National Defence committee  Indeed, the central part of any weapon system is the people, and the sailors are very well trained.

National Defence committee  But there'll be warning time in advance of that, so if a decision were taken it would take one or two days, depending upon the readiness we've asked our pilots to be at before they're going to be ready to start that flight. So we would keep them at a ready state based upon our ex

National Defence committee  The HMCS Charlottetown is at a high state of readiness and has all the weapon systems they require for what they're doing.

National Defence committee  I know Jill Sinclair has something to say here. Let me give you a quick, upfront answer, which would be yes and no. Yes, nations do consider, as they're going along, how they ought to participate. The UN Security Council resolution is a direction unto itself, but nations have th

National Defence committee  As I recall, the coalition, in its force generation request, looked to have in the order of about 40-plus airplanes for the air mission and a similar kind of number for the maritime mission. There's a maritime protection piece there and other activities there that would merit the

National Defence committee  Can I leave that to my air force counterpart to answer?

National Defence committee  There's always going to be a limit. What I'm saying is there are sometimes people who aren't prepared to go to the limit that's been agreed to by a coalition or by an alliance. The limits are still established. We don't exceed those limits; there's no effort to exceed those limit

National Defence committee  Well, of course the U.S. can do it on its own, and that's why it often leads off in coalitions. It has the capacity, with its global component commanders, to be able to do this kind of mission relatively rapidly. NATO can of course do it. As I say, be it in some kind of a hybrid

National Defence committee  There are some naval assets, but they have essentially stayed in port and are not presenting a threat at this time.

National Defence committee  Well, of course in our own national structure we've got our own, so we put a colonel, as I said, into the Canadian Air Component Command in order to do that level of coordination in Ramstein. But there are Canadians elsewhere. For example, Lieutenant General Bouchard is the deput

National Defence committee  Absolutely.

National Defence committee  That's actually an excellent question, and in my own experience I have found some interesting challenges with that. I guess I would say to you that in a coalition the differing rules of engagement present both a challenge and an opportunity. They present a challenge because it's

National Defence committee  Yes, it's both the upfront process of taking a look at all of the intelligence and surveillance information and then of course it's reviewed through a battle damage assessment process where we want to take a look and see whether the target has been effectively engaged or not, wha

National Defence committee  Ms. Sinclair will answer that.

National Defence committee  The Qataris haven't started flight operations, but they're making preparations. I couldn't tell you exactly when that will take place. If I could just address the issue of Arab League and other country involvement in NATO operations, for example, of course if you look at ISAF, t