I know this US ambassador is an a-hole, and he tends to shoot his mouth like Trump. However. After reading the article, it isn’t as bad as the headline implies. Sending their jets isn’t as a threat, but what the ambassador is saying is that more F-35s are needed to fill in whatever security roles it plays in their defensive strategy if Canada buys something else. In the event of some other jets we’re using, they would have to alter NORAD in order to allow more US F-35 jets to patrol the skies over Canada.
Why would the Jets have to be f35s?
The agreement existed before f35s existed, so it can’t be due to something unique to the f35 itself.
Not sure. These are the only type of its kind. It has capabilities other jets don’t have and they work together with other F35s and defense systems.
NORAD worked with jets of other kinds, without the interplane networking, before the f35 existed.
To say that they depend on some feature or ability of the f35 is disingenuous.
Yeah, this is already something they can (and do) do under the terms of NORAD.
Had to scroll pretty far down to find someone that actually read it…
This is more reason to get out of the deal and get more grafins.
~70% of the lifetime revenue of the F-35 program would be the support costs on top of the purchase price. Even if Canada paid for every plane it ordered and grounded them the USA would be out 40Billion in revenue.
Meanwhile the planes cost 80-100 Million each to build. So if we refused to buy the remaining ~70 they’d be out 5.6Billion in production costs.
This new threat is a pathetically naked admission that the USA is hurting for revenue.
Subscription freedom for Canadians.
And we shall send a flock of geese in return.
So, extortion… I am not surprised.
They say, as though if we agree they won’t simply use the same threat later for something else, and then ignore the agreement when it suits them.
Might as well just ignore the threat
For some reason this reminds me of the the 9-11 bombings. In my Canadian newspaper (Globe and Mail from 9/11), it stated that the usa’s FAA will shut down the airspace between usa/Canada if Canada did not prevent Salman Rushdie from entering the usa, from Canada. I was shocked that the FAA would threaten Canada like that. Then the destruction came and I never read or heard about that Salman Rushdie thing again.
Buy our warplanes or we’re gonna bomb you.
What the actual Shit???!!
That’s not at all what the article is saying.
Under the current terms of NORAD, the U.S. and Canada can operate in one another’s airspace to track or intercept threats.
Ambassador Pete Hoekstra cautioned that if Canada purchased fewer fighter jets, the U.S. would “fill those gaps” in security concerns.
“NORAD would have to be altered,” Hoekstra told CBC News.
One can read threats into that, but it’s quite far from threats of bombing.
There is simply no level of stupid that will surprise me from them anymore.
In that case, US airspace is fair game for Canada. Rules don’t mean anything anymore so fuck them.
We need much more of this sort of thing.
It needs to reach the point at which the universal international response to Trump’s latest bullshit is a diplomatically phrased (or even not) “Fuck you.”
Whatever it is and whoever is on the receiving end - “Fuck you.”
