Canadian

Jan. 16 (UPI) — Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Friday where they unveiled a “strategic partnership,” including a new trade deal, amid a thaw of an almost decade-long deep freeze in relations between the two countries.

Welcoming Carney at the Great Hall of the People, the first visit of a Canadian leader in eight years, Xi lauded the “turnaround,” noting that cooperation in recent months had already yielded “positive results” and that he was committed to further strengthening the relationship.

Carney said the relationship would deliver “stability, security and prosperity” for Chinese and Canadians alike, saying agriculture, energy and finance were the issues where efforts should be directed.

“That’s where we can make most immediate progress,” he said.

After their meeting, Carney emerged to announce a five-point partnership — the fruit of “recalibrating distant and uncertain ties” since he came into office in March — with a focus on boosting agri-food trade and clean energy and climate competitiveness, along with championing multilateralism and cultural exchange.

The trade deal will see China slash tariffs on Canadian canola seeds, peas and shellfish — worth as much as $3 billion in new orders — in exchange for Canada slashing its 100% tariff on 49,000 Chinese-made electric to just 6.1%, and Chinese investment in the development of clean power.

The deal unlocks an expected flow of Canadian investment in the other direction into aerospace, sectors, including services, aerospace and advanced manufacturing, as well as a potential increase in oil and gas exports to China.

Carney’s visit kicked off with a meeting Thursday with Premier Li Qiang with the Canadian delegation holding a series of ministerial-level meetings that yielded an MOU to hold more in-depth discussions oil and gas resource development, including LNG along with LPG, as well as cutting emissions.

“They are very clear, they would like more Canadian products,” said Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson.

At a news conference with Li, Carney said the progress made in their new partnership would help position Canada and China up “for the new world order.”

He later clarified, saying what he meant was the decades-old multilateral, rules-based international order was no longer intact and was being superseded by a new one.

“The world is still determining what that order is going to be. The multilateral system that has been developing these has been eroded, to use a polite term, or undercut,” he explained.

Carney stressed Friday that differences between the two sides remained and that he had emphasized to Xi areas where Canada would never compromise, including human rights and issues such as election interference.

Ties have been stretched to the limit by a series of diplomatic and trade frictions dating back years but relations took a nose-dive in 2018 after Canada arrested Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou on a U.S. extradition warrant, with China retaliating by detaining Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig on espionage charges.

All three eventually made it home after a swap in 2021 but relations were tested again in 2023 after Ottawa accused Beijing of attempting to influence the result of Canadian federal elections in 2019 and 2021.

More recently, the Canadian government condemned China in March for executing four dual Chinese-Canadian citizens on drug-related charges.

BEIJING — Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney arrived in Beijing on Wednesday night, beginning a four-day visit designed to repair foundering relations between the two nations as Canada looks to develop ties with countries other than the United States.

It’s the first visit of a Canadian leader to China in nearly a decade. Carney will meet with Premier Li Qiang, his counterpart as head of government, and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“We will double non-U.S. trade over the 10 years. That means we are cognizant of that fact that the global economic environment has fundamentally changed and that Canada must diversify its trading partners,” Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said in Beijing after she arrived with Carney for the visit.

China’s state media has been calling on the Canadian government to set a foreign policy path independent of the United States — what it calls “strategic autonomy.”

Canada has long been one of America’s closest allies, geographically and otherwise. But Beijing is hoping that President Donald Trump’s economic aggression — and, now, military action — against other countries will erode that long-standing relationship. Trump has said, among other things, that Canada could become the 51st U.S. state.

Carney has focused on trade, describing the trip to China as part of a move to forge new partnerships around the world to end Canada’s economic reliance on the American market. Trump has hit Canada with tariffs on its exports to the United States and suggested the vast, resource-rich country could become America’s 51st state.

The Chinese government bristled at former President Biden’s efforts to strengthen relations with Europe, Australia, India, Canada and others to confront China. Now it sees an opportunity to try to loosen those ties, though it remains cautious about how far that will go.

The downturn in relations started with the arrest of a Chinese tech executive in late 2018 at American request and was fueled more recently by the government of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, which decided in 2024 to follow Biden’s lead in imposing a 100% tariff on Chinese-made electric vehicles. China has retaliated for both that and a 25% tariff on steel and aluminum with its own tariffs on Canadian exports including canola, seafood and pork.

“The conversation has been productive. The negotiations are continuing,” Anand said when asked if she was optimistic about a deal to reduce tariffs on canola. “Prime Minister Carney is here to recalibrate the Canada-China relationship.”

Carney met with Xi in October at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea.

Anthony and Gillies write for the Associated Press. Gillies reported from Toronto.

The ability to sense and understand activities in the air and on the sea is one of Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) Maj. Gen. Chris McKenna’s main responsibilities as operational commander for the Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) Region (CANR). However, he faces a number of hurdles to accomplish that mission. Canada has no organic airborne early warning and control aircraft and is relying on an aging satellite system with many users competing for its products.

