The latest update to the treaty governing operations of the NORAD bi-national command went into force May 12—adding the new mission of maritime warning for North America. The two original missions—aerospace warning and aerospace control—remain in place. While NORAD will warn of potential maritime threats, it will “not exercise operational control over maritime assets,” according to a Canadian backgrounder. The agreement states that maritime warning pertains to “processing, assessing, and disseminating intelligence and information” related to internal waterways of and maritime areas and approaches to Canada and the US. This does not necessarily rule out creation of a maritime version of NORAD that conceivable could have maritime operational responsibility.
In order to deny China “sanctuaries” from which it can launch air and missile salvos during a potential invasion of Taiwan, the U.S. Air Force needs to buy far more B-21 bombers and F-47 fighters than currently planned, according to a new report from AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.
