DND presentation all bafflegab

Editor:

I attended one of the A-OTHR meetings and was disgusted by the total lack of clarity in the presentation. The person identified as the contractor put up black and white diagrams that only added to the confusion when he talked about both the transmitter and receiver sites. If that was the best he could do in this day and age we are in trouble regardless of where this thing is built.

CFB Borden is over 50 square miles and the comment that it is needed for training is laughable. Over the years CFB Borden’s terrain has been changed so many times that levelling off the required area wouldn’t affect the environment much. No one trains in the bestsite for A-OTHR because of the poison ivy. Move the tanks back to CFB Shilo or CFB Suffield, both are larger training area also used by our NATO allies.

A-OTHR is an Australian design and I didn’t hear that in the meeting and only found out after through a military magazine. Why couldn’t the contractor explain and show a clear picture of what this thing would look like with the receiver site preferably located in CFB Borden.

I don’t want to be a doomsday sayer, but by 2043 the triumvirate of Russian, China and North Korea may have us divided up among themselves. This system should be built faster than we did the Dew and Pinetree Lines of the 1950s to be effective. It’ll be out of date by the time it’s up and running.

I believe DND bought the farm land in obscurity to prevent land speculation, in other words to get it as cheap as possible. Good for them, now give it back but don’t expect to get back all the money.

The questions I started to ask at the meeting were to be regarding the receiving site here not the transmitter site, but I went quiet when I felt all I was going to get was bafflegab.

Norman Nordstrom,

Creemore.