MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Australia and Canada signed a $1.75 billion export agreement on Monday to build an Australian-designed long-range radar system in Canada.
Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles and Canadian Secretary of State (Defense Procurement) Stephen Fuhr signed the first phase of a pact to provide early warning radar coverage from the Canada-United States border into the Arctic.
“What this really means is that Australia and Canada are now partners in terms of the future development of the Over-the-Horizon Radar,” Marles told reporters at the Australian Parliament House in the capital Canberra.
“There is now a very strategic dimension to the relationship,” Marles added.
Fuhr said the two British Commonwealth countries, both of which are partners in the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance that also includes the United States, Britain and New Zealand, had “stood shoulder-to-shoulder for generations.”
“As the world adjusts to its new strategic and economic realities, I can’t think of a stronger partner to work with more than Australia,” Fuhr said at a joint press conference with Marles.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced he’d chosen Australia’s radar system over comparable U.S. technology shortly after he came to power last year.
In March, Carney became the first Canadian prime minister to visit Australia in 12 years.
During the visit, Carney and his Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese agreed to increase cooperation on defense technologies, artificial intelligence and critical minerals.
BAE Systems Australia said in a statement it will support both governments in developing the Arctic Over-the-Horizon Radar.
The Australian system, developed over 40 years, works by refracting high-frequency electromagnetic waves off the ionosphere to detect distant objects that are invisible to conventional radars because of Earth's curvature.
The deal is Australia’s largest ever defense export. Australia’s previous record defense export was a $700 million deal signed in 2024 to provide Germany with 100 Australian-made Boxer heavy weapon carrier vehicles.
Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles, left, and Canada's Secretary of State Stephen Fuhr speak to the media after signing an agreement on export of an Over-the-Horizon Radar system at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, Monday, June 22, 2026. (Lukas Coch/AAP Image via AP)
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Police found 2.7 metric tons (3 tons) of cocaine on a property on Sydney’s outskirts in Australia’s largest ever seizure of the drug, officials said on Monday.
The drug was found on June 19 in plastic tubs buried in underground bunkers hidden beneath three shipping containers on a semirural property in the suburb of Londonderry on Sydney’s western edge, the Queensland Joint Organized Crime Taskforce said in a statement.
The containers had false floors that provided access to the cocaine, which police estimate had a street value of 816 million Australian dollars ($572 million). Two Sydney residents, men aged 21 and 25, were arrested at the property and charged with possessing a commercial quantity of an illicit drug. They face potential sentences of life in prison.
Australia’s previous record cocaine haul was 2.34 metric tons (2.58 tons) seized in 2024 from a fishing boat near K’gari, formerly known as Fraser Island, off the Queensland state coast.
Police said the cocaine found in Sydney, the capital of New South Wales state and Australia's most populous city, landed by boat at Midge Point in the sparsely-populated Queensland tropics. They allege that a Sydney organized crime group transported the drug by road to the city, a distance of 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles), police said.
Police added that they suspect the shipment was landed from the same mother ship as 178 kilograms (392 pounds) of cocaine previously seized in Queensland. Six people have been charged over that cocaine and 142 kilograms (313 pounds) of methamphetamine that was also found in the investigation.
They suspect the mother ship to be MV Wealth, a Belize-flagged cargo ship that has been seized by authorities in Solomon Islands on suspicion of involvement in transitional organized crime.
The Solomons are 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) northeast of Queensland.
Australian Federal Police Commander Stephen Jay said organized crime groups were increasingly targeting Queensland’s 13,000-kilometer (8,000-mile) coastline to smuggle drugs.
Australians pay some of the world’s highest prices for cocaine, which makes Australia a lucrative market for drug traffickers.
In this undated photo provided by the Australian Federal Police, a quantity of cocaine is bagged and displayed in Sydney. (Australian Federal Police via AP)
In this photo provided by the Australian Federal Police, a man, center, is arrested by police in Londonderry in western Sydney, Friday, June 19, 2026. (Australian Federal Police via AP)
