In 1987, Canada released a long-awaited White Paper on Defence; signalling its intent to re-assert sovereignty over its Arctic Waters. Concerned that Soviet submarines were operating in Canada's Arctic Archipelago, several programs were proposed to close the gap between Canada's current capabilities and its commitments to NATO. Project Spinnaker was born, a joint Canada–US endeavour whose secret purpose was to provide the capability to monitor submarine traffic in Canadian Arctic waters by deploying acoustic listening posts on the seafloor. This project required the development of a large autonomous underwater vehicle – named Theseus – whose sole purpose was to lay communications trunk cables on the seafloor in waters with a permanent ice cover. In the spring of 1996, Theseus was transported to CFS Alert (on the northeastern tip of Ellesmere Island) then was deployed from an ice camp where it laid 180 km of fibre optic cable on the seafloor in ice-covered waters, successfully delivering it to an acoustic array deployed on the edge of the Continental Shelf.