Canada Delays 4 Months in Sending Funds After Approving Air Defense System Purchase for Ukraine

After deciding to join a U.S.-led plan to purchase urgently needed National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS) for Ukraine, Canada initially took four months to secure its place in the queue.

Defense Minister Bill Blair insists that this delay did not slow down the overall process of acquiring the high-tech defensive systems, which are still months away from being delivered.

According to CBC News, the proposal for Canada to purchase the system was first discussed by former Defense Minister Anita Anand and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in late November 2022 at the Halifax International Security Forum.

At that time, Russia was conducting a brutal ballistic missile campaign aimed at destroying Ukraine’s electrical grid, with attacks hitting civilian targets and killing scores of innocent people.

Anand announced the planned $406-million purchase in January 2023, but the Department of National Defence recently informed CBC News that the federal government didn’t transfer the necessary funds to the United States until March 2023, at the end of the fiscal year.

The U.S. was unable to negotiate a contract with the manufacturers until it had both its own funds and Canada’s contribution in hand. The U.S. Congress gave its approval in May 2023.

In July 2022, the U.S. announced it would purchase two NASAMS for Ukraine, and two months later, it expanded the order by adding six more. The first systems, sourced from an existing Pentagon order, arrived in Ukraine within 71 days of the contract signing, according to U.S. government data.

Once operational, the NASAMS achieved a 100 percent success rate in intercepting Russian drones and cruise missiles, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin revealed at the Halifax conference, where he also negotiated with Canada to fund an additional system.

Thomas Withington, an analyst specializing in air defense systems and electronic warfare at the U.K.-based Royal United Services Institute, pointed out that the struggle by Canada, the U.S., and other nations to acquire missile and drone defense over the past two years has implications far beyond the conflict in Ukraine.

“We’ve lived, in many ways, through a gilded age where the air threat to NATO, broadly speaking, was diminished,” Withington noted. “We haven’t faced the prospect of our own countries being attacked en masse with air-delivered weapons like missiles and bombs. That situation has now changed, and in many ways, we find ourselves in a situation similar to the Cold War, facing significant air and missile threats.”

Canada’s recently updated defense policy commits to acquiring ground-based air defense systems to protect critical civilian infrastructure. The military is also in the process of purchasing an air defense system to protect troops deployed overseas, but in a recent statement to CBC News, the Department of National Defence indicated that this equipment could also be used to protect Canadians at home.