Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand has announced major investments to modernize the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). During a press briefing Monday, at the air base Trenton, Ontario, Anand unveiled the plans by the Canadian government to spend C$4.9 billion over the next six years to modernize continental defenses.
”This is the most significant upgrade to NORAD from a Canadian perspective in almost four decades”, she concluded. The joint US-Canadian defense organization is charged with the missions of aerospace warning, aerospace control and maritime warning for North America.
”There is a pressing need to modernize Canada’s NORAD capabilties”, the Defense Minister said while pointing to new technologies like hypersonic weapons and advanced cruise missiles being developed by competitors.
As CBC reports, military experts have warned that NORAD’s current surveillance system is not built to track weapons fired from submarines or from outside of North American airspace – or deal with hypersonic missiles. […]
Initiatives included in this is an Arctic over-the-horizon radar system which will provide early warning radar coverage and threat tracking from the Canada-US border to the Arctic Circle. Moreover, a polar over-the-horizon radar system will provide early warning radar coverage, over and beyond the northernmost approaches to North America, including the Canadian Arctic archipelago. Additionaly is a new system, called ”Crossbow”, which will be a network of sensors with classified capabilities distributed across Northern Canada as another layer of detection. Läs artikel