Canada will invest $4.9 billion over the next six years to modernize North America's aging defensive systems, according to Defence Minister Anita Anand.."Today, we turn another page and begin NORAD's net chapter as autocratic regimes threaten the rules-based international order that has protected us for decades," Anand said at CFB Trenton air force base on Monday.."And as our competitors develop new technologies like hypersonic weapons and advanced cruise missiles, there is a pressing need to modernize Canada's NORAD capabilities.".That figure represents Canada's share of the cost of overhauling the decades-old missile defence system. The US covers about 60% of the bill for NORAD..Several US and Canadian military experts have claimed that NORAD, which was set up in the 1950s to detect incoming Soviet bombers, has begun showing its age and needs to be upgraded. They have said the system was not built to track more modern cruise missiles or hypersonic missiles..Anand says the funding is the first of an estimated $40 billion to be spent over the next 20 years to upgrade NORAD — Canada's and the US' joint early warning system, and buy other military assets to protect the continent..The NORAD overhaul will include the replacement of the North Warning System — a chain of radar stations in the Canadian Arctic. This system will be replaced with two different types of radar systems that can look over the horizon..The overhaul will also deploy new satellites built to track moving ground targets and build on commitments for space-based surveillance, which were first announced in the defence policy named Strong, Secure, Engaged..It was not immediately clear whether Canada would also join the US in actively defending against intercontinental ballistic missiles, a program that Ottawa opted out of in 2005.
