OK, so why are we even wasting time with SAAB and Lockheed, when all we have to do is turn around, give the Avro Arrow blueprints to Mikey McBryan at Buffalo Airlines, and they'll resurrect that project for us and we'll have a great home-built option for national air defense in a matter of weeks.
We can also task them to figure out how to integrate a radar system onto one of their old C-47's, or, perhaps get a dispersed light-weight radar that can be installed in the Norseman aircraft, which, wearing floats, can take off and land practically anywhere giving us mobile, rapid deployable air radar systems which will preclude our need for anything so fancy as an E-7?
This will be a key initiative in bringing our defense team further into the North, and provide opportunities for community engagement and both youtube and history channel sound-bites that will give us a boost with the social media world that is unbeatable!
(Edit to add - we can contract them to cover off the SAR tasks up north as well - we can double-hat the SARTECHS as the Radar Operators in the Norsemen airplanes!)