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NORAD’s New Maritime Mission

On Thursday, October 29, CNP hosted General Victor E. Renuart, Commander of North American Aerospace Defense and US Northern Command, to speak about NORAD's maritime warning mission. The discussion was opened by Paul McHale, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and current CNP Board member, who set the context of the briefing by explaining: "General Renuart's presentation builds upon discussions we've had here at CNP with a list of other top military leaders representing different components of the armed services, including Gen. James Cartwright, the vice chairman of the joint chiefs; Tony Zinni, the former CENTCOM commander; Gen. Craig McKinley, the chief of the National Guard Bureau; and Lt. Gen. James Clapper, retired undersecretary of defense for intelligence."

General Renuart began his presentation by sketching a brief history of NORAD, illustrating how it was first formed in 1951 to provide a common defense of Canadian and American airspace from Soviet long-range bombers. Improvements in technology, including intercontinental-range ballistic missiles, led to NORAD's mission expanding to include the ability to warn against threats from space. In 2006, NORAD's mission grew yet again to include a maritime warning mission that was tasked to create an "integrated warning of threats not just from military vessels at sea but from non-nation-state actors, who might use the maritime domain to threaten our ports" and maritime approaches. It is now NORAD's mission to track the threats in the air, space, and maritime domain and integrate them into one holistic picture.

Renuart went on to explain the importance of maritime security to the U.S. and Canada. Maritime shipping is the lifeblood of North American industry, as 80 to 85 percent of everything the United States consumes arrives via the maritime domain. Monitoring the maritime domain is hampered by sheer size of that domain to include long coastlines and vast navigable waterways even in the Arctic due to the rapidly shrinking polar ice cap. Protecting this domain is the responsibility of many actors in the United States and Canada including NORAD and the Department of Defense; the Canadian Department of National Defense and Canadian Forces; U.S. Coast Guard, Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Border Patrol and the Department of Homeland Security; local and provincial law enforcement, and the private sector.

Gen. Renuart concluded by explaining that NORAD's maritime warning mission is precisely that - a warning mission. Their job is to warn the leaders of each country and to make them aware of a threat. This information enables the leadership in the United States and Canada to make an informed decision on what action is appropriate.  NORAD does not have an enforcement role and does not exercise operational control over maritime assets. In sum, Renuart explained: "NORAD gives both the U.S. and Canada the ability to focus on, pay attention to, be aware of a number of threats across a broad variety of domains. But each nation retains its sovereign authority to take action. In NORAD, I have in the air domain the ability to respond for either government. In the maritime domain or in the space domain, each of the governments respond through a national command, either, in our case, U.S. Northern Command or in the Canadian case, Canada Command."