Petey "Airshow" MacKay might have taken the advice of some of the salt-horse corporals he must occasionally pass and kept out of sight with his mouth shut.
His little display of bravado on Friday, in the presence of the Chief of Defence Staff and the commander of NORAD General Gene Renuart, leaves more questions than answers. So, at the risk of beating a dead bear, let's get into just a few of them.
The first is, what motivated a full day of blather, not just from MacKay, but also from Harper (of course) and a question in the House from Conservative MP Rick Norlock to Laurie Hawn, MacKay's parliamentary secretary? That's right, during question period a Conservative MP asked another Conservative MP a staged question in which the esteemed parliamentary secretary set the questioner right on the matter of Russian bombers invading Canadian airspace.
Parliamentary secretary: "The Russians never entered Canadian airspace. Our fighter pilots met them and turned them around."
Right. And wrong. In that order. Never entered Canadian airspace. Never do. They were met by air interceptors. They turned around of their own accord. Which raises the next question.
MacKay originally said there was one Russian bomber, without mentioning the type. That seemed rather odd since Russian patrols almost always fly in groups of two or more on long range patrols. The standard patrol is two (for reasons I will explain further on). Later on, MacKay's office, confirmed by NDHQ, said it was two Tu-95MS Bear-H bombers. What a strange detail for a briefed minister to miss. If this was such hot button to push, you'd think he would have that fact on the paper in front of him.
Then, something really strange happened.
The Russians popped up, in a Russian newspaper, calling MacKay's statement a farce. As accurate an assessment as that may be, they gave every indication that the Russian aircraft involved was a single Tu-160 Blackjack bomber. That's a little different breed than a Bear-H. In fact, it's a supersonic, variable-sweep wing bomber in the same class as the American B1 Lancer.
That report creates several problems. MacKay's office and NORAD confirmed two Tu-95MS. The Russians are not just disparaging MacKay's little Friday follies, they're saying both NORAD got and MacKay got it wrong or they are lying. How do you screw up the number and type of aircraft so significantly?
Of course, the Russian's could be trying to mess with some heads at NORAD (and to a lesser degree with MacKay). There is no particular reason to believe the Russians either since what is being suggested is that they sent a single aircraft on an Arctic patrol, an extremely rare event.
Then we come to another issue. The Russians are adamant that they inform adjacent countries of all such patrols. There is no reason not to believe the Russians on this one. In the interest of avoiding a nasty incident, providing such information to neighbouring countries makes perfect sense.
The Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, Col. Alexander Drobyshevsky, confirmed that all the neighboring states had received prior notification of the flights by Russian strategic aircraft.It would hold then, that Russia informed Canada that the Arctic patrol was taking place. How long in advance we don't know in this case, but past notices have been anywhere from several days to a few hours before the sortie.
Which brings up something else.
The distance from CFB Cold Lake to 150 km north of Tuktoyaktuk (just shy of where the Russian aircraft were/was reported to have been intercepted) is 2175 km. The ferry range of a CF-18 (CF-188 if you prefer) is reported as 3330 km. The combat radius of a CF-18 is 540 km. Since an interceptor is not flying without a substantial air-to-air weapons package, it would mean that Cold Lake based CF-18s would have had to complete at least one in-flight refuelling enroute to intercept. That's not a big deal, but it does slow down the advance of the interceptors. And it means executing a rather elaborate program of logistics and rendezvous. Again, no big deal but a lot of execution and there is the matter of the where the air tanker comes from.
Unless.... there were CF-18s already sitting on the ground at a Forward Operating Location in the North West Territories. Now, that would be a coincidence.
If the approaching aircraft was a Tu-160 Blackjack, a Cold Lake scramble would be hard pressed to make an intercept without NORAD having some prior knowledge. And that would indeed make MacKay's, Harper's and Hawn's blustering a complete farce.
Bears in Pairs
The Russian bomber arm (Dal'naya Aviatsia) very rarely ever deploys any less than two bombers on a patrol. The reasons are varied but it goes back to the old Soviet mentality. Aside from the fact that two aircraft made for a better defensive posture in the event of a shoot-up, the truth is, the Russians had (and probably still have) a deep lack of faith in the loyalty of their crews. If one crew made the unthinkable decision to defect to, oh say, Canada, the other aircraft crew had orders to shoot it down. So, while there are operational reasons to fly in formations of at least a pair, they are also there to keep each other honest.
21 November, 2008. Arctic patrol - two Bear-H bombers.
11 December, 2008. North Sea patrol - two Blackjack bombers.
21 January, 2008. Arctic patrol - two Bear-H bombers. Norwegian Sea patrol - two Blackjack bombers.
11 February, 2009. Arctic patrol - two Bear-H bombers.
Notice anything?
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