Mr. Norlock, thank you very much for the question.
You touched on a very important point in your question, which is the tyranny of the distances in Canada. Speaking of distances, a lot of people don't know that there's more distance between the southern edge of Canada and the northern edge of Canada than there is east to west, because of the way we look at the map. Normally people think about Canada in terms of east to west, but going to the north is our biggest challenge in terms of distance.
Partnering with the U.S. has served us extremely well. A concrete example is that we don't have enough tanker aircraft to protect our north by ourselves. However, the U.S., through the NORAD Agreement, has placed on alert two U.S. tanker aircraft, which are aircraft that deliver fuel airborne. One is on the east coast in Bangor, Maine, and one is in Fairchild, Washington. When our fighters take off from either Bagotville or Cold Lake and they have to head up north, these tankers will also launch, and that allows us to extend our reach as far north as we can.
Distance also poses a challenge in terms of the forward operating locations up north, where they are still relatively south with respect to the extreme northern edge of Canada.
The other area where we benefit from the NORAD Agreement is in the use of airborne early warning aircraft, commonly known as AWACS, where they extend the reach of the radar.
It's a vast area both for the asymmetric threat, which is commercial airlines like those used in 9/11, and the symmetric threat from long-range munitions from Russia. NORAD definitely profits from the partnership with the U.S. to make sure we have the right capabilities.
I think I forgot about the maritime warning mission.
Binationally we do the maritime warning, which is fusing all the information from all the maritime stakeholders. Giving NORAD the maritime warning mission has allowed a conduit to fuse the information and intelligence of everybody interested in the maritime domain awareness. Bilaterally we have the Canadian Joint Operations Command and NORTHCOM, the navigation north command, that work together and are able to put the mechanisms in place to do the maritime control.
NORAD's role is to transmit simultaneously to the governments of both Canada and the United States a maritime advisory message or maritime warning message. Bilaterally NORTHCOM and the Canadian Joint Operations Command, with law enforcement partners, decide how to prosecute those warning or advisory messages.