The Pentagon hopes to build on a good thing—the long-running bi-national North American Aerospace Defense Command—so has established the Bi-National Planning Group to determine whether it’s conceivable to create other such compacts with Canada. The goal: to reduce the red tape during responses to terrorist threats or natural disasters. Two Navy captains are leading the effort: US Navy Capt. Kendall L. Card and Canadian Forces Navy Capt. Richard J. Bergeron. So far the group has drafted several plans to address missions for joint and combined defense, as well as civil authority aid operations. Whether these plans, if approved, would lead to new organizations with full-time American and Canadian military staffs—as with the 50-year-old NORAD—is very much up in the air. “We can’t rush the process,” said Bergeron.
The Air Force kicked off one of its biggest exercises this week with the latest edition of Bamboo Eagle, featuring combined virtual and live training scenarios focused on test the command-and-control “nervous system” leaders need to operate on a complex joint battlefield spread over vast distances.
