Prime Minister Mark Carney says the Canadian Armed Forces need the plane to detect and deter threats across the Arctic.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced on Wednesday that his government would not purchase early-warning-radar planes from the United States, opting instead for a European model.

Canada will purchase Swedish Saab’s GlobalEye, which is based on the Canadian-manufactured Bombardier Global 6500 jet.

Tensions between the US and Canada have been high since Donald Trump launched a trade war against the US’ northern neighbor and even suggested that Canada should become the 51st US state, which caused widespread outrage in Canada, just as Carney was seeking the post of prime minister and succeeded in getting elected to it.

Since then, the Canadian government has also opted ot review the planned purchase of US F-35 fighter jets to explore other options.

  • merc@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    91·
    21 hours ago

    It is strategic for Canada to invest in its air force because:

    1. Hmm, what happened in that far northern area? We should go check it out. Oh wait, we don’t have planes to do that.
    2. Russia attacks Finland. Finland calls for help from its NATO allies. Canada sends its air force.
    3. Every single flight from Europe to the US west coast flies over Canada. Even flights from Europe to Mexico City pass over Atlantic Canada. One of those flights stops responding and there’s a fear it was hijacked. Oh well, I guess the USAF can check it out once it crosses the border… if it crosses the border.

    You can see some of the absurdities of not having a proper air force in Switzerland. They used to have an Air Force that only operated during daytime business hours. In 2014 an Ethiopian Airlines pilot hijacked his own plane and landed it in Geneva. Italy and France scrambled to escort the plane through their airspaces. Switzerland had to just let it do what it wanted because their Air Force didn’t operate 24 hours a day.

    In fact, for a huge and nearly empty country like Canada, the air force is arguably the most important military branch. Since prehistoric times, the size of a country / kingdom / empire was defined by the region in which it had a monopoly on the use of force. If Canada wants to claim sovereignty over the entire North, and not just the Montreal to Toronto corridor, it needs to be able to notice an invasion in the north, attack anybody there tying to claim its territory, and transport soldiers up there if necessary. That’s all Air Force stuff.

    A modern Air Force might not mean fighter pilots in supersonic planes. As things in Ukraine have shown, it might instead be mostly drones.