In the third installment from our exclusive interview last month, McKenna gives us a candid view of what Canada needs to do to modernize its sensing capabilities to get a better handle on the myriad threats NORAD is facing. He also talks about Canadian deliberations over the Trump administration’s Golden Dome missile defense system and how to defend against the threat to military installations from drones. You can catch up with the previous installments here and here.

Some of the questions have been slightly edited for clarity.

Q: Are there any updates to the Trump administration’s Golden Dome missile defense initiative from Canada’s point of view? And does Canada back the placement of kinetic interceptors in space?

A: I think that’s a political decision. So I’m not going to speak to the space-based interceptor piece. That’s up to my politicians to answer that. But certainly, the advocacy that I do is all about integrated missile defense. And how does Canada become a bigger player, a more reliable player, in how we sense things in the Arctic? 

From an integrated missile defense point of view, I think we need to be looking at what ground-based effectors look like. And how do we protect ourselves from an integrated missile defense point of view? How do we be more additive in the NORAD partnership with more capability?

Q: How do you do that? 

A: Well, I think one is the recapitalization and modernizing our command and control and modernizing the way that we sense. I think there’s a lot of opportunity in the space domain as well. Canada signed a partnership between two Canadian companies, MDA and Telsat, that I think will bear fruit, from a polar communications point of view, in the next number of months. We have a project ongoing for space-based ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance], which is likely to progress in the next month or two, and there’ll be some news on that. So there’s, there’s a lot of money moving, finally, on defense spending.

Why Telesat is expanding in Canada

Q: Are you able to provide any details about the space-based ISR?

A: We currently operate a government-of-Canada-owned constellation of four satellites called RADARSAT Constellation Mission. All the orbital axes are based on [the] Arctic, [but] obviously, it’s global. It’s a Low Earth Orbit constellation and it’s radar. 

It’s all about looking through clouds. And for us, it’s about looking at dark ships [with the AIS transponders turned off] with an actual picture of what ships are out there, and figuring out what ships are being non-compliant, and then queuing either ISR assets or the Coast Guard to go and have a look at those ships. 

That was launched in 2019, and its service life is expected to last until about 2026. It’s still giving us good data, and likely will give us good data until the 2030s. So DESSP, or the Defense Enhanced Surveillance of Space Project, is anchored on having a defense-only constellation of satellites, because you can imagine those are satellites are being looked at for, ‘hey, where are the whales?’ ‘Where’s the ice?’ Environmental pollution control. There’s a lot of demand on it. We do get sort of primacy over it, but we do need more ISR in the Arctic, and I think we need our defense-only constellation. So part of the NORAD modernization project was funded that very significantly.

Q: Back to Golden Dome. Are there any updates from the Canadian point of view?

A: So we look at it as Continental Shield. Golden Dome is the U.S. brand on it. From our point of view, it’s great air missile defense and what we will put on the table to defend the continent with. And so I think there are ongoing negotiations between our governments with respect to what the specific investments will be. We’ve got a good head start, though, with our NORAD [modernization], and I think there’s more to come.

Q: Let’s switch topics for a minute. Has Canada experienced drone incursions over critical facilities like the U.S. and Europe have?

A: Not to the same extent. I’m obviously very attuned to what is going on in Europe and what has been going on in the States, and I talked about it with my commander quite a bit. We’re taking counter-UAS very seriously. As we onboard exquisite things like the F-35, we need to have a better system. We’ve purchased a system called the Leonardo Falcon Shield system. That’s the same one that the RAF uses, and we can place it at two of our wings right now, and I’m rolling it at all my wings as the deliveries roll in. And it’s an RF [radio frequency] sensing, RF interception capability. It’s not kinetic as of yet, but that can be added pretty easily. And I think we need to be thinking about this as a baseline capability. Every one of our air bases to be able to deny airspace for hobbyists and state actors who may wish to fly drones over top.

Falcon Shield – Operationally proven drone mitigation system

Q: Why do you think that Canada hasn’t experienced drone incursions to the extent that the U.S. and Europe are experiencing them?

A: I honestly don’t have an opinion on that. We do have drone issues. We do detect drones once in a while, but I have not had massive incursions in any of my NORAD bases as of yet. That doesn’t mean it’s not coming, though. And I think we can’t be naive about this. The U.S. talks about Golden Dome, and [NORAD/NORTHCOM commander] Gen. [Gregory] Guillot, in front of Congress, has talked about the three domes, with the last, the smallest dome, being counter-UAS domes around the U.S. infrastructure. We see it the same way, in the sense that I need limited air defence around my key infrastructure to protect the assets that I wish to protect.

Q: You talked about your counter-UAS equipment having radio frequency detection and intercept capabilities. What’s Canada’s policy on kinetic counter-drone systems?

A: I think there’s other optionality, right? And I think this becomes a policy and a legal discussion. What are the boundaries for our authorities? And if we need more authorities, we have to go back to the government to get them. We do have some exemptions from [Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada] that manages our spectrum. It’s like the FCC in the States, so we’ve got a bunch of dispensations from them to conduct the interceptions we need for defense installations, which is good news. But I do think there’s probably more to come. I do think kinetic, directed energy, drone-on-drone type [of defenses] would be very useful. I think it’ll depend on what the legal framework we’re allowed to use to protect our facilities.

