National Defence committee  To answer more precisely, I don't have any concerns of not being able to respond to approaches to the west coast from our present geographic location.

National Defence committee  The number of long-range aviation flights, perhaps not this year—they had grounded a chunk of their fleet for a while after an accident—but in the last couple of years is approximating the high point of the Cold War. That's correct. Does that mean the threat is increasing? It talks about capability and intent.

National Defence committee  Well, it depends where the approach to North America is. Sometimes they'll come through Alaskan airspace, and so the Americans have fighters there. Sometimes they come from north of Alert and come down the north slope of the Arctic where we would be in position in Inuvik to intercept them.

National Defence committee  If you look at the distance between Inuvik and Cold Lake and the distance between Vancouver and Cold Lake, they're equidistant. If there was a known threat, if we had intelligence indicators to suggest that we had a threat, we would move fighters closer. We do that often. In fact, we practise monthly deploying our F-18s to Comox, and we have a facility in Comox for them to operate out of seamlessly.

National Defence committee  I tend not to think about it in those terms. If a threat was coming through Alaska, and then was coming across our coast, we would launch fighters from Cold Lake. If for any reason the distance that they were at was far enough out that the Alaska fighters could hand off to an American fighter, it's immaterial.

National Defence committee  If I think of the air force writ large and the capabilities that we've just replaced, with the C-130J and we've brought in a fifth C-17, so we've increased our airlift capacity to respond to hurricanes in the Philippines.... We're in the process of changing our Sea King helicopters for Cyclones, we've reinvested in the CP-140, and we just brought in—

National Defence committee  No, but my point is that it's evolving all the time. Are there new threats that we should be concerned about and be ready to respond to? Undoubtedly. And those are considered, and we will bring in projects to respond to those within the defence budget as it stands right now. Today, the posture of the Royal Canadian Air Force, in particular, is sufficient to the threats as we see them right now, although it's not foolproof.

National Defence committee  We've recently gone out to industry asking a number of questions as we do, as we seek to refine our request for proposal. They have a lot of R & D going on in industry that we're not necessarily up to speed with every moment of the day, so we ask a number of questions as we look for the types of solutions we're looking for.

National Defence committee  It could be used for a multiple of contingencies abroad. In Afghanistan we had UAVs. Many of our allies had them armed. It could be used in defence of Canada, actually, when you're trying to have a deterrent capability. Part of having a deterrence is the ability to act, and we're in the business—part of our business—of acting, as I talked to, with the power and the capability.

National Defence committee  If I use the campaign that we're in right now, or were recently in, and if we're just talking about jets, for example, the F-18 is extremely interoperable with the majority of the platforms that are out there.

National Defence committee  The present F-18. As newer platforms come on, the capability of the equipment we have to be seamlessly interoperable in an environment where you need to be very discrete with signals passage.... This is technology. How they detect our aircraft are there is quite often...by how we pass information between aircraft and platforms.

National Defence committee  With the majority. There are some aircraft for which we would have limited ability to be seamlessly interoperable—the F-22 Raptor, for example, right now.

National Defence committee  That may be a better question for General St-Amand. I will tell you that investments are being made to support research and development, shared between Canada and the U.S., for what the replacement system will look like given the threats you've pointed out. Looking at air-launched cruise missiles and their capability, the detection of them is a challenge moving forward.

National Defence committee  Well, no, I wouldn't.... I think we have to be careful; with the system we have in place, there are no guarantees. It's not to say that we can't detect, they're just getting increasingly difficult to with the capability they have. Many of the cues we would have used in the past to be able to anticipate responding to those have diminished with technological advances.

National Defence committee  If I could, Ms. Gallant, I actually think that question would be a perfect one for General St-Amand on Tuesday when he's here as the deputy commander in NORAD. I don't have a strong background in ballistic missile defence. I know that the policy of our country has been, certainly in the last 15 years, not to participate.