ARIZONA : The U.S. ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, has warned that Canada’s failure to purchase 88 F-35 fighter jets could affect the North American Air Defence Command (NORAD), the decades-old partnership between the two countries responsible for tracking and intercepting airborne threats.
Speaking exclusively to CBC News at Luke Air Force Base, Hoekstra said the United States might need to buy additional F-35s for its own air force and increase operations in Canadian airspace to cover potential gaps. “If Canada is no longer going to provide that [capability], then we have to fill those gaps,” he stated.
NORAD allows the closest aircraft to respond to threats, and there have been several recent instances of U.S. jets operating over Canada. In September, American F-15s responded near Calgary after a bomb threat on a German airliner, and two years prior, an American F-22 intercepted a suspicious cylindrical balloon over Yukon.
