![]() ![]() At an airshow the following year, a fly-past of 28 Bison seemed to indicate that the bomber had entered serial production, two years earlier than predicted, the paper says. The Soviets would soon display a new long-range jet bomber, the Bison, at the 1954 May Day parade in Moscow. "These demanding specifications contributed to the escalating costs and frequent delays in the CF-105 program." In November 1952, the Royal Canadian Air Force called for an aircraft with a speed of Mach 2 and the ability to fly at 50,000 feet. "The CF-100 Canuck, a jet interceptor developed and manufactured in Canada, was just entering service, but there were already concerns that it might soon be outclassed by newer Soviet bombers operating at higher altitudes and faster speeds." planning for continental defence, Barnes notes. The analytic capability allowed Canada to fully participate in preparing the assessments on the Soviet threat to North America that would underpin joint Canada-U.S. It would no longer have to rely entirely on assessments from the United States and Britain. In the years after the Second World War, Canada developed its ability to prepare strategic intelligence assessments on defence and foreign policy, the paper notes. "All of these claims cannot be true it is possible that none of them are," Barnes writes. It has also been suggested that Canadian intelligence officers intentionally discounted contrary information to support a decision that had already been made by their political masters, or the government simply ignored the intelligence provided by both the Canadian and U.S. Another is that Washington deliberately manipulated the intelligence it gave Ottawa to induce Diefenbaker to cancel the Arrow. One is the notion that Canada was misled by poor U.S. "Only now can we address many of the myths about the Arrow that have grown up in those decades." "It has taken more than 60 years to get a more complete picture of the decisions surrounding the Avro Arrow," Barnes told The Canadian Press. The paper's author, researcher Alan Barnes, tells of how the sudden cancellation of the impressive delta-winged interceptor, once a symbol of Canada's high-tech future in aircraft manufacturing, remains a source of nationalistic anguish decades later.īarnes, a former federal intelligence official who is now a senior fellow of the Centre for Security, Intelligence and Defence Studies at Carleton University, used the Access to Information Act to obtain classified records that shed fresh light on the saga. "Arrows, Bears and Secrets: The Role of Intelligence in Decisions on the CF-105 Program," was published Tuesday in the peer-reviewed academic journal Canadian Military History. Sign up for breaking news alerts from CTV News, right at your fingertips.Capital Dispatch: Sign up for the latest in federal politics and why it matters. ![]() The paper makes the case that these strategic intelligence assessments - long the "missing dimension" in the debate over the Arrow's demise - now allow for a fuller understanding of an important episode in Canadian history. The intelligence highlighted the Soviet Union's shift away from manned bombers to long-range ballistic missiles, suggesting interceptors like the Arrow would increasingly play a smaller role in the defence of North America. The Diefenbaker government's 1959 decision to scrap the fabled Avro Arrow was significantly influenced by Canadian intelligence that pointed to a diminishing need for the costly aircraft in the evolving Cold War, says a new research paper based on previously secret information.
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