National Defence committee  The Aurora is the same vintage as the CF-18. We bought it just prior to that, so it's not necessarily a young aircraft. We initially bought it for anti-submarine warfare capability. After the Cold War, anti-submarine warfare tended to trickle out a little, and so at that point we

National Defence committee  We divide the country and we use Bagotville to support the east portion and Cold Lake to support the west portion. We have a number of deployed operating bases and forward operating locations that we can go to if we get information that this is where we need to concentrate our ef

National Defence committee  Certainly, as we mentioned before, CADs in North Bay have a pretty good visual capability throughout the majority of Canada. The Arctic's obviously very difficult, though. There's not a lot of infrastructure up there, and certainly not a lot of civilian radars up there either. Th

National Defence committee  How about if I jump in on that one and answer it? Different types of operations take place. The Middle East is not a sophisticated environment. The folks on the ground there, ISIL and other belligerents, don't necessarily have great capabilities with regard to surface-to-air mun

National Defence committee  The entire aircraft works in concert and needs to be interoperable with other aircraft, but you need to fight your way in and fight your way out of some wars. That's not the case in Iraq, as we tend to use altitude to secure a peaceful environment for us to conduct operations.

National Defence committee  Well, with regard to North American airspace, really what we see from a NORAD perspective are two types of threats. One would be the Operation Noble Eagle type of threat, which is a similar one to 9/11, where you have terrorists who have taken over some sort of civilian aircraft.

National Defence committee  Well you know, if the individual is actually working on the equipment I would suggest that he or she is very much.... I don't want to say in love with what they're doing, but they put their hearts and souls into sustaining that equipment, improving that equipment, and making sure

National Defence committee  We don't necessarily follow the business planning model completely, but we do planning in periods like that as well with various horizons. We will look at five years, ten years, out to 20 years, but then of course we will look at next year as well. We do try to be proactive in al

National Defence committee  We're very used to getting either less funds or more funds on a regular basis. This is where, as I said, we build contingencies into our plans. We call them off-ramps and on-ramps. In there, we will always bracket a certain amount of training that we need to do to ensure that we

National Defence committee  That is very much a strategic question. It is not something that we do here at the operational or tactical levels. What I can say is that our search and rescue folks are extremely professional and conduct search and rescue on a daily basis. For 365 days a year they are on standb

National Defence committee  The only thing I'd like to add is that the air force is not there alone. We support our joint colleagues, the army and the navy, out there as well. I think that we'll become more involved in the north and I think we're getting better at it. The one thing that I would add, that h

National Defence committee  Hopefully that answers your question.

National Defence committee  From a specific hourly perspective we get additional hours to participate in Iraq. It benefits in that manner. From our operations in Canada we make sure that we have the capability to sustain our NORAD mission first. It's our number one mission and it will always be supported.

National Defence committee  Of course they can. The more we pay for fuel, the less money we have to put towards other events. The fuel costs, especially overseas in some places, are higher than they are in Canada or in the United States. But interestingly enough, the fuel prices have dipped so much that we

National Defence committee  Absolutely. I would suggest that it's not necessarily the state of readiness of the aircraft, but the state of readiness of the capability that uses the aircraft. It's a combination of personnel, aircraft, and other resources that puts together that capability. Obviously, with t