Q: What are the limitations on your counter-UAS actions?

A: It’s an emerging space now in terms of we’re just getting the installs done, and we’re scratching at the authorities, and having the analysis is fine, but right now, in terms of what we’re going to be able to do, I can do some things. I’m not going to get into the details on that – but I can do some things to deny access to my airspace right now. I do think there’s going to have to be a discussion about the aggregation of additional authorities.

Q: Can you tell me more about the domestic counter-UAS strategy to help mitigate the threats, particularly posed by smaller, lower-end drones?

A: Well, one of the keys is domain awareness to begin with, like understand the problem you’re facing and then pair your defensive design against that. And that really is the basis of integrated air and missile defense. But zoom down into the sub-tactical, force protection lens around each of our bases, and we’re going through that process right now to get that laid down. The good news is I’ve got some systems installed. We’re learning with them, and we’re pushing the policy space to make sure we’re having the right authorities.

Q: Have you had to use any of these defensive systems against drones yet?

A: Not yet.

Q: What space-based capabilities are needed for the mission that you don’t have right now?

A: The one that’s in development is the space-based air moving target indicator. The U.S. is going quite heavily on that. I’m really interested in what that could bring. It would be a nice layer on top of the Over the Horizon radar picture. 

The key question is, how small a thing can it see? That’s the overriding discussion we have now. And you know, could it ever supplant a thing like an airborne early warning aircraft? I think at the current time, no. Maybe 15 or 20 years from now, very much potentially. We’ll see. I think we still need AWACS-like aircraft. So that third basket of policy authorities was received in 2024, they [provided] a bunch of money to us to go and conduct an options analysis, and we are in the middle of that right now, looking at airborne early warning aircraft that would be contributive to the NORAD mission set.

Q: What kind of airborne early warning aircraft are you considering in your review? 

A: There are really three options. You could say four with an E-2D as well. But I think that may not fit for the purpose of the Arctic mission set. We are looking at the Boeing advanced E-7 Wedgetail. We’re looking at the Phoenix [L3Harris airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft]. And we’re looking at the GlobalEye, or variants that Saab has built. Two of them, L3Harris and the Saab offering, are both based on a Canadian biz jet. They’re based on the Global 6500 aircraft that Bombardier produces.

GlobalEye walk-around tour with Saab

Q: When will you make a decision?

A: That’s a good question for my government. We owe them the results of our options analysis. We’re near the end of options analysis (OA). The way that Canada appropriates money is by buying years, almost like your mortgage. It’s very boring, but that’s how you get money apportioned to you. And I believe it was sort of in the early 2030s. I’ll be honest, I have a need almost immediately for it. To think about the state of the E-3  fleet around the world, both in NATO and the U.S., there’s a need.

Q: Has the need for look-down radar capability pushed your airborne early warning aircraft program forward?

A: Because of the austerity of the radar landscape in Canada, I do need a movable, high-power radar in which to be able to cue my fighters and to take electronic custody of anything that was coming close to the approaches to North America, so I have a need for it, absolutely.

Q: So that’s what’s driving your options for the airborne early warning aircraft?

A: I feel quite strongly that we need that. We advocated to the government that we needed it. We made a good case. There are obviously lots of questions, but they bought our analysis, and they obviously provided us with policy coverage and funding to get after that.

Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com

Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) Maj. Gen. Chris McKenna spends a good part of his days and nights figuring how to counter the growing threat China and Russia pose to the high north. Cruise missiles, launched from enemy aircraft well into international airspace, count among his biggest concerns. 

McKenna serves as commander of 1 Canadian Air Division, operational commander for the Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) Region (CANR) and the Canadian Joint Forces Air Component Commander. As such, he helps oversee an ambitious, $4 billion project to build a new Over the Horizon Radar system designed to sense threats almost 2,000 miles away. He also has many other responsibilities, like preparing for the integration of F-35 stealth fighters into the RCAF.

In a recent, exclusive hour-long interview, McKenna offered details about the radar development program, the mysterious 2023 shoot-down incident over the Yukon, and his biggest worries as Russia and China increase their individual military capabilities and frequently operate jointly.

You can catch up with the first part of that interview here.

Some of the questions and answers have been slightly edited for clarity.

Q: ​​ How confident are you that NORAD can protect the Arctic domain, and what are the biggest threats emanating from this area?

A: That’s a great question, and it starts with the adversary. From my point of view, the acute threat is Russia; from a NORAD point of view, historically, that has been the threat that we have postured ourselves against. But the emerging or pacing threat is certainly China and what they are doing.

And a great example of that is last summer, we had a combined bomber patrol that threatened North America. So you had a Chinese H-6K bomber paired with and bouncing through Russian infrastructure in the north, in the Russian Arctic, and they conducted a run at the Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ). So we met those bombers, both Canada and the U.S., together. U.S. F-35s and F-16s, my F-18s were postured and met them when they entered the ADIZ and escorted them out. But it’s very interesting to see the collusion between two adversaries in a way that is very different from what we’ve seen in the past. 

