There is a way the U.S. could play hardball with Canada, if the Liberal government of Prime Minister Mark Carney decides it wants to limit its purchase of F-35s in favour of the Gripen.
Critics who favour the Lockheed-Martin stealth fighter have long argued that the Swedish-built Gripen would not be interoperable with American aircraft and the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD).
That’s not what you see at the NATO air policing mission in Iceland, where Danish-owned F-35s have been training and operating alongside Swedish JAS-39 Gripens-Cs.
Commanders of both the Swedish and Danish air forces, speaking at the airfield in Keflavik on Tuesday, said the aircraft have been performing well together.
No, I haven’t actually. How much is even known publicly about what it is, and to what extent it’s an actual thing rather than just a Trump-brand marketing label for more air defence?
I know the name make it sound like it’s the same thing as the Iron Dome, but we’re talking about very different scales and very different threats.
There’s information if you go looking.
It’s quite different from the Iron Dome. The Iron Dome is regional batteries focused on mostly short-range missiles. The Golden Dome is air, sea, ground, cyber, and space, and it’s being set up for long-range missiles like ICBMs and hypersonic missiles and drone swarms. Space-based systems are big part of the plan.
The big plan is knitting together all of these different sensors and weapons systems into an integrated whole, stuck together by a Command and Control system.
The command and control is in the process of being set up and is planned for a first demonstration this summer. Canada’s over the horizon systems fit into that system by providing the sensor data for the lower level of the shield, below space-based systems but still long-range detection.
Canada’s engaged on the path to building this and expected to be part of the test this summer. The biggest questions for Canada going forward will be to what extent we have any say over use of response systems in our airspace, and there’s no guarantee of that.
It is something that will take many years to fully set up, but it has the top-level administration, architecture, and funding in place, and it’s moving forward on the plan.