National Defence committee  I would agree with everything that was just said there, and I would foot-stomp that the urgency is, no kidding, what stands in the way. I feel a bit bad about saying this to folks in the high north, but winter is coming, and just how bad it could be has not sunk in.

National Defence committee  I'll just jump in briefly to say that the radars in the North Warning System are very old. Radar technology has improved dramatically over the past several decades, so there's the opportunity to replace them and also, by the way, to fill in some gaps. I completely agree with the comment that was made earlier: We're blind today.

National Defence committee  “Limited area defence” is a term of art that has been used by NORAD for some time, and it has now been released in terms of the architecture for the golden dome idea. There needs to be a lot more information put out about the narrative for the United States regarding this as well.

National Defence committee  First of all, I believe that's correct, and I think that's okay. The good news is that the OTHRs may not have the super high fidelity, but they can see very far. To paraphrase an American politician, I don't want to just see over our territory; I want to see to Russia from my house.

National Defence committee  It's a useful tool in the tool box, but Canada is also getting, for its surface combatants, SPY-7 radar, for instance, and that has S-band. That's a completely different animal. It's useful to view ballistic missile threats with the higher fidelity that I think you're looking for.

National Defence committee  That's Canada's choice. I would really foot-stomp what was said, I think, by Dr. Fergusson and maybe some other folks: You want lots and lots of sensors. You don't want to put all your eggs in proliferated LEO space. You don't want to put all your eggs in any one type. You want to have a diversity of sensor types so that if they can successfully blind one, you've still got lots more, like AWACS and the F-35 sensor package.

National Defence committee  I think there are a couple different species of this. Probing NATO airspace to ascertain what capabilities they have to respond to in terms of air policing is one form of a test. It might be, as you said, short of war. Doing that with cyber-operations, like I said, quasi-war operations, might be another kind of test.

National Defence committee  I would say today. Missile threats could come at any time. The threat is here. It's not a tomorrow problem. It's very much a today problem. Second, I would just add—to your previous question about eliminating threat—it's not going to be possible to eliminate the threat, and that's why it's so important to begin to have the conversations of what it is, what areas and what things need to be defended above all, as opposed to the things you don't try to defend.

National Defence committee  That's a great question. First of all, as someone who has been following the particular air and cruise missile threats for a while, I was very gratified by the announcement a couple of years ago about a long-term and very significant investment in NORAD. As some of the other folks have said, it was long overdue.

National Defence committee  I do appreciate Dr. Fergusson's candour. We have gotten good at diagnosing the problem. We've figured out that the world has changed, and we have even begun to prescribe some solutions. We've said what we need to invest in and what we need to do differently to contend with these threats from major powers, but we've not yet begun to take our medicine, so we're not yet on the road to recovery.

National Defence committee  I think this was what I was alluding to in my prepared remarks. Professor Lackenbauer explained very well the difference between denial and retaliation. The question is why. Why is it necessary to have that denial to thwart it? After all, why isn't the threat of punishment enough?

National Defence committee  I'll just say as an observer that I was very gratified to hear the interest in the F-35. The fifth-generation aircraft is going to be pretty useful when you're contending with fifth-generation threats like from Russia, for instance. There are a couple of things that come to mind there.

National Defence committee  Chair Sousa, Vice-Chairs Bezan and Savard-Tremblay, and members of the standing committee, our topic today is a timely one. Missile threats are no longer niche or boutique problems, but certainly weapons of choice. Today’s landscape is accompanied by the advent of a new missile age, one defined by a surge in the global supply and demand for a broad and diverse spectrum of strike capabilities and the means to counter them.