Q: What are your biggest concerns?

A: I worry about ballistic missile threats, which continue and persist. Hypersonics as an emerging threat. But the ones that I really worry about are cruise missiles. So air-launched cruise missiles emanating from bombers, and we’re watching Russian bombers shoot those same weapons that we’re concerned about every single day into Ukraine. So we know they work, and we know what their ranges are, and they’re significant.

And I worry about sea-launched cruise missiles in the maritime domain. And what advanced submarines can do in terms of holding North America at risk.

Q: What are the biggest challenges to protecting the Arctic domain, and what has to change from what exists now?

A: In the 1990s, there was a large recapitalization of the radar line in the Arctic North known as the North Warning System, and it fuses Canada and the U.S. We essentially have coastal radars around Alaska and then down the western seaboard of North America. We have radars that go along the north side of the Arctic landmass onto Baffin Island and wrap around Quebec and Newfoundland all the way down to Maine. So we have sort of a radar fence that goes around.

We have 52 total Canadian radars that are up in the north. But they are co-owned. The U.S. co-funds them.

But that fence line was put in place when bombers had to cross it to shoot something, because of the range of their weapons. It’s still relevant in that you will find a weapon crossing that, but bombers don’t need to cross that line. So the fundamental issue is they could be in international airspace, well north of us, and conduct a launch. And so that’s my challenge – how do I domain sense? How am I aware of what’s going on, from a domain awareness point of view, to know that they are there? I think we have to up our game. So Canada’s invested recently in the Over the Horizon Radar project, where we’ve bought the Australian system known as JORN [Jindalee Operational Radar Network]. 

(We’ll discuss the Over the Horizon Radar project in more detail later in this interview)

Q: Have you seen any combined threats from China and Russia since that bomber flight?

A: They continue to conduct combined bomber patrols, but most typically, in the Indo-Pacific, in and around Japan and around the Korean Peninsula. We have not yet seen another return of a combined bomber patrol into the North American approaches.

中俄空中战略巡航现场画面
(微博 央视军事20251209）

12/9に実施の第10次中露合同空中パトロールの映像が公開。中国空軍[PLAAF]H-6K爆撃機や露 Tu-95爆撃機と思われる機体が参加。そのほか、映像内での中国側参加兵力はでJ-11BS戦闘機、Su-30MK2戦闘機、J-16戦闘機、KJ-500A早期警戒機となっている pic.twitter.com/4q3M1M6s0d

— KAROTASU (@type36512) December 9, 2025

Q: Are you seeing any recent joint Chinese-Russian naval patrols?

A: China routinely has these auxiliary general intelligence vessels, which are dual-use vessels, that transit the Bering Sea and end up in what I would characterize as the 10 o’clock to North America, if you look at North America like a clock. So that certainly is an activity that is concerning. Russian research vessels are up there as well. And I think they’re up to some interesting things, and we are present to meet them when they are in the approaches to North America. So I had aircraft deployed up into Alaska this summer, and we were on 14- or 15-hour missions up to 88 Degrees north to make sure we were over top of these vessels as they approached the continent.

Q: You said these vessels are up to some interesting things. What interesting things?

A: Well, I think they, they’re obviously mapping, they’re mapping the seabed for a variety of purposes, both scientific and military. And I think I just leave it at that.

Q: Do you know if they’re looking at underwater cables and that kind of infrastructure?

A: I think yes to all that. I’m not going to get into it in an unclassified setting, but I would just say I’m very concerned about some of the increased activity in that region, and certainly a region that is pristine. It’s also very difficult to navigate through from an underwater point of view. And so there’s a reason they would be up there. I don’t know quite what it is, but it’s concerning from a North American point of view.

Q: Russia has traditionally been the primary threat in the far north, but China’s military expansion in the Arctic is changing this. What role do you see China playing in the Arctic in the coming years?

A: The Russia-China piece is a bit of a marriage of convenience. And we’ll see where this goes. It could deepen, but I certainly don’t see it as close a binational command as we have with the U.S. and Canada, where we have NORAD aircraft flying in tight formation with each other, relieving each other on station, protecting our two countries seamlessly across the border. I flow my fighters into the U.S. and U.S. fighters flow into Canada as required. I don’t believe the Russia-China relationship is that way. I think it’s deconflicted in time and space. They present, obviously, a challenge to North America with these combined power patrols, but I don’t see it anywhere as deep as the relationship we have.

Q: But beyond a relationship with Russia, how do you see China on its own playing a role in the Arctic in the coming years?

A: They have a lot of ambitions, and they’re building a lot of military capability, which we need to pay attention to, in the air domain and the maritime domain, specifically in space, the cyber domain. So I worry quite a bit about the expansion beyond the First and Second island chains of their sphere of influence, and what they wish to do. And I think economic security is national security and vice versa. So you can’t disentangle one from the other, and that’s the advice we give our government.

Q: Can you offer more details about how you view the threats from China?

