The Canadian military has quietly spent $50 million on a project to link up with and receive information from a system of secret U.S. spy satellites and sensors, the Citizen has learned.
The scheme, code-named Project Troodos, will give the Department of National Defence the ability to use spy information collected from space. The project is so sensitive military officials decided the Canadian public should be kept in the dark about Troodos.
The system can also collect information in electronic form and transmit it to Defence department intelligence agencies at high speed so it could then be forwarded to commanders in the field or at headquarters.
Military officials have been planning Project Troodos since the mid-1990s. In 1997, the program was classified top secret. The military wants Troodos to be in place by the end of this year.
"It is vital that DND intelligence agencies have the capability to receive space-derived intelligence data at a useful reception rate," the military argues in a document obtained by the Citizen. The project will provide intelligence agencies with the equipment to receive and analyse the information, which also includes photos taken by spy satellites.
The U.S. military operates an extensive network of intelligence-gathering satellites and other space sensors. The systems are not only continually taking photographs of objects on the ground, but are also intercepting and sorting through telephone, fax and computer e-mail transmissions. Some of the spy satellites are able to photograph objects as small as 7.62 centimetres in width.
Troodos was originally part of the Defence department's $637-million Joint Space Project, but in 1997 was set up as its own program.
The Citizen filed Access to Information requests on Troodos, but the Defence department has declined to release any information. That decision was also supported by Information Commissioner John Reid, whose job is to monitor the access law.
The department also declined to release a memorandum of understanding on Project Troodos between Canada and an unnamed country, believed to be the United States.
Defence analyst Bill Robinson said the decision to deny the public information on Project Troodos is likely because some of Canada's allies are unaware that the Canadian military has put into place this specific intelligence sharing arrangement.
"There could be some reaction from NATO countries wanting to know why Canada is receiving information and they're not," said Mr. Robinson, an analyst with the disarmament group Project Ploughshares.
What isn't known is what services the Canadian Forces would provide in return for the Project Troodos data.
Mr. Robinson said U.S. spy satellites are technologically advanced enough, for instance, to be able to tell if a person on the ground is reading a book or newspaper. He said Troodos appears to be a ground-based system to process the spy information coming in from U.S. satellites.
Troodos is separate from another Canadian military surveillance program that would be able to track vehicles and ships on the ground. That system, the Ground Moving Target Indicator, is to be installed on the Radarsat 2 satellite scheduled for launch in 2001. The program will cost $19.5 million and test the basic principles of tracking moving targets, such as missile launchers and armored personnel carriers.
Those tests will be carried out between 2002 and 2004. Canadian military officials want to use the technology as part of a future joint U.S.-Canadian space-based radar system.