Russia and China co-operating more often and more closely in the Arctic, says NORAD commander

There's been a subtle but significant shift in what NORAD has been seeing over the last year when it comes to mostly Russian — but also Chinese — activity in the Arctic, says the top commander of the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD).

U.S. Gen. Gregory Guillot tells CBC News that air and sea incursions into the zones just outside North America have not only become more frequent, but also more co-ordinated.

"I'd say the most consequential difference in 2025 has been the volume, the simultaneous volume," Guillot said in an exclusive interview.

"Sometimes we'll have — instead of a ship — there might be four or five ships at the same time operating in various parts of the Arctic Ocean down into the Bering area," Guillot said.

And then a few hours later, he said, there will be an air incursion in a different part of the region.

That kind of activity, defence analysts say, is intended to test the reaction of the U.S. and Canadian militaries.

As of late December 2025, NORAD had publicly acknowledged at least eight separate events in 2025 where it detected and tracked Russian military aircraft operating in the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ). The events all took place in international airspace — near but not inside North American airspace.

There were no acknowledged sea incursions, at least in the public statements. However, it was acknowledged last summer that the Canadian military kept tabs on a Chinese research vessel when it was in Arctic waters off Alaska for the second time in two years.

Guillot said he's confident in NORAD's ability to keep eyes on the region and to defend the Far North, if necessary. The remarks were made in a year-end interview just prior to the renewed crisis over Greenland and U.S. President Donald Trump's threat to annex the Danish territory.

If you look at the map of North America as a clock, Guillot said, most of the activity they've witnessed is in the 10 o'clock position over Alaska. The activity in the two o'clock position, near Greenland, appears to be on — and under — the sea.

"There's certainly Russian activity in the Arctic to the east of our continent," Guillot said.

"A lot of times that activity, if it's in the maritime domain, will go through what we call the GIUK gap, Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom gap, and then out into the Atlantic, but not necessarily coming close to Canadian or United States territorial waters."

Future of the Golden Dome

Guillot also said he's had extensive talks with Canada's top military commander, Gen. Jennie Carignan, on the mechanics of how Canada could join the Trump administration's self-titled Golden Dome missile defence system.

The federal government is currently in discussions and negotiations with the United States about joining the initiative but has not yet formally committed to full participation.

Trump has publicly stated that it would cost Canada more than $61 billion US to join the program, but participation would be free if the country joined as the 51st state.

Guillot didn't touch on the politics in his interview, but rather focused on how integration could happen.

He said the questions the two countries are asking themselves include whether it makes sense to expand NORAD and include missile defence in the binational command, or allow each nation's operational commands to manage missile defence themselves, as U.S. NORTHCOM already does.

Last summer, Defence Minister David McGuinty quietly removed the decades-old prohibition Canada had on participating in the U.S. ballistic missile defence program.

"We can discuss threats, advanced threats, more openly with our Canadian counterparts," said Guillot, noting that he hosted McGuinty and Carignan at a demonstration of some of the systems the United States uses to detect and track incoming missile threats last year.

A recent study by the Center for European Policy Analysis warned that Russia and China are pulling ahead of NATO nations, including Canada, in the race to develop and field drones capable of operating in harsh Arctic conditions.

Guillot said he has not read the report, but said the U.S. Army has field tested counter-drone technology in the Arctic and has been co-operating extensively with Canada's joint operations command (CJOC) on the use of the systems.

"On the defensive side, I've been very pleased with the performance of the systems that we've brought up there from a counter-[unmanned aerial system] UAS perspective. I've been very pleased with how they operate up in the harsh conditions," he said.

At the end of November, the U.S. Army acknowledged the 11th Division in Alaska conducted a large-scale UAS and counter-UAS experiment in co-operation with defence contractors to measure how the systems behave in extreme cold.

Small platoons of soldiers, using electronic warfare equipment, tracked drones and used commercially available counter-drones to bring them down during tests near Fort Greely and Fort Wainwright.

Also in the testing phase, the U.S. military plans to deploy a micro nuclear reactor to independently power an air force base in the Alaskan Arctic in a program that's expected to have far-reaching implications for Canada's plan to deploy an over-the-horizon radar station in the polar region.

One of the issues both the U.S. and Canada face in deploying new advanced radar stations is how those facilities, which require massive amounts of power, can be operated so far north.

Guillot says micro reactors are a potential game-changer for military operations in a region where the weather can often be the biggest enemy.