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US warns they will send fighter jets into Canadian airspace if F-35 deal doesn’t go through | The Independent
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2026
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Canada could do something really funny and start buying chinese anti-aircraft missiles.
Close. We should build our own, and if we happen to violate Chinese IP along the way, oh well.
Or just work with MBDA and Thales to set up a domestic production lines for Meteor and SAMP/T. And then collaborate with Europe more on aerospace and defense. And then make some deals with Korea and Poland for some of their hardware that they’re currently churning out. And then set up a joint production and rapid iteration project with Ukraine, since they’re essentially the best in the world at drone shit these days. And then talk to France, Germany, Sweden, and/or Japan about getting some attack subs and perhaps SSGNs.
There’s lots of possibilities once you free yourself from the economic yoke of the US. We did kinda wreck your defense aerospace industry (the Avro Arrow was the absolute tits, and it’s a damn shame we crushed the project). But now’s a great time to reinvest in that stuff.
A solid plan.
The US commands Korea's military. Japan literally sacrificed their own economy to prop up the US in the 80s. You can't achieve sovereignty from the US by making deals with other vassals, because the US can simply lean on them if they don't like it.
I don't see Europe becoming more independent at this point given 30 years of liberalism hollowing out their industry and welfare state while supporting US foreign policy unconditionally.
The US does not command Korea’s military. They’re a large contributor to SK defense posture, sure, but Korea is a major economic powerhouse in its own right (see: chip foundries), builds their own AEGIS-parity ships - and generally have some of the most advanced and productive shipyards in the world - and the largest standing army in the world at 3.6M active personnel. They have a thriving international military arms trade in terrestrial units and munitions (see: Poland). They are also beginning to roll out an indigenously produced 5th gen fighter, amongst many other interesting technological and military products and advancements.
Getting absolutely stomped twice in rapid succession (by Imperial Japan - saved by the fall of Imperial Japan; by NK - saved by UN (though primarily US) intervention) tends to focus one’s priorities on defense.
Also, strategically speaking, their huge chip foundries are an incentives for allies to pitch in, for the same reason Taiwan’s chip industry is a huge incentive for allies to pitch in - the entire rest of the economic world basically revolves around what they can make. And nobody wants their economy to crash, so there’d be a lot of assistance for SK if NK (or anyone else) decided to try to wreck them again.
Japan is to some degree in the same boat - though I dare say if the US pulls back from allies in east Asia, I do think there’s a good chance they’d set aside some of the historical animosity out of sheer pragmatism and the potential for mutual defense (a fringe benefit of being involved in the US-centric arms pipeline for so long is implicit system compatibility - if not direct, then much easier to adapt and modify for compatibility).
As to Europe: we’ll see how that goes. The EU seems to be partially waking up and taking things more seriously, but they’re also for the most part world fucking champions at bureaucracy-ing themselves to death. At the same time, the Brits and French have nukes, which, if they actually fully commit to continental defense (and if nukes proliferate more), is a bit of a trump (no relation) card.
The US takes control at will during times of war, as determined by the US, and the exercises occur with the US in command. The difference between this and the US commanding SK forces all the time is not meaningful.
Buying from America's enemy sends a very different message. Just building your own missile looks like America's vassal having pout; it'll be used against NATO's(read America's) enemies anyway, essentially doing what Trump asked all NATO members and increasing their contribution to America's sphere, for free. Cozying up to the other superpower signals that Canada is actually prepared to break it off if the US doesn't cut yall a better deal.
Does Canada have the kind of military aerospace background to speedrun a program like that? Genuinely don't know.
Do you think you can build it cheaper than the Chinese will sell it to you? Even if you had all the production documents, you can't just replicate the half century of central planning that lead to cheap material, tooling, labor, engineering knowledge, etc that makes manufacturing in China so cheap.
60 years ago we did. The Avro Arrow program was unexpectedly killed just as production was getting read to ramp up. Why? Who the fuck knows.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_CF-105_Arrow
We still do. That was a nascent effort, not some built up military industrial complex and it still exceeded all rivals at the time.
Why? Being a supplicant to a bully.
Do you think it could have been bribery? Lockheed and Boeing have a history of doing so, both legally and illegally. That time a porn-star 9/11'd a yakuza's kitchen was revenge for this.
Going from supplicant to one abusive superpower to another sends the wrong message. Carney's Davos speech spelled it out for you.
Yes. We have virtually all the skills, expertise and knowhow with a few notable exceptions. (Submarines, we could build them but at great cost and a learning curve.) We could build nukes in a year if we wanted to. The delivery system would take longer than the payload, but we could do that too.
Chinese goods are cheap because market function and the profit motive was not of central concern, neither human rights, labour rights or environmental rights. Your claim of "cheap" is badly distorted. There were costs born by the Chinese peoples across each of these domains that don't show up on an invoice, but the bill always comes due and is paid in full. Your definition of "cheap" is a perversion of full cost accounting to suit a narrative.
So don't put yourself into a situation where either can force abusive terms on you, not that China's terms have been abusive, as evidenced by the development of countries who take chinese loans vs the eternal "developing" of countries which accept western "help". I'm not even advocating entering China's sphere, just having the threat available that the US can't push any terms with no fear of consequences.
Correct, building the means of production was. Now they've done that, one unit of labor goes a lot further when you're regularly setting up complex, automated assembly lines in days. If market function was the central concern, China would look like India or Africa; still exporting cheap resources and labor while your own people starve.
Maybe 25 years ago when they had children working in machine presses and rivers that turned funny colors, it's a different country now.
Isn't that similar to the shit that got Turkey kicked out of the F35 program?
Yes, except Russia instead of China.
To what extent it was the US sending other countries a message "Buy American or else" vs "We think you'll let the radar systems send data on F-35s to Russia", we don't know, but if the second was a genuine concern, all the better for keeping F-35s away from your airspace.
IDK if it was the second tho, since the US flies F-35s near the North Korean border every spring, and if Russia wanted radar data, they'd just give one to the DPRK.