US Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra has threatened Canada with a change in the nature of NORAD if Canada does not go ahead with the purchase of 88 F-35 fighter jets for its air force. “NORAD would have to be altered,” he told CBC News in an exclusive interview at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona. He says the United States would likely need to purchase more of the advanced fighter aircraft for its own air force, and would fly them more often into Canadian airspace to address threats approaching the U.S. “If Canada is no longer going to provide that [capability], then we have to fill those gaps,” said Hoekstra.
CBC notes that the NORAD arrangement allows the closest aircraft to respond to potential threats even if that means flying into the other country’s airspace. In September, American F-15s responded near Calgary after a bomb threat on a German airliner. Two years earlier, an American F-22 shot down a suspicious cylindrical balloon floating over Yukon. Hoekstra describes the current defence relationship as “awesome,” but says such interventions by the U.S. military over Canada would increase if Canada does not increase its purchase of F-35s beyond the 16 currently on order.
Canada is reviewing its F-35 order and is considering the Swedish Gripen instead, a less capable aircraft. “If they decide,” Hoekstra said, “they’re going with an inferior product that is not as interchangeable, interoperable as what the F-35 is, that changes our defence capability. And as such, we have to figure out how we’re going to replace that.”
