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 made it a multi-role aircraft and we used it for a secondary SAR mission plus for some intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance-type sorties.
Since that time, the anti-submarine warfare role has come back with great vigour, especially from the Pacific countries, and so there is a real threat out there that requires Canada to have this type of capability. But with all the new changes that have come through from the Block program and the investments we have made in mid-life upgrades to the Aurora, it is now our most capable ISR platform and that's what we're using it for over in Operation IMPACT in Kuwait right now.
It flies, we have two of them over there. We have a Block III and a Block II because we're continuing with that mid-life upgrade right now. They are tasked to fly over Iraq and gather intelligence on behalf of the coalition. It doesn't just gather information for Canadians, it provides it for the entire coalition and in many different ways. It is not just one type of intelligence-gathering platform. It gathers multiple types at the same time and that's what makes it so special. A lot of airplanes are used for that role but have one type of capability alone. This, as I said, has multiple capabilities. I would suggest that it has been extremely beneficial to have the Aurora go through that mid-life upgrade, and we plan to use it with vigour for a number of years to come.