Tax exemption for those serving on overseas missions, the military exercise Maple Resolve and the announcement of defence deals with Saudi Arabia that has caused shares to jump for some defence giants. All on this episode of Vanguard Radio.

Show Notes:

Tax exemption

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan said late last week that the salaries of Canadian soldiers and police officers serving on overseas missions will no longer be federally taxed.

This tax exemption is retroactive to Jan. 1 of this year and will cover 1,450 personnel who are currently serving on international operations.

Maple Resolve

Almost 5,000 military personnel are at CFB Wainwright in Alberta, taking part in the largest and most comprehensive military exercise of the year - Exercise Maple Resolve. Of this number, 4,000 are Canadians and the other 1,000 are soldiers from the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Britain, training together in a fully immersive force-on-force battle scenario. Among the troops are hundreds of actors there to add friction to the war games.

The aim of this exercise is to help the military practice their skills in an environment that is as realistic as possible for when they are deployed.

Training centre commander Col. Peter Scott said the online news was used to help sway the opinions of the local population and is something that "commanders have to take into account in all of their planning going into any operations. I think the only thing that is missing is that there are not real bullets flying. We've created an environment that is as close as possible to what they will face on any given deployment."

When the exercise is over, the entire group will sit down and look at what went right and what went wrong so soldiers can learn from their successes and failures.

Shares in defence giants rose

Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Boeing shares rose on Monday, after a weekend of deals between US companies and Saudi Arabia. This came after President Trump's first visit to Saudi Arabia, where a $110bn arms package was announced.

Lockheed Martin signed a $6bn deal to assemble 150 Blackhawk helicopters with the potential of future orders.

Raytheon also inked agreements for local defence contracts. Boeing has secured aircraft and helicopter contracts, announcing on Sunday that it has agreed to a potential sale of 16 wide-body commercial aircraft to a Saudi airline.

Thanks for listening.

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