A: They have fifth-generation aircraft and sixth-generation aircraft and sixth-generation aircraft in development. They have long-range air-to-air weapons, which I get concerned about. Obviously, they have aircraft carrier capability, a Rocket Forces capability, which can reach out and touch into our allies’ homelands. You have a pretty significant subsurface capability that’s growing by the day with the Shang class submarine. 

So I think there are threats that emanate in almost every domain. I don’t worry too much about the land domain, but I do worry about long-range threats that emanate from the land domain, that is to say, Rocket Forces. So maybe just leave it at that. I don’t want to get into an intelligence discussion because it’s probably not the right forum.

Q: Can you provide any new details about the still unidentified objects that flew over the U.S. in early 2023, including one that was shot down in Canadian airspace? Who sent them? Why hasn’t imagery and additional information been released about those objects?

A: I’m tracking one object that was shot down near White Horse using an F-22 under the NORAD agreement, obviously authorized by the Canadian government. I don’t believe they have found the wreckage of that thing yet. It’s a white balloon in the middle of a white expanse of snow, so it is actually hard to find. We had Canadian military folks searching for it for weeks. As far as I know, we did not recover it. It was a balloon, either research or a state actor. It’s not known which. I can’t really give you that detail.

Q: You said you can’t give me that detail. Is it because you don’t know or can’t tell me?

A: I legitimately don’t know (laughs). I will say the way that we executed the engagement, though, is exactly how NORAD’s agreement was crafted to work in the sense that sovereign decision, sovereign soil, but by national best sensor, best shooter. So it actually worked out exactly as scripted.

Q: There were other objects spotted in the skies around the same general time period that we still don’t know what they were or there hasn’t been any additional imagery or information released. Can you talk about those situations?

A: We do track a fair number of research balloons that move around the planet, and you need to sort of run some algorithms on your radar takes to find them. Sometimes it’s very small, like, just imagine, it’s not emitting any heat. It’s got almost no radar reflectivity. These are very hard to detect items. But I don’t have any other information to provide on balloons or UFOs or otherwise.

Q: Let’s circle back to the Arctic Over the Horizon radar. Are there any updates you can provide? What will it bring to the table that doesn’t exist today? And can you talk about the cost overruns associated with the program?

A: I wouldn’t say cost overruns. I just think the understanding of what the system is and what it can do is sort of evolving. So we bought some land in southern Ontario for a transmit site and receive sites. You might be aware that Over the Horizon radar is a bit of dark magic, in the sense that you need about 80 miles between a transmit and receive site. 

The receive sites are these three-kilometer by five-kilometer boxes of many thousands of antennas, in some cases, 30,000 antennas. And you can progressively build out that array to have a higher fidelity in your radar in terms of the rare cross-section size that you can see. The transmit site will be full power when we build that for 2029. The receive sites we will build out over the years, as we get more and more space to build on. 

If you look at the radar picture in the United States, there are so many airports through the center of the U.S. that you never really leave radar coverage, at least in the lower U.S. Canada is not the same. Most of our population is along our border with the U.S., and as you know, the center is quite empty. So you do have little pockets of folks living near an international airport. You get a radar associated with that. And then you have the North Warning System, which is up at around 72ish [degrees] north. So there are large swaths that are sort of unsurveiled, unless you were to put an AWACS aircraft there to go look at it. 

What this will do is give us the ability to sense. Over the Horizon radar is different, though. It’s not like this sort of sweep that you would get with a normal radar. You have to plan it like you’re looking at trapezoids, a couple of hundred miles by a couple of hundred miles that you soak with radar energy. You’re bouncing energy off the ionosphere, into that trapezoid, and then there’s a revisit rate. Every so many seconds, you’re re-irradiating that trapezoid. And that gives you your change detection of a track moving.

Certainly, I’ve seen the Australian system at work. They have three radars in the middle of Australia that look north towards China, towards the Indo Pacific, and their their remote sensing unit down in Adelaide, aggregates those signals, and they present a recognized air picture using that, and it’s pretty, pretty dramatically good. I’ve seen high-end aircraft moving through the South China Sea.

Australia has been operating a version of that for decades now. They’re, quite honestly, world experts on HF over-the-horizon radar. And we’re replacing a couple of sites in the south of Canada. The first few sites are going to look towards the Greenland, Iceland, UK (GIUK) gap​​.

And the second set of sites is going to look to the northwest. And those are going in by 2029 to 2031. We bought the land. We’re clearing the land now. We’ve got a partnership with Australia. So using HF energy to be able to see into the Arctic is useful. And I think space-based sensors, space-based AMTI [air moving-target indicators], space-based intelligence. These are the things we’re going to be using, I think, to look and sense in the Arctic.

Q: What’s the range of the Over the Horizon radar?

A: I believe it’s 3,000ish kilometers, unclassified. But it all depends. You have to have ionospheric sounders that bounce and give you the texture of the ionosphere. So you can tune your radar to bounce it. So again. It’s a bit of a dark art. It depends on the ionosphere conditions of the day. So you want to pair it, obviously, with space-based [sensors] to make sure you have a layered domain awareness approach.

Q: And what does Over the Horizon radar bring to the table that doesn’t exist today in terms of seeing what’s out there?

