Norad paying ‘full attention’ to Chinese-Russian air co-operation

The head of the North American Aerospace Defence Command says Chinese and Russian air co-operation in the Arctic has Norad's 'full attention.'

The head of the North American Aerospace Defence Command says Chinese and Russian air co-operation in the Arctic has Norad’s “full attention.”

Those two countries for the first time staged a joint patrol in the Arctic near the coast of Alaska last July.

U.S. Gen. Gregory Guillot told The Canadian Press in a year interview that it potentially takes decades for two nations’ militaries to reach “full integration” at a level like the U.S. and Canada.

“We see it right now as co-ordinated, meaning that they can safely operate in the same area (but) not near the level of integration that the Canadian Forces and the U.S. Forces have,” he said. “As they continue to operate up there more, it certainly has our attention and it’s something we watched very closely.”

Norad’s strategic competitors — Russia, China, North Korea and Iran — have had an “unprecedented level of transactional coordination back and forth between them really for the first time,” he noted.

Canada has been on the outs politically over the past year with U.S. officials for falling behind its NATO pledge on defence spending. While that’s a conflict that will only ratchet up in 2025 as Donald Trump assumes the presidency, Guillot said this incident highlighted the deep ties between the two militaries.

“2024 has been an outstanding year for Canada to U.S. military-to-military relationships,” he said, pointing to how CF-18s and the U.S.’s F-16s and F-35s co-ordinated to deal with the July incident.

“The Canadians just happened to be operating out of Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska, and were able to switch to the Norad role and respond with us. That you can only do if you have years and years of fully integrated training.”