Canada to Spend $5.0Bil on AEW Aircraft

[Kirkhill]

Because it would be way too late in the game to get warnings at that point.

If it is way too late to get warnings to NORAD so that they can launch a response and the response can reach the area of interest then it doesn't seem that NORAD, or the RCAF, is going to be particularly material to a homeland defence mission.

Couldn't the civil-military hand-off be managed through threat levels? If hostilities have broken out then condition red and local control. If all clear then condition green and keep your hands away from the switches. If unclear then condition orange and dual control with national looking over local shoulders.

NORAD is effective at keeping things away from American borders, less so at keeping them away from Canadian borders. The US and Canada both let our local AD assets atrophy once we became happy that no threat could reach us, apart from the one we couldn't do anything about anyway, the ICBM. Now the array of threats has increased. We are short on means to counter those threats.

 

[Kirkhill]

Looking at the distribution of those NAVCAN sites and wondering about the relative cost of upgrading the northern sites to systems associated with the National Airport System. The range would increase so the coverage would increase. Would there be a need for more operators and maintainers?

 

[Good2Golf]

If it is way too late to get warnings to NORAD so that they can launch a response and the response can reach the area of interest then it doesn't seem that NORAD, or the RCAF, is going to be particularly material to a homeland defence mission.

Couldn't the civil-military hand-off be managed through threat levels? If hostilities have broken out then condition red and local control. If all clear then condition green and keep your hands away from the switches. If unclear then condition orange and dual control with national looking over local shoulders.

NORAD is effective at keeping things away from American borders, less so at keeping them away from Canadian borders. The US and Canada both let our local AD assets atrophy once we became happy that no threat could reach us, apart from the one we couldn't do anything about anyway, the ICBM. Now the array of threats has increased. We are short on means to counter those threats.

I take it as “if NORAD doesn’t do it now”….then…

 

[Kirkhill]

I take it as “if NORAD doesn’t do it now”….then…

What exactly is "Golden Dome" going to look like anyway?

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2025/04/17/setting_military_requirements_for_golden_dome_1104625.html

The Canadian Ballistic Missile Dilemma - Canadian Global Affairs Institute

Today the American homeland faces a broad range of sophisticated air and missile threats. These include modern land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), ballistic and cruise missiles aboard submarines, air-launched cruise missiles aboard strategic bombers, hypersonic missiles, and fractional orbital bombardment systems. In addition, the United States faces an increasing threat from unmanned aerial systems (UAS) of various sizes and sophistication.

Current U.S. homeland defenses against these growing threats are woefully inadequate. The U.S. has an extremely limited capability to effectively defend against either cruise missiles or UAS. The nation’s missile defense posture was put in place almost two decades ago and has failed to adapt to significant changes in the threat environment. The U.S. ground-based ballistic missile defense system provides protection against a small number of North Korean ICBMs, but is not designed to defeat even limited strikes from China or Russia who are developing, testing and deploying advanced weapons targeted against the American homeland to coercively dissuade it from responding to threats to Washington’s global security interests. Likewise, because of U.S. sensor coverage gaps, certain adversaries could conduct air or missile attacks with little to no advanced warning.

the heart of the Canadian dilemma. Acquiring significant IAMD capabilities, such as ground and maritime air and missile defence systems, will be insufficient for Canada to engage fully in the Golden Dome. As the U.S. integrates strategic, theatre, and tactical capabilities as part of its global deterrence posture, Canadian access via NORAD will be significantly constrained unless it reverses policy. The net result will be a loss of Canadian access to U.S. air and missile defence thinking and operational planning, leading to the marginalization of NORAD in the U.S., the ceding of key Canadian defence decisions to U.S. unilateralism, and resulting in the implicit re-nationalization of North American defence contrary to Canada’s longstanding defence and security strategy.

 

[OldSolduer]

Golden dome

 

[Furniture]

Re the Whitehorse situation:

Do we need "lots of Canadians"? Or can we manage with "The Few, The Proud"? Or even just the curious and adventurous willing to check a place out for a year or two?

Apparently 864,000 Canadians voluntarily isolate themselves from the mainland on Vancouver Island. 72,000 of them live in the Comox Valley.

Whitehorse had a population of 31,000 in 2021 and is estimated at 33,000 now with growth expected to continue to 35,000 by 2030.
Yukon's total population is 47,000.

Surely it is not too much to expect that out of a population of 40,000,000 we could sustain a unit of 400 in a place like Whitehorse on a mix of contracts? Locals and "visitors".

We struggle to get people to go to the bases we currently have, getting more people to go to even more remote places is no small ask.

I raised Vancouver Island as a point, because people who actually get posted there complain about isolation. It's not an abstract, or random numbers off the internet, it's conversations with the real "The Few, The Proud" we currently employ.

I'm not suggesting it's impossible to place a unit in Whitehorse, but it will require a lot more than wishful thinking and google searches.

