More details have emerged about the controversial Maritime Helicopter Program, which looks more and more like a money pit.
Where are the helicopters?
Tag Archives: Defence policy
Maritime helicopter procurement flounders
Before the F-35 fiasco, there was the Maritime Helicopter Program, another disastrous, wasteful military procurement program. Whatever happened to that program? As David Pugliese reported earlier this month (“Sikorsky hasn’t paid $8M fine for late helicopter delivery,” Ottawa Citizen, 3 January 2012), we’re still waiting to get something out of it: The original plan called […]
New U.S. defence strategy to impact Canada?
Earlier this month, President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced a new U.S. defense strategy, shaped in large part by projected Pentagon budget cuts. According to the New York Times (Elisabeth Bumiller & Thom Shanker, “Obama Puts His Stamp on Strategy for a Leaner Military,” New York Times, 5 January 2012), the new […]
Is the covert war with Iran becoming overt?
Earlier this week, another Iranian nuclear scientist was assassinated in a bomb attack (Ali Akbar Dareini, “Bombs kill another nuclear scientist in Iran,” Globe and Mail, 11 January 2012): Two assailants on a motorcycle attached a magnetic bomb to the car of an Iranian university professor working at a key nuclear facility, killing him and […]
Saunders: Why was Canada in Kandahar?
Globe and Mail columnist Doug Saunders examines how the Canadian Forces ended up at war in Kandahar (“Canada picked its Kandahar moment,” Globe and Mail, 7 January 2012): What on earth were we doing in Kandahar? Now that it’s all over, that question hangs in the air…. How did we pour five years, more than […]
Great moments in national security punditry: "Red Dawn" Canada
Columnist Bernie Quigley makes a bold bid for the all-time silly pundit record — an almost insanely ambitious goal while Frank Gaffney still wields a keyboard — with “Russian troops above America’s border: Canada’s ‘Red Dawn’ moment?” (The Hill, 27 December 2011): Until recently, threats to America via the splendid isolation of the Arctic seemed […]