Pentagon Slams Canada — "NOT a Credible Partner" as F-35 Deal Hangs in the Balance

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]On May 18th, 2026, the Pentagon did something it had never done before.

[00:00:05]It pulled out of a defense board with Canada. A board that has existed since 1940, since Franklin Roosevelt and Mackenzie King sat down in Ogdensburg and decided the two countries would defend this continent together.

[00:00:20]86 years of uninterrupted bilateral military cooperation, gone.

[00:00:25]Paused.

[00:00:27]And the language Washington used to explain why is the part that should stop everyone in their tracks.

[00:00:33]Canada has failed to make credible progress on its defense commitments.

[00:00:38]That sentence came from Elbridge Colby, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.

[00:00:43]He did not say Canada was behind. He did not say Canada needed more time. He said Canada was not credible.

[00:00:51]And buried inside that word is a charge that goes far beyond a missed spending target. It is a statement about trust.

[00:00:59]And the F-35 deal sitting at the center of all of this is only one piece of a much larger picture that neither government is being fully honest about.

[00:01:08]Over the next few minutes, you'll see exactly what the Pentagon said. Why Canada's own military is alarmed, and where this alliance is heading next.

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[00:01:32]Let's start with what actually happened on May 18th, because the announcement itself was remarkable.

[00:01:38]Colby made it on social media. No press conference, no formal statement through diplomatic channels.

[00:01:45]A post on X, directed at the Canadian public, accompanied by a link to a speech Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney gave at the World Economic Forum in Davos back in January.

[00:01:57]That speech is the threat that connects everything here.

[00:02:01]In Davos, Carney stood in front of the world's most powerful economic forum and described what he called a rupture in the world order.

[00:02:10]He did not name Trump directly, but the message was unmistakable. He called on middle powers to band together. He said, "If we're not at the table, we're on the menu."

[00:02:21]It was widely understood as a direct shot at American pressure on Canada, including Trump's tariff war and his repeated public comments about Canada becoming the 51st state.

[00:02:34]Washington did not forget it.

[00:02:36]Colby linked that speech to the decision to pause the Permanent Joint Board on Defense, the most senior advisory body on North American Continental Defense, as his justification.

[00:02:47]The message from the Pentagon was blunt.

[00:02:50]You gave a speech about standing up to American power and you still haven't delivered on what you promised militarily.

[00:02:56]We're done pretending otherwise.

[00:02:59]We can no longer avoid the gaps between rhetoric and reality, Colby wrote.

[00:03:04]Real powers must sustain our rhetoric with shared defense and security responsibilities.

[00:03:10]Now, here is the part that requires careful reading.

[00:03:13]The Permanent Joint Board on Defense is not NORAD. The Pentagon was careful to clarify that. NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, continues to operate.

[00:03:24]Canadian forces at Colorado Springs continue their duties.

[00:03:29]Cross-border defense cooperation under existing agreements is not affected.

[00:03:34]So, what exactly was paused?

[00:03:37]The PJBD is a strategic-level policy forum.

[00:03:41]It is where the two countries discuss where the alliance is heading, how NORAD modernization should proceed, how Arctic defense strategy should develop.

[00:03:50]The last time it actually met was 2024.

[00:03:54]Carney himself tried to downplay the move, calling it not overly important.

[00:03:59]But defense analysts on both sides of the border are reading it very differently.

[00:04:03]Because the board's real value is not in what it produced last meeting. It is in what it signals when it is shut down.

[00:04:11]Christian Leuprecht, a defense expert and professor at the Royal Military College, put it plainly.

[00:04:17]He said the United States has concluded that Canada is not committed to delivery.

[00:04:22]Not that Canada is slow. Not that Canada is late. Not committed to delivery at all.

[00:04:29]And that brings us to the F-35.

[00:04:32]In 2023, Canada signed a deal with Lockheed Martin for 88 F-35A Lightning II fighter jets at an agreed price of roughly 19 billion Canadian dollars.

[00:04:44]The contract was the result of years of competition, a previous government's decision to cancel an earlier F-35 commitment, a new competition, and ultimately the conclusion that the F-35 was the only aircraft that fully met Canada's operational requirements, particularly for NORAD integration and Arctic defense.

[00:05:05]The Canadian Royal Air Force selected it.

[00:05:08]Military planners endorsed it. The agreement was signed. Then came 2025.

[00:05:15]Trump imposed sweeping tariffs on Canadian goods.

[00:05:18]The political relationship between Ottawa and Washington deteriorated sharply.

[00:05:24]Prime Minister Carney ordered a review of the entire F-35 procurement, citing concerns about over-reliance on the American defense industrial base.

[00:05:34]The review was supposed to conclude by September 2025.

[00:05:38]It is now May 2026. The review is still open.

[00:05:42]And here is what Canada has actually committed to in the meantime.

