Australia sells Canada record $1.7 billion radar technology deal
Australia sealed its first overseas radar sale with Canada, a A$2.5 billion deal to extend Arctic surveillance and support about 300 jobs at home.
Australia and Canada deepened their defense ties with a record A$2.5 billion, or about US$1.75 billion, agreement for advanced over-the-horizon radar technology, a deal Canberra said was its largest-ever defense export. It was Australia’s first overseas sale of its Over-the-Horizon Radar, or OTHR, technology, and officials said it would support Canada’s surveillance of the Arctic region while creating about 300 jobs in Australia.
The sale marked more than a weapons transaction. It reflected a wider alignment between two middle powers that are racing to harden their northern and maritime warning systems as Arctic and Indo-Pacific security pressures grow. Canada said the radar was a key part of its NORAD modernization plan, a C$38.6 billion effort announced in 2022 to strengthen continental defense over 20 years. Australian officials cast the agreement as the first stage of a broader collaboration on the system, built around the Jindalee Operational Radar Network, or JORN.
Australia says JORN is a sovereign innovation and the world’s leading large-scale, long-range over-the-horizon radar capability, able to provide wide-area surveillance at ranges of roughly 1,000 to 3,000 kilometres. BAE Systems Australia said the export agreement covered Australia’s High Frequency Surveillance capability system to establish an Arctic over-the-horizon radar in Canada, extending technology that already operates from remote sites in Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia.
The deal followed a series of steps that had been building for more than a year. In March 2025, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced Canada’s intention to partner with Australia on advanced Arctic over-the-horizon radar technology. The two governments signed a technology partnership in June 2025, and Canada selected the first transmit and receive sites in July 2025 after public consultations. Canada’s project page identified those Stage 1 locations as a transmit site in Kawartha Lakes and a receive site in Clearview Township.
Canadian defense officials said the partnership with Australia offered the best way to improve Canadian Armed Forces awareness of the country’s northern approaches. The full Arctic over-the-horizon radar program is expected to be operational by 2043, with an initial capability targeted earlier in the schedule. For Canberra, the sale adds a major industrial win; for Ottawa, it gives NORAD modernization a long-range sensor built for a harsher theater, where earlier warning has become a strategic priority.
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