Canada's hidden, media-ignored role in electronic warfare

CFP ^ | February 28, 2005 | Judi McLeod & David Hawkins

[MikeEdwards]

Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin may have been telling us more than he thought when he said Thursday: "Ballistic missile defence is not where we will concentrate our efforts."

Where Canada is concentrating its efforts should be worthy of both Washington and mainline media attention.

Weapons of electronic intelligence and electronic warfare are where the nation of Canada holds the cutting edge.

Through an intricate series of subsidiaries and sub-contractors, leading back to the blind trust running his Canadian Steamship Lines company, Prime Minister Paul Martin is still at the epicenter of that cutting edge.

In the development and design of Instrument Approach Procedures (IAP) for military aircraft, Canada maintains a first-place role.

IAPs are published instructions to pilots, specifying a series of aircraft maneuvers that must be executed for the aircraft to transition safety from an en route driving final approach, when flying by instruments.

MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Limited (MDA), a Canadian company, monopolizes IAP-related safety of air transportation for air forces and civil aviation authorities worldwide.

On May 3, 2001 MDA was awarded a contract - apparently arranged through the CSL blind trust--with the United States Air Force to develop a system for use by specialists at Air Force bases to design IAPs.

MDA’s system ingests digital terrain, elevation data and air navigation data (such as the location of navigation aids, runways, buildings and towers) to build and display a virtual made of the physical environment surrounding any given airport. . . . .

[Brilliant]

We ought to tell these companies that if they want to do business with us, they'd better be in the US--not in Canada.

[Grut]

The article is just incoherent.

[KeyWest]

Makes no sense. Must be a lot of brain freeze up there.