Canadian Forces Base North Bay, also CFB North Bay, is an air force base located at the City of North Bay, Ontario about 350 km (220 mi) north of Toronto. The base is subordinate to 1 Canadian Air Division, Winnipeg, Manitoba, and is the centre for North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) operations in Canada, under the Canadian NORAD Region Headquarters, also in Winnipeg. It is also home to the 1 Air Force, Detachment 2 of the United States Air Force. [1]
22 Wing/Canadian Forces Base North Bay is the most important military base in Canada with respect to the continental air defence of North America and the country's air sovereignty. It is also home to one of the most unusual military installations in North America, the NORAD Underground Complex, a bunker the size of a shopping centre, 60 storeys beneath the surface of the Earth.
On 1 April 1993, all air bases in Canada were redesignated as wings; the base was renamed 22 Wing/Canadian Forces Base North Bay. This is abbreviated as 22 Wing/CFB North Bay. Today, although this designation still stands, the base is often referred to simply as "22 Wing", and the Base Commander as the " Wing Commander". [2]
North Bay's air force base is the centre for the air defence of the entire country, and works in concert with the United States via NORAD for the air defence of Canada-U.S. portion of the North American continent. Activities are wide-ranging, from identifying and monitoring all aircraft entering Canada from overseas, to guarding VIPs flying in the country (e.g., the Pope), to assisting aircraft suffering airborne emergencies, to aiding law enforcement versus smugglers, to participating in NORAD's Christmas Eve Tracking of Santa Claus for children. From the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s it took in Unidentified Flying Object reports from across the country on behalf of the National Research Council of Canada, relaying the reports to a study at the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics, British Columbia. In 2000, it resumed UFO reporting, provided to researcher Chris Rutkowski at the University of Manitoba.
In 2010, North Bay's operations centre took the first steps towards transitioning from air to aerospace defence, commencing preparations for Sapphire, Canada's first military satellite. [N 1] Sapphire functions as a contributing sensor in the United States Space Surveillance Network (SSN), performing surveillance of objects orbiting at 6,000 to 40,000 kilometres altitude, and delivering data on those objects (called Resident Space Objects, or RSOs) to the Space Surveillance Operations Centre (SSOC), in North Bay's operations centre. The SSOC, in turn, coordinates with the Joint Space Operations Center, in Vandenberg, California. On 25 February 2013, Sapphire was launched from a site in India, and underwent technical testing and checks, expected to begin its duties in July 2013. [3] Due to various technical delays, the satellite's FOC (Final Operational Certification) wasn't achieved until 30 January 2014. [4] By end of that year it had delivered 1.2 million observations of space objects. [5]
22 Wing/CFB North Bay has two unique properties among air bases in Canada. It is the only Canadian air base that does not have flying units (as of August 1992, when the last flying squadron departed), and the only air base in the country that does not have an airfield (base assets such as control tower, fuel depot and hangars were demolished or sold following the 1992 departure). [N 2] |