A: It’s the ability to have a much cleaner and more complete picture of any target that is moving in the air or on the water, and our challenge is maritime domain awareness. Maritime warning is part of the NORAD mission set, so being able to sense on the surface of the ocean at great distances is really important. The challenge with Over the Horizon radar, for the Canadian Arctic context, is a thing called the auroral oval, where all of that energy sits. That gives us those awesome northern lights in Canada. It also prevents HF energy from bouncing into that oval. And so you do need something inside a transmit and receive site, inside of the pole. 

And so we have a signals intelligence base way up north on alert called CFS [Canada Forces Station] Alert, named for a British ship that was stranded there in the 1800s. It’s the most northern permanently inhabited place on the planet. We’ve got about 60ish, very, very dedicated RCAF and Canadian Armed Forces people who live up there on six-month shifts. And that is a great place to put a transmit site. And there are receiver sites potential all over the place. In the Arctic, we have research stations that we’re looking at that have power and that have potentially fiber, depending on where you put it, that would allow you to get that data back south. But we need to transmit and receive in the north.

This is life on Alert

Q: Can you tell us about the development of the Crossbow sensor system and what that includes?

A:  It’s a passive sensor. And so I won’t get into what it can do. I will say, in the Canadian Arctic, the challenge, obviously, is power generation and making sure that can be powered. And that’s what we’re focusing on. It’s the shelter that makes sure that we can feed that sensor.

Q: Where is Crossbow in the development phase?

A: We have some installations that have occurred in the last year or two. I’ll leave it at that.

In the final installment of our interview, McKenna talks about Golden Dome, space-based sensors and the dire need for airborne early warning and control aircraft.

Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com

EDMONTON, Canada — Jason Hills grew up in a rural hamlet in southern Alberta so small there were no traffic lights. Which wasn’t a problem because there wasn’t any traffic either.

But there was a curling rink.

“There was nothing else really to do,” Hills said. “So if you weren’t curling you’d go hang out at the curling rink. It’s a community thing. It’s like everyone gets together.”

In much of the world curling is a curiosity, a sport which, like luge or the biathlon, surfaces every four years at the Winter Olympics — as it will do in February in Cortina D’Ampezzo, Italy — then quickly fades from view.

Canada’s Tracy Fleury (R) releases the stone during a gold medal match against Switzerland at the World Women’s Curling Championship in Uijeongbu on March 23.

(JUNG YEON-JE/AFP via Getty Images)

In Canada, however, it’s as much a part of the culture as poutine and maple syrup.

More than 2.3 million people — or one of every 18 Canadians — participate in the sport annually. That’s about 100 times the level of participation in the U.S. And more than 11 million Canadians watched the sport on TV in 2024, according to estimates from Curling Canada, the national governing body for the sport.

“It’s just embedded in the fabric of Canada,” said Elaine Dagg-Jackson, an Olympic bronze medalist and now one of Canada’s top curling coaches. “Canadians have a real identity with what curling is and what it stands for. It’s a gracious sport where people are being polite. They shake hands before and after the game.

“The curling rink was just a really good place to be in Canada. And still is. It just really suits the culture.”

The objectives of the sport are simple: Teams of two to four players slide 44-pound granite stones, also known as rocks, down a narrow 150-foot-long sheet of ice toward a target area called the house, aiming to get their stone closest to the center of the house. One or two players from the throwing team use carbon-fiber brooms to sweep the ice in front of the moving stone, influencing its path and speed.

A round of play ends when each team has thrown eight stones; in Olympic curling, a match consists of 10 ends, eight in mixed curling, with games typically lasting two to three hours.

The simplicity of the sport is both its charm and its curse. Because there is no running, jumping or lifting of heavy objects, everyone from young children to octogenarians can, and do, compete in amateur curling in Canada.

“It’s relatively inexpensive and it’s relatively accessible,” said Heather Mair, an associate professor at the University of Waterloo. “It’s not a hard sport to play and have fun at. It’s hugely entertaining. And you can really play your whole life.

“I don’t know too many sports you could go out with your grandfather and participate. It can be really family-oriented as a sport.”

But while it looks easy, to excel at the highest levels, where millimeters separate winners from losers in competitions that can stretch for as long as seven hours over multiple days, the sport requires surprising strength, stamina, precision and agility.

Canada’s Brett Gallant curls the stone during the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing on Feb. 17, 2022.

(LILLIAN SUWANRUMPHA/AFP via Getty Images)

“It definitely takes a toll on your body,” Rachel Homan, a three-time Canadian Olympian and three-time world champion, said during a break in training on a bright Edmonton morning. “That part of the game is maybe overlooked; the physical toll it takes. It’s definitely demanding.”

The curling events at February’s Winter Olympics will be held at the Cortina Olympic Stadium in Cortina D’Ampezzo, one of four event clusters in and around Milan. Canada, which has medaled in curling in every Olympics in the modern era, winning a record six golds, will send a dozen athletes — including Homan, the reigning world champion — to Italy to compete in the men’s, women’s and mixed doubles.