 

[Kirkhill]

We struggle to get people to go to the bases we currently have, getting more people to go to even more remote places is no small ask.

I raised Vancouver Island as a point, because people who actually get posted there complain about isolation. It's not an abstract, or random numbers off the internet, it's conversations with the real "The Few, The Proud" we currently employ.

I'm not suggesting it's impossible to place a unit in Whitehorse, but it will require a lot more than wishful thinking and google searches.

Another good idea fairy drifted past my ear.

Why don't you stop relocating people?

Some people like the idea of settling down in one location and raising a family. It seems that there are a number of bases that don't constantly relocate. Why do the people have to? If they are comfortable in their rank and station why not let them stay put?

The positions that require constant movement can be advertised and recruited for as such.

Less commanding and more volunteering.

...

Strangely enough I have met a few real people in my life as well.

 

[YZT580]

I am going to pitch another option again. I already have my lid on.

The internal airspace of Canada is poorly covered by radar, civil and military. And the airport radars are strictly civil and, from what I have been led to believe previously, incompatible with military needs.

Why don't we upgrade the civilian network so that it can operate with military assets, including effectors like EW/DE/Missiles/Guns and aircraft? Work out the C2 issues and the handoffs. When you switch from local to national control. When you switch from passive to active.

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nice thought but NavCan has dropped prime requirements except for TMA and their legacy systems that haven't been replaced. So unless you can convince your invading force to equip their ac with functioning transponders you can forget about any assistance from civil stuff. Military will have to go it alone. How about positioning blimps to cover the entire north country. One every 500 miles or so should do it. Seriously though, this is a big country. Our best solution is to have all weather systems that can be launched and kept in place continuously should things start going sour. Leave them on the ground until then but have them kept on a few hours notice in readiness.

 

[Kirkhill]

nice thought but NavCan has dropped prime requirements except for TMA and their legacy systems that haven't been replaced. So unless you can convince your invading force to equip their ac with functioning transponders you can forget about any assistance from civil stuff. Military will have to go it alone. How about positioning blimps to cover the entire north country. One every 500 miles or so should do it. Seriously though, this is a big country. Our best solution is to have all weather systems that can be launched and kept in place continuously should things start going sour. Leave them on the ground until then but have them kept on a few hours notice in readiness.

Thanks for the info.

Excuse me while I react negatively to the "Big Country" comment. We claimed it. It's ours.

I don't feel particularly sorry for the guy who claims a massive estate and them complains about the price of keeping trespassers off it.

If we want the second biggest country in the world all to ourselves then we should expect to foot the bill. Even if that means stationing blimps every 500 miles, or telling NAVCAN to revert to status quo ante and leave surveillance radars up and running.

5% of GDP for more elbow room than anybody else on the planet doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

 

[ytz]

Why don't you stop relocating people?

Because nobody really wants those locations, so the pain has to be redistributed somehow. Also, because we locate bases not based on military or economic efficiency, but for political reasons and dumbass ideas like people thinking we have to fighters in Whitehorse to defend the Arctic.

 

[ytz]

I am going to pitch another option again. I already have my lid on.

The internal airspace of Canada is poorly covered by radar, civil and military. And the airport radars are strictly civil and, from what I have been led to believe previously, incompatible with military needs.

Why don't we upgrade the civilian network so that it can operate with military assets, including effectors like EW/DE/Missiles/Guns and aircraft? Work out the C2 issues and the handoffs. When you switch from local to national control. When you switch from passive to active.

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What's the problem you're trying to solve here. Being able to get better missile targeting in Toronto is kinda pointless when you don't have missiles in Toronto. And we never will.

 

[Kirkhill]

What's the problem you're trying to solve here. Being able to get better missile targeting in Toronto is kinda pointless when you don't have missiles in Toronto. And we never will.

I forgot. This is Canada. We have no enemies and never will have.

 

[ytz]

It appears that L3 is trying to put NATO lipstick on a non NATO product. It maybe possibly be a superior product ( I don’t know) but I suspect going forward NATO manufacturers will be given preference

E-7 is still the best option at the end of the day, but it seems politics will likely push Canada towards one of the Global 6500 offerings.

The big advantage of the L3 offering is wider sensor coverage. 360 I believe. GlobalEye is not. And the CAEW is also AAR capable, which GlobalEye doesn't currently offer.

CAEW has political risk and be slight technical risk since it has never been integrated on a Global. Only Gulfstreams. But it is the more technically capable of the non-Wedgetail options.

