservatives agreed.
What’s more, the Liberal’s RADARSAT Bill (C-25) has a secret annex that even MPs were not allowed to read before voting on it.
The US military already had its hands on RADARSAT-1 through something called “Eagle Vision,” a “family” of portable ground stations. Eagle Vision is “a cornerstone of the [US] military’s commercial imagery exploitation” (See SIGNAL Magazine, March 2001, http://cartome.org/battle-fusion.htm) It allows them to directly control RADARSAT-1 and -2 and downlink its data to soldiers on the battlefield.
RADARSAT-1 was used in NATO’s bombardment of Yugoslavia in 1999 and in the Afghan war since 2001. Regarding Eagle Vision’s use in Iraq, a Pentagon source said: “It’s doing great things... It’s working like gangbusters” (See http://search.space.com, March 31, 2003). NATO and US war planners have also been planning for RADARSAT-2’s role in pre-emptive first strikes that are part of so-called “missile defence.” (It’s called “missile defence” because its real purpose is to defend US missiles from attack during foreign wars.) RADARSAT-2’s revolutionary GMTI technology will be especially useful if the US ever manages to fabricate a suitable pretext for launching air strikes against Iran. All this may come as news to Canadians who have been told that RADARSAT-2 is just a hot new tool for monitoring rapidly-melting ice caps and other casualties of global warming. Truth is, Canada’s new and improved “eye in the sky” is firmly ensconced in the US warfighter’s arsenal and that it will soon be used in the very hot wars of Iraq and Afghanistan.
RADARSAT-2’s prime military role hinges on what warplanners, in their love for acronyms, call MAJIIC. For those uninitiated in the sacred rites of war, that stands for the “Multi-sensor Aerospace-ground Joint ISR Interoperability Coalition.” ISR, the acronym buried in MAJIIC, refers to “Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance.” You can’t win a war without ISR. It is as essential as the weapons, the war budget, an enemy, a taxpaying public duped into footing the bill and a media that promotes and then covers up the whole fraudulent operation. With the right shills, a willing mark and crafty, fast-talking conmen to pull off the scam, it’s a grifter’s dream come true. But back to the sleight of hand trick they call MAJIIC. On January 3, 2008, Aviation Week ran an article that begins: “A nine-nation intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) project sponsored by NATO is yielding ‘powerful new technologies that soon could be deployed to Afghanistan.’”
And Canada, of course, is deeply embedded in this MAJIIC, which is devoted to “developing standards and technologies that will allow NATO commanders to instantly tap into real-time data from a number of NATO and national systems.” These “systems,” NATO tells us, include a “wide array of air, ground and space surveillance assets” which will “provide commanders with a single, coherent and detailed picture of what’s happening on the ground.”
Canada’s state-of-the-art-of-war satellite system is the shining new jewel in this MAJIIC crown. In fact, RADARSAT was offered up to NATO even before MAJIIC, through CAESAR (Coalition Aerial Surveillance and Reconnaissance) which emerged in the mid-‘90s. It was through this project that Canada decided to give unto CAESAR that which is CAESAR’s. In various NATO “war games,” involving thousands of real troops and billions worth of real weapons systems, Canada rendered up simulated RADARSAT-2 data in preparation for the day when NATO warfighters could download real data from our satellites for real-time use in live wars.
That day has finally arrived.
Victims on the ground – those at the receiving end of the weapons systems targeted with RADARSAT-2 data – will presumably not know what hit them. And along with their friends and family, they also won’t know that Canadian technology was involved, or that Canadians paid for it with their taxes.
But what about Canadians? Will our fellow citizens notice this country’s contribution to the US military’s technological revolution? In one of his more lucid moments, Canada’s Major-General Andrew Leslie, then military Commander in Afghanistan, said, “Every time you kill an angry young man overseas, you’re creating 15 more who will come after you.” By that logic, it’s better if Canada’s victims don’t know who to blame. Perhaps that’s exactly how we Canadians want it. Perhaps we want the world – and ourselves – to remain blissfully ignorant of Canada’s deep complicity in the global business of war. That way, if any “terrorists” ever go looking for revenge because neighbourhoods in their country were levelled during a US-led war, they won’t know enough to look for targets in Canada.
By trying to burst the enduring and widespread myth that Canada is the great peacekeeper, are antiwar activists aiding and abetting the enemy?
Unfortunately it seems that Canada’s secret is still good. Of the hundreds of news stories about the sale of MDA to ATK only a handful even mentioned RADARSAT. And, of course, because RADARSAT’s numerous military uses are rarely mentioned, Canada’s phoney reputation as a peacemaker remains intact for another day.

For more information, see “Canada’s Role in the Militarization of Space: RADARSAT – The Warfighters’ Eye in the Sky and its links to ‘Missile Defence,” Issue 58, Press for Conversion! http://coat.ncf.ca