Canada wanted the best long-range radar money could buy, and the place it found it was not Washington but Canberra. Late on Sunday, Canadian time, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government finalised agreements with Australia and BAE Systems Australia to buy an Arctic Over-the-Horizon Radar system — a deal Australian officials promptly billed as the largest defence export in the country’s history.
Secretary of State for Defence Procurement Stephen Fuhr signed the A$2.5 billion agreement with Richard Marles, Australia’s deputy prime minister and defence minister, in Canberra. Reuters put the price at roughly US$1.7 billion; Bloomberg’s conversion landed nearer US$1.8 billion. Whatever the exchange rate on the day, the strategic point is the same: a piece of sovereign Australian technology that the United States had reportedly eyed is heading north to guard Canadian skies instead.
The hardware is a descendant of the Jindalee Operational Radar Network, the Australian-built system that watches ships and aircraft out to 3,000 kilometres by bouncing high-frequency radio waves off the ionosphere and reading what comes back. Conventional radar is blocked by the curvature of the Earth; over-the-horizon radar reaches past it. For a country trying to see threats approaching across the top of the world before they arrive, that range is the whole appeal.
For Australia, the commercial milestone matters as much as the engineering. The country has spent years trying to turn its defence-industrial expertise into something it can sell abroad rather than merely field at home. Marles, in a written statement released by his department, framed the agreement as proof the model can work.
“This arrangement demonstrates Australia’s ability to export advanced, high-technology defence systems while safeguarding our national security, and enabling trusted partners to benefit from Australian innovation.”
Richard Marles, Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister
The Canadian rationale is geographic. Ottawa’s contribution to NORAD has long leaned on ageing northern sensors, and a string of defence analysts have warned that the country lags badly on Arctic awareness. The new system is meant to plug part of that gap. Stephen Fuhr cast it as one component of something larger.
“This project is part of a broader effort to build an integrated Arctic surveillance and communications network that will strengthen Canada’s ability to monitor, understand and respond to activity in the Arctic.”
Stephen Fuhr, Secretary of State for Defence Procurement
There is a wrinkle worth noticing in where the first radar will actually sit. The transmitting and receiving stations for this initial Arctic Over-the-Horizon Radar unit go in the Kawartha Lakes region of southern Ontario — hundreds of kilometres from the ice it is built to watch. That is the nature of the technology: the antennas stay south, the gaze reaches north. The system is expected to be operational by 2029.
- A$2.5 billion — contract value (about US$1.7 billion, per Reuters)
- 3,000 km — surveillance range of JORN-class over-the-horizon radar
- 2,270 jobs — annual employment from construction, 2026–2033
- 2029 — expected first operational date
- ~$6 billion — Carney’s estimate last year for the overall program
The money does not flow only one way. Because the radar is foreign-built, the contract is paired with an industrial-benefits arrangement obliging investment back into Canada’s defence base; BAE Systems Australia is to work with Canadian firms to grow local expertise on the system. Construction alone is projected to create 2,270 jobs a year between 2026 and 2033 — the kind of domestic return that makes a large foreign purchase easier to defend in Parliament.
Sunday’s signing also covers only the first of two planned radars. The second, the Polar Over-the-Horizon Radar, has to be planted far deeper inside the Canadian Arctic Archipelago — a sprawl of more than 36,500 islands north of the mainland — and its exact coordinates and host communities remain classified. Carney first announced the Australian partnership last year, shortly after taking office, when he pegged the wider effort at around $6 billion.
Set against the present mood inside the alliance, the optics are pointed. Washington has spent recent months pressing partners to spend more and lean less on American capabilities, and Carney’s “middle power” framing has drawn open jabs from US officials. Buying a sovereign radar from a fellow middle power rather than from the United States is, in that light, less a snub than a statement: when the technology is good enough and the politics are friendly enough, the road to Arctic security can run through Canberra.
