Another one while Harper is in the Arctic:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/...-airspace.html
Quote:
Two CF-18s shadowed a pair of Russian military aircraft Tuesday as they flew within 56 kilometres of Canadian soil.
The Prime Minister's Office says the TU-95 Bear aircraft were spotted approximately 220 kilometres north of Inuvik, N.W.T.
The CF-18 jets from 4 Wing Cold Lake, Alta., shadowed the Russians until both aircraft turned around.
The Canadian aircraft returned to base without incident.
A PMO statement early Wednesday said that because of the rapid response, "at no time did the Russian aircraft enter sovereign Canadian airspace."
Spokesman Dimitri Soudas said Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who is in the Canadian North for his annual Arctic tour, was briefed during and at the end of the mission.
|
I don't understand how we can have a rapid response from Cold Lake. If this is 220km north of Inuvik, and the distance from Colk Lake to Inuvik is something like 3,000km, that means the planes need to fly 3,220km to intercept.
Max speed of CF-18 is 1,800km/hr, that's an hour and 45 minutes to intercept at full throttle, which I don't think they could do. 1 hour and 45 minutes doesn't exactly seem rapid.