The U.S., which has won two Olympic curling medals, both in the men’s competition, will also have a dozen curlers in Italy competing in all three events. But if the sport is a national pastime in Canada, one that competes with hockey for fans and media attention, it remains something of an oddity in the U.S., where it draws huge TV audiences every four years during the Olympics, then fades from view until the next Winter Games.

“It’s so frustrating to see curling become the next best thing to sliced bread for a month and then it comes off the radar for four years,” said Korey Dropkin, a five-time U.S. champion and a 2023 world champion in mixed doubles. “I want to see something that’s on national television in the U.S. every week. I want to be able to expose our amazing sport to the U.S. audience day in, day out.

“I hope that in the near future we’ll be able to create more opportunities for exposure for curling.”

Curling was born in Scotland in the early 16th century but grew up centuries later on the Canadian prairies, where the severe weather, rural landscape and boredom provided fertile ground.

“In many parts of the country there’s long, long winters,” Dagg-Jackson said. “The farmers would be busy all summer, but in the winter they were looking for something to do. So the old adage in Canada is you could go to any town in rural Canada and find a grain elevator and a curling rink.”

Members of the Highland Curling Club, formed in 1898, play on flooded sheets of ice on Jan. 11 in Inverness, Scotland.

(Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images)

The sport, which predates hockey by several decades, was brought to Montreal by Scottish emigrants during the colonial period, more than a half-century before Canada became a country. It then moved west as settlers pushed into what would become the central provinces, where the game was played on ponds and lakes before coming indoors.

In many ways the sport and the harsh conditions in which it thrived embodied the traditional values and traits — resilience, community, politeness, resourcefulness — that have come to define Canada’s unique “northern character.”

Mair, the Waterloo professor, has studied the role curling played in creating social and inter-generational connections and found the sport may have been more important from a mental perspective than from a physical one.

“I don’t know if you can appreciate what a Canadian winter is like, but anything that gets us out of our homes and talking to one another is really, really important,” she said. “We know how necessary it is that we spend time socializing with one another, especially in the dark winter days.”

As a result, it quickly became hugely popular, but for reasons that went beyond sport. Most curling rinks, Mair said, provide social spaces where players can visit with the people they’re competing against.

“So you’re sitting there for half an hour with people that you might never run into in any other part of your life and you start to build social relationships,” she said. “In really small rural communities, those are pretty essential. That’s kind of how it started.”

Aksarban Curling Club president Steve Taylor demonstrates how to push off the hack to deliver a stone in front of an all-ages group learning about the sport in Omaha, Neb., in 2018.

(Nati Harnik / Associated Press)

It’s also why the flat lands of Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta became the earliest hotbeds of curling, which aligned well with the farming season. But the sport didn’t stay there. Curling clubs soon sprung up on Army bases and in fishing communities, in big cities and small towns, where it was taught in schools and played in retirement homes. (Curling has taken a different path in the U.S., where it has become popular in nontraditional winter-sports areas such as North Carolina, Florida, Texas and the San Francisco Bay area.)

“There were entire generations, for the most part, who really had a sense of the game,” Mair said. “The[re] were plumbers and carpenters and teachers, they had regular day jobs and yet they were these really talented athletes who would take the sport to these elite levels.

“So you could come from a teeny, tiny club and you might know someone who’s playing in the national championship.”

That romanticism inspired a radio play and novella by W.O. Mitchell, a writer and broadcaster who chronicled life on the Canadian prairies in the mid 20th century. In “The Black Bonspiel of Willie MacCrimmon,” which was also adapted for television, a cobbler from a small town in rural Alberta strikes a deal with the devil to trade his soul for curling success.

American John Shuster watches Matt Hamilton, center, and Colin Hufman, left, sweep his throw during a match against Canada at the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022.

(Brynn Anderson / Associated Press)

But as curling moved from the prairies to the cities, the object lessons the sport taught changed as well. If Mitchell’s tale is a decades-old take on the timeless tug of war between good and evil, “The New Canadian Curling Club,” a 2018 comedy by playwright Mark Crawford in which four immigrants show up for a learn-to-curl class, is a modern exploration of multiculturalism and acceptance.

What the immigrants share, however, is a belief that understanding Canada starts with understanding curling.

“It’s weird and wonderful. And like all good things, it takes a little time to appreciate,” Mair, who teaches in the department of recreation and leisure studies at Waterloo, said of the sport. “At first glance you’re not totally sure what’s going on. And then as the layers start to kind of unfold, you realize just how interesting and complicated and engaging it can be.

“It’s fun. It really is. It’s quirky and fun. And I think we need more of that.”

But, she added, much of that has changed since curling entered the Olympics.

“We’re at a bit of a crossroads,” she said. “Elite sport is doing just fine in a lot of ways. [But] we need to have a different conversation about community sport. It’s not about a pathway to Olympic gold. It’s about rebuilding our communities and providing safe and accessible sports for everything. And curling is just so special in that way.”

