Five Lessons from the History of North American Aerospace Defence

Abstract

Since the onset of the War, the United States and Canada have been cooperating in what has since come to be called the of North America. This has entailed detecting, and in some instances being able to intercept, aircraft (above all Soviet bombers and cruise missiles), intercontinental and submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and satellites. In 1957, Washington and Ottawa agreed to the creation of the North American Air Defence Command (NORAD), headquartered at Colorado Springs, Colorado with a US commander-in-chief, a Canadian deputy commander, and a staff drawn from the militaries of both countries. NORAD was given operational control over the air defences of both countries. The binational organization was renamed the North American Aerospace Defence Command in 1981. Despite this name change, and although NORAD has remained at the heart of continental defence cooperation, its operational control over air defence was never extended to aU of aerospace defence. Most notably, it has never encompassed baUistic missile defence.Canadians have often made assumptions about what they have to do for continental defence to keep the Americans satisfied, how the Americans have to defend Canada, or how the Americans have to rely on Canadian territory and airspace, and have often been understandably confused about who actuaUy does what in North American aerospace defence, and how decisions are made. To address these issues, here are five lessons that can been drawn from the history of continental defence.GEOGRAPHY DREW CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES MILITARILY CLOSER TOGETHER UNTIL 1957; SINCE THEN, EXCEPT FOR A BRIEF UPTICK IN THE 1980S, THE GEOGRAPHIC BONDS HAVE LOOSENEDNo sooner had the Second World War ended, public servants in Ottawa began pointing out to their political masters that bombers would largely have to pass through Canadian skies to attack the US. Washington could therefore be expected to take an avid interest in defence cooperation with Canada. Canada would be the ham in the sandwich or the of the atomic age. In the 1950s, those expectations were born out. The two countries cooperatively put in place a vast air defence system. Newspapers published maps showing the way it would work. Soviet bombers would first be detected by the American-built and -operated distant early warning (DEW) line in the high Arctic, which would provide plenty of time for the air defence and for the bombers of the US strategic air command to get aloft. The southward movements of the Soviet aircraft would be confirmed by the mid-Canada Une that Ottawa itself had paid for and put in, using Canadian technology. When they reached the vicinity of the Pinetree radars in southern Canada, most of whose stations were operated by Americans, they would be attacked by Canadian and US interceptors and surface-to-air missiles.While there was a lot of cooperation between the two air forces, missing until 1957 was one commander who could take control over all the vast air defence forces that the two countries had been in place and use them as part of a continent- spanning air defence battle. That gap was filled when the two air forces were able to convince the two governments to create NORAD.Shortly before NORAD stood up, the Soviets tested their first intercontinental baUistic missile. It changed the geography of continental defence; the Americans did not need Canada to be able to respond to the missile threat. Unlike aircraft that needed to pass through Canadian airspace, Soviet ballistic missiles would travel beyond the atmosphere and then sharply downward to their US targets. To detect them, the US needed radar sites looking out over the top of the world towards Russia. Alaska, Greenland, and the United Kingdom provided better locations than Canada. To these three sites the Washington later added detectors on satellites and at sites in the continental United States. To any Canadians walking around with that ham sandwich or Cold War Belgium model in their heads - which still applied to air defence - the geographic impact of missile detection must have come as a surprise. …