"...and an oatmeal lobster"

Further to this post by Milnews.ca,

Post-2011 AFG Mission: Civilian Contractors Helping Hunt IEDs?

Bruce R. has his own view at Flit:

People-who-don't-know-what-they're-talking-about Watch

Defence analyst Allen Sens says the contract for the surveillance aircraft indicates that Canada’s Afghan military mission is not yet over.

“This seems to support the idea that we will be staying on with a military mission,” said Sens, an analyst with the University of British Columbia. “I was always under the impression we would continue with some kind of military presence such as JTF2 ( the military’s elite force), PRT assets and a headquarters battlegroup.”

Ottawa Citizen. Some analyst: "Headquarters battlegroup" is a nonsense phrase. If he'd said "...and an oatmeal lobster" it would have made about as much sense in that context. So, either UBC's defence analyst knows nothing about defence, or the Ottawa Citizen's defence reporting team of O'Neill and Pugliese doesn't, or both. Your pick. (You should probably judge the rest of Sens' "analysis" accordingly.)

And another reaction at Milnet.ca:

Because these aircraft have no scope of use outside Afghanistan....

These planes will be critical assets to those people how use SIGINT to target bad guys in any theater of operations not just the current AO.

Defence experts my left butt cheek!

As long as there is a low surface-to-air threat in the theatre. This is the USAF version of the plane; see this post for current Canadian Air Force use of King Airs.

Update: Canadian milblog post of the day:

CONTRACT AWARDED FOR TRANSPORTATION GARAGE AT 8 WING TRENTON