Curling debuted in the Winter Games in 1924 with just three countries taking part; Great Britain, which fielded a team of Scottish curlers, won the gold medal. But the sport didn’t return to the official Olympic program for another 74 years and when it did, the exposure fueled interest in winter sports powerhouses such as China, Japan and South Korea, but also in Afghanistan, Andorra, Bolivia, the Virgin Islands, Kuwait and Mexico, which are all among the 67 members of the World Curling Assn.

“There’s a little bit of perception from America that curling is small potatoes. And it probably is compared to the big four sports,” said Marc Kennedy, a world and Olympic champion from Canada who will be competing in his fourth Olympics in Italy. “But it’s a big deal. Arguably one of the fastest-growing sports internationally. It’s massive in Asia. Some of our most popular athletes are from Japan.”

That added competitiveness — 30 countries attempted to qualify for this year’s Olympic tournament — has not only raised the stakes and professionalized the sport, it also threatens to crush curling’s gracious and polite traditions in a stampede for the top of the medal podium. In last spring’s world championship in Canada, for example, Chinese athletes were accused of touching a stone with a broom, kicking a stone and illegal sweeping — all forbidden acts.

In most other sports, that would have been considered gamesmanship. In curling, the accusations alone were an affront to the sport’s tradition and dignity.

Team Shuster’s Chris Plys throws the rock during the U.S. Olympic curling team trials in Omaha, Neb., on Nov. 20, 2021.

(Rebecca S. Gratz / Associated Press)

“In curling you always divulge that you broke a rule … and apologize,” said Dagg-Jackson, the former Olympian turned coach.

“It’s supposed to be a gentleman’s game. You’re supposed to call your own fouls,” added Chris Plys, a three-time U.S. Olympian. “Now we’re starting to see people doing questionable things.

“It’s sad because the best part of the game is just how honest everything is. And there’s people out there 1766928496 that are willing to do whatever it takes to win.”

Those athletes certainly aren’t cheating for the money since curlers, even at the highest level, have often had to work regular jobs to pay the bills. That could change this spring with the launch of the Rock League, the sport’s first professional competition, which will begin play shortly after the Milan-Cortina Olympics.

“The Rock League is going to be a huge new chapter to the sport,” said Dropkin, the Olympian who will captain the U.S. Rock League team. “That is going to present a whole lot of opportunities to curlers. Curlers now, curlers [in] the pipeline. They can actually make a living.”

The five-week circuit will feature six teams of five men and five women — one from the Asian-Pacific, two from Canada, two from Europe and one representing the U.S. — playing a variety of formats during stops in the U.S. and Canada. Competitors will not just earn money based on performance, but will receive salaries as well.

Historically the sport has relied heavily on prize money, which doesn’t go far. Kennedy’s winning five-man team at the 2025 Brier, the annual Canadian men’s championships, split $108,000 of the tournament’s $300,000 purse last March, which didn’t leave much after paying for travel and housing at the 10-day event.

The Dodgers will pay Shohei Ohtani more than that every time he comes to the plate over the next 10 seasons.

“I don’t think any of us get into curling with the idea of making millions of dollars,” said Kennedy, 43, a father of two who sold his frozen-food franchise 14 years ago to support his curling career. “You’ve got a lot of curlers out there that still play for the love of the game and for the opportunity to represent Canada at the Olympics or World Championships.

“If money was your motivation, then you’re probably in the wrong sport.”

Rachel Homan throws a rock during Canadian Olympic curling trials in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, on Nov. 25.

(Darren Calabrese / Associated Press)

For Homan, 36, a mother of three young children who has traditionally relied on sponsorships, stipends from the national federation and winnings from underfunded tours such as the Grand Slam of Curling to make ends meet, the Rock League has the potential to change not only her life, but her legacy as well.

“In this league, being a part of it, might not mean anything for me financially right now. But it’s more about what you’re leaving behind and what you’re helping create,” said Homan, who will captain one of the league’s two Canadian teams.

Financing a professional league isn’t the only challenge curling will face coming out of the Milan-Cortina Games, though. Because while the Olympics may help the sport gather viewers, it has done little to reverse a steady decline in participation at the grassroots level, which is robbing the sport of its future athletes.

“It’s just hard to get young kids introduced to it and have access to it,” Kennedy said. “Back in the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s it was the community center. Everybody kind of learned curling, especially out west. That’s what was driving a huge part of our sport for a long time.”

Not any more. Canada, like the U.S., has seen millions of people flee rural areas for big cities over the last several decades and as a result the local curling rink is no longer the civic hub it was when Jason Hills was growing up on the frigid plains of central Alberta. And what investment there is in the sport is now being directed to events such as the Olympics, the Grand Slam of Curling or the fledgling Rock League, not to building more community rinks.

“Curling had to pivot a bit,” said Dagg-Jackson, who takes her five grandchildren curling. “It used to be all about membership, about the thousands and thousands of curlers across the country. Now those few competitive curlers that shine in the spotlight are known to all Canadians because they’re on television all the time and they draw attention to the sport.

“Fifty years ago you just waited at the rink and people showed up because it was the place to be. Big events, Olympics, pro leagues, that’s the future of curling. But the culture and the lore, the history of curling, it’ll always be there.”