The days of single-aircraft/monostatic radar-based AEW are diminishing. Do you put billions of dollars into that specific capability, or assess the overall requirements space and see what the best solution is, or more accurately will be? This is especially true when one looks at the trend of countries to expand air ops to include space - Canada is no exception in this regard, btw. The idea that classic AEW need only graft a past capability onto a (relatively) new airframe is to fail to consider how object visibility in the electromagnetic spectrum has developed. Multi-static radar capabilities comprised of combinations or terrestrial, aerial and spaced-based transmitters and receivers, providing both energy source and survivability diversity, will increase in both number and integration. The future of AEW function augmented/furnished by space-based assets, will only increase. Additionally, diversification of the EM bands forming such a network, including non-conventional bands and segment of the EM spectrum will add further capability to the ability to ‘see everything.’ Think also IR(and UV)ST type capabilities. Hint, NASA FIRMS satellites s aren’t the only system looking out for thermal events in (or near ) the Earth’s surface.

Background information on multistatic radar concepts. Additional sources throughout the terrestrial-aerial-space regimes add to the accuracy and resiliency of a comprehensive radar network.

https://wipl-d.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/RCS_016_WIPL-D_Monostatic_Bistatic_Multistatic_Radar_Scenarios_2021.pdf

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This is one of those ideas that seems easier on paper. The constellation needed to have the fidelity of an AEW platform, is not a small matter. You also need all kinds of new information. Think of how much of our radar cross section information is from horizontal observation. And on how much our radars are designed to use Doppler shift of the relative motion of two aircraft, not a LEO platform racing across the sky. The idea that this is being pitched as cheaper, is very bizarre to say the least.

You can watch this discussion from a well known air warfare channel, for a discussion on all the complications involved.

 

[ytz]

I forgot. This is Canada. We have no enemies and never will have.

We have no enemies that are planning to launch missiles randomly in Manitoba.

 

[Good2Golf]

This is one of those ideas that seems easier on paper.

As are all paradigm breaking/challenging concepts.

The constellation needed to have the fidelity of an AEW platform, is not a small matter.

‘Constellation?’ Are you constraining future multistage capabilities to space only? My posts were clear about blended terrestrial, aerial and space-based capabilities.

You also need all kinds of new information. Think of how much of our radar cross section information is from horizontal observation.

Yup. Concur.

And on how much our radars are designed to use Doppler shift of the relative motion of two aircraft, not a LEO platform racing across the sky.

Doppler shift between two separate airborne platforms is an article, and is cancelled out for the most part by the surveilling aircraft’s IMU. Track solutions are substantively resolved to target absolute movement relative to a datum, not relative to the surveilling platform’s temporally-variant absolute position.

The idea that this is being pitched as cheaper, is very bizarre to say the least.

Who said it was cheaper? My point was to be careful before we automatically follow the path of a functional E-3A replacement, without due regard for how the future of battlespace awareness and ability to control it, while denying it from our adversary(ies).

 

[dapaterson]

We have no enemies that are planning to launch missiles randomly in Manitoba.

The Greater Saskatchewan Collective enters the conversation.

 

[Nvlgzr]

This is one of those ideas that seems easier on paper. The constellation needed to have the fidelity of an AEW platform, is not a small matter. You also need all kinds of new information. Think of how much of our radar cross section information is from horizontal observation. And on how much our radars are designed to use Doppler shift of the relative motion of two aircraft, not a LEO platform racing across the sky. The idea that this is being pitched as cheaper, is very bizarre to say the least.

Would a variation (tailored to a moving target rather than stationary) of our RADARSAT Constellation be useful to track or just illuminate? I would guess that from space the target may be easier to track since it would be observed from a less stealthy or higher angle. I understand that it makes sense to have multiple means of tracking or targeting.

 

[Kirkhill]

As are all paradigm breaking/challenging concepts.



‘Constellation?’ Are you constraining future multistage capabilities to space only? My posts were clear about blended terrestrial, aerial and space-based capabilities.



Yup. Concur.



Doppler shift between two separate airborne platforms is an article, and is cancelled out for the most part by the surveilling aircraft’s IMU. Track solutions are substantively resolved to target absolute movement relative to a datum, not relative to the surveilling platform’s temporally-variant absolute position.


Who said it was cheaper? My point was to be careful before we automatically follow the path of a functional E-3A replacement, without due regard for how the future of battlespace awareness and ability to control it, while denying it from our adversary(ies).

Isn't that actually the whole promise of AI? That it can take inputs from multiple sources and draw pictures. The sensors don't have to all be of one type. The sensors don't all have to operating in the same frequency. In fact some of the inputs can be from people and books.

 

[Good2Golf]

Isn't that actually the whole promise of AI? That it can take inputs from multiple sources and draw pictures. The sensors don't have to all be of one type. The sensors don't all have to operating in the same frequency. In fact some of the inputs can be from people and books.

No, AI is just programming tbh. It’s not manic, it only does what it’s asked to do, albeit with substantially more flexible programming structure and supporting large language/data models, but programming and reference to databases nonetheless.

That’s not the same as a physical structure/framework of objects and their interaction with reflected energies from a variety of regions of the EM spectrum.

 

[Maxman1]

We have no enemies that are planning to launch missiles randomly in Manitoba.

Winnipeg did surrender to the Nazis in 1942.

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