DTN News - DEFENSE NEWS: Canada Bails Out Of NATO Airborne Surveillance Programs
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - March 18, 2012: The Canadian Forces hope to save $90 million a year by pulling out of NATO programs operating unmanned aerial vehicles as well as airborne early warning planes, according to documents obtained by the Citizen.
Defence Minister Peter MacKay gave U.S. officials a heads-up last year about the withdrawal, pointing out that it will free up 142 Canadians assigned to NATO for new jobs, the documents show.
The shutdown of Canada’s contribution to NATO’s airborne warning aircraft, known as AWACS, will save about $50 million a year, according to the records obtained under the Access to Information law. Another $40 million a year will be saved as a result of Canada’s withdrawal from NATO’s Alliance Ground Surveillance Program, which would see the purchase of advanced unmanned aerial vehicles to conduct surveillance and intelligence gathering.
Canada has been involved in NATO’s AWACS program for more than 25 years and the aircraft were seen as key to the alliance’s success during the recent war in Libya.
U.S. unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs as they are known in military parlance, were also used to gather intelligence information during the Libyan conflict. NATO wants to ease the strain on the U.S. UAVs by having a pool of Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles at the alliance’s disposal.
Canada’s pull out from the UAV program will be done by the end of April, the Defence Department confirmed in a recent email. The withdrawal from the AWACS program is expected to take much longer.
The Canadian Forces contingent assigned to the AWACS aircraft is the last major Canadian military presence in Europe.
