Bear facts, rumour and analysis

I was rather dismissive of the government's almost over-the-top reaction to the recent TU-95 incident in the Arctic (below of photo of an earlier interception).

DND HANDOUT PHOTO

A CF-18 Hornet (left) from 4 Wing Cold Lake flies next to a Russian Tu-95 Bear bomber on Sept. 5, 2007, in a publicly announced exercise.

An informed reader (not CF) has now sent along this interesting account and analysis of the Bear incident, and implications for the Canadian NORAD role:

Some people seem to be forgetting that Canada has a treaty commitment with the US in the form of NORAD and letting Russian bombers fly around unattended in the Canadian Arctic is definitely NOT part of the deal. Ever since the DEW line went operational and NORAD came into being, the Americans have been onto us about holding up our end of the deal. They had to do most (if not all) of the 'heavy lifting' defending the western Arctic airspace from Alaska until the end of the Cold War. Canada thought they had finally resolved the matter in the nineties when they built the "Forward Operating Location" airbases across the Arctic (Inuvik, Yellowknife, Rankin Inlet, and Iqaluit). They were all completed right around the time the Russians started going broke and quit poking at our Northern defences. In 2007 the Russians came back but this time things are much different. The Americans have scaled way back in Alaska and have re-deployed a large portion of their continental air defence assets to the lower 48 states [we've even sent Hornets to Elmendorf AFB when the USAF had F-15 problems, more here - MC]. Now they're asking us to fulfill our NORAD commitments in the Arctic and we still can't seem to do it.

Whether the Russians actually violated Canadian airspace is all a matter of semantics depending on their exact altitude and whose definition of "Canadian airspace" you use. The Bears were intercepted 190 kilometres northeast of Tuktoyaktuk. That's about 500 kilometres EAST of 140 degrees west longitude which is the usual point where airline traffic is handed off between ATC centres in Alaska and Canada and WELL into the western end of the Northwest Passage. Canada has domestic airline traffic flying between Inuvik and Sachs Harbour on Banks Island on tracks that are farther west than where the intercept took place.

The real question that nobody is asking (except inside NORAD, I'm sure) is: How did a Russian bomber penetrate THAT FAR before being intercepted and sent on its way. The answer (and likely why the government chose to go on the offence instead of trying to play it all down) is that Canada got caught with their pants down again. Rumour has it that we had to scramble CF-18's out of Alberta and without refuelling it's a long, one-way trip from there to the Beaufort Sea. Furthermore, the nearest tanker support that could be scrounged up had to come from American bases in Washington state. Our soon-to-be-retired Hercules air tankers are far too slow to support these kind of missions from their home in Winnipeg and our two CC-150 Polaris transports that were recently upgraded to enable air-to-air refuelling are always fully tasked with other duties. The generals in Colorado Springs must have been turning purple by the time the fighters FINALLY intercepted the Bears, warned them off and then met up with the tankers to refuel for the long trip home.

The Canadian Arctic cannot be seriously defended from bases in the South. The FOL sites might be OK for temporary deployments in the summer but there are issues with operating in the Arctic in winter that the Canadian Forces needs to deal with. A continuous presence in the western Arctic with all the defence, support and monitoring assets that are necessary to do the job properly is the only solution to meet our NORAD commitments. Coincidentally, this is also the best way to satisfy the political aim of proving that the Arctic islands and all the air and sea space between them is sovereign Canadian territory.

As I have pointed out, however, no Canadian land (Hans Island apart) is in dispute.