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The reason we need air force bases, Peaches, is: DLAs (Designated Loading Areas).
You cannot load and unload weapons, or store armed aircraft at civilian airfields in Canada, because we simply do not have the explosive safe distances (the distance you need in case things go catastrophically wrong with a bomb/missile-I seem to recall that the minimum) distance starts at 1000 feet and goes up from there, depending how big a boom the weapon can make- I think you can find the answer in Div Orders online at work, if you look) from civilians or civilian infrastructure at any civilian aerodrome in Canada, that I am aware of. Even our remaining Air Force bases that have DLAs are getting crowded by the civvies building up to our fence lines.
This is what saved Comox- unless you want to go to NAS Whidbey Island (and depend on the US Navy), the only place you can arm a CF aircraft on the west coast is Comox.
So, yeah- we could base all of our aircraft at Edmonton International, or Vancouver or Halifax or Montreal- but we couldn't arm them, so what's the point?
You cannot load and unload weapons, or store armed aircraft at civilian airfields in Canada, because we simply do not have the explosive safe distances (the distance you need in case things go catastrophically wrong with a bomb/missile-I seem to recall that the minimum) distance starts at 1000 feet and goes up from there, depending how big a boom the weapon can make- I think you can find the answer in Div Orders online at work, if you look) from civilians or civilian infrastructure at any civilian aerodrome in Canada, that I am aware of. Even our remaining Air Force bases that have DLAs are getting crowded by the civvies building up to our fence lines.
This is what saved Comox- unless you want to go to NAS Whidbey Island (and depend on the US Navy), the only place you can arm a CF aircraft on the west coast is Comox.
So, yeah- we could base all of our aircraft at Edmonton International, or Vancouver or Halifax or Montreal- but we couldn't arm them, so what's the point?