Canada has agreed to purchase an Australian-designed over-the-horizon radar system to monitor its vast and increasingly contested Arctic approaches, signing an export agreement valued at roughly $1.75 billion in what Australia hailed as its largest-ever defence export deal. The arrangement marks a significant deepening of military-industrial ties between the two Five Eyes partners.
The Arctic Over-the-Horizon Radar, or A-OTHR, is designed to detect and track aircraft, missiles and other threats at extreme ranges by bouncing radar signals through the atmosphere, allowing it to see far beyond the line-of-sight limits of conventional radar. The technology would give Canada early warning of objects approaching from across the Arctic and northern regions — coverage stretching, as one account put it, from the Canada-United States border into the high north.
Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles and Canada's Secretary of State for Defence Procurement, Stephen Fuhr, signed the first phase of the agreement at an official ceremony in Canberra. The deal builds on a defence relationship that has grown closer as both countries reassess their security postures, and it routes a major capability purchase through an allied supplier rather than the United States.
For Canada, the acquisition addresses a long-standing gap in its ability to surveil the Arctic, a region warming faster than the global average and drawing increasing strategic attention from Russia, China and others as sea routes open and competition for resources intensifies. Canadian officials have framed the radar as strengthening the country's ability to detect and track threats approaching through the north and as a contribution to the modernization of North American continental defence under NORAD, the joint US-Canada command.
The purchase fits within Prime Minister Mark Carney's broader effort to bolster Canadian defence and to diversify the country's security partnerships. Carney's government has moved in recent weeks to expand sanctions, deepen ties with European partners and invest in continental defence, part of a recalibration driven in part by uncertainty over the dependability of the United States as an ally under the current administration.
For Australia, the deal is a milestone. Securing its biggest defence export to date validates a strategy of developing and selling sovereign military technology to trusted partners, and positions its over-the-horizon radar expertise — developed over decades to watch its own northern approaches — as an exportable asset. The agreement strengthens the defence-industrial dimension of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance that links Australia, Canada, the United States, Britain and New Zealand.
The radar is expected to be built in Canada, with construction phased over several years, and officials have pointed to the economic benefits of the work alongside its military value. The arrangement reflects a wider trend among US allies of investing in their own and each other's defence capabilities rather than relying solely on American systems and guarantees.
As Arctic security climbs the agenda for both nations, the radar deal stands as a marker of how middle powers are responding — pooling technology and money to cover gaps that have grown more dangerous, and building the kind of allied supply chains that may define Western defence procurement in the years ahead.