The Royal Canadian Air Force will acquire a fifth aircraft to augment the current Boeing C-17 (CC-177) Globemaster III fleet.
The purchase will increase the availablity of C-17 by 25 per cent, ensuring at least three Globemasters available, more than 90 per cent of the time to respond to concurrent international or domestic crises.
The acquisition is estimated to cost $415 million, in addition to 12 years of integrated in-service support valued at $30 million.
The additional Globemaster will improve the Canadian Armed Forces’ response capability to both domestic and international emergencies and provide support to a variety of missions, including humanitarian assistance, peace support and combat and ease the burden on the current fleet and extend the life expectancy of the entire fleet by about seven and a half years.
The current fleet of Globemasters have been playing an integral role in ferrying supplies and troops to Kuwait to establish and resupply the Canadian camp through Operation Impact. It has also delivered essential armaments and materiel to CF-18s deployed in Lithuania in support of NATO as part of Operation Reassurance and the international response to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.
Boeing is actively engaged in sales of C-17s as it is in final stage of building 8 more unsold white tail C-17s at its Long Beach assembly line, California which is slated for a 2015 shut down.