[00:05:47]16 jets out of 88.

[00:05:51]Canada has firm legal commitments for 16 F-35As with first deliveries expected later this year.

[00:05:58]Pilots from the Royal Canadian Air Force are already at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona training on three F-35 aircraft in preparation for that delivery.

[00:06:09]Canada has also made long lead component payments for an additional 14 jets preserving its place in Lockheed Martin's production queue without formally ordering them.

[00:06:20]The remaining 72 aircraft are frozen.

[00:06:23]The review has no end date. Defense Minister David McGuinty told a Senate Defense Committee in April that Ottawa had not set a timeline for deciding whether to proceed.

[00:06:33]The official who briefed reporters on May 21st, the day after the Pentagon doubled down on its rebuke, described Canada's approach precisely. He said the delays and lack of transparency around the F-35 review were one example of prioritizing politics over the shared responsibility for North America's defense.

[00:06:53]That phrase, lack of transparency, is worth pausing on.

[00:06:58]Because what that means in practice is that Canada has been conducting a review of a major defense procurement for over 8 months without releasing its findings, without setting a deadline, and without indicating whether the conclusion will be to proceed, to split the fleet, or to walk away from Lockheed Martin entirely.

[00:07:17]From Washington's perspective, that is not a review. That is a stall.

[00:07:22]And the reason it matters so much is not just the dollar value of the contract.

[00:07:27]It is what the F-35 actually does inside NORAD.

[00:07:31]The F-35A is not just a fighter jet. It is a networked node in an integrated command architecture.

[00:07:39]When a Canadian F-35 is in the air alongside American F-35s conducting a NORAD intercept. They share real-time sensor data seamlessly. The aircraft speak the same digital language. They see the same picture.

[00:07:53]They can coordinate a response before any voice communication happens.

[00:07:58]That level of integration is what fifth generation aviation means in practice.

[00:08:03]A mixed fleet or a fleet built around Swedish Saab Gripen jets instead of F-35s changes that picture significantly.

[00:08:11]There are no guarantees that Gripen aircraft would be fully integrated into NORAD's data architecture.

[00:08:18]Experts have raised the question of whether the United States would even agree to that integration.

[00:08:23]Because the F-35's communication systems, including the Link 16 data sharing terminals, are under American control.

[00:08:31]If Canada chooses a non-American aircraft for the majority of its fleet, Washington retains leverage over whether that aircraft can fully participate in the continental defense network.

[00:08:43]Pete Hoekstra, the US ambassador to Canada, addressed this directly in public. He warned that if Canada does not follow through with the full 88-jet purchase, NORAD would have to be altered with more American aircraft operating in Canadian airspace to compensate.

[00:09:01]That is not a neutral statement. That is a message about what reduced Canadian capability means in practice.

[00:09:08]American jets picking up Canada's slack over Canadian territory.

[00:09:13]Now, the Saab Gripen offer is not without merit, and it is worth being honest about why it is politically attractive in Ottawa.

[00:09:21]Saab has submitted a formal proposal to Canada covering 72 Gripen E fighter jets and six Global Eye airborne early warning aircraft.

[00:09:32]The Swedish company has tied that package to a promise of 12,600 Canadian jobs, including a Montreal-based data center and domestic assembly operations.

[00:09:44]The Gripen is a 4.5 generation aircraft that has genuine advantages for Canada's geography.

[00:09:50]It can operate from short or improvised runways, which matters enormously in the Arctic. It offers lower operating costs, full technology transfer, sovereign data control, and source code access for mission systems.

[00:10:05]Lockheed Martin does not offer source code access.

[00:10:08]The F-35's software and mission systems remain American intellectual property.

[00:10:14]Saab's chief executive said in late March that Canada could have Gripen jets delivered within 5 years.

[00:10:21]Industry Minister Mélanie Joly publicly confirmed the Carney government is in active talks with Saab. An Eco survey released earlier this year showed that 43% of Canadians favor a full Gripen fleet, while only 13% support sticking exclusively with the F-35.

[00:10:39]A further 29% want a mixed fleet. So, the political pull toward the Gripen is real. The jobs argument resonates. The sovereignty argument resonates. The idea of not being militarily dependent on a country that is simultaneously threatening annexation and imposing tariffs resonates.

[00:10:59]But, here is the operational problem that the polling does not capture.

[00:11:02]Canada's CF-18 Hornet fleet, the aircraft the F-35 is supposed to replace, is in genuine crisis.

[00:11:10]These jets have been in service since 1982.

[00:11:13]In 2026, roughly 40% of the fleet is mission ready at any given time. The other 60% is in maintenance, facing structural fatigue issues, or grounded waiting for parts that grow harder to source every year.

[00:11:28]In 2026, the structural fatigue of these airframes is no longer just a maintenance problem.

[00:11:34]Defense analysts have described it as a flight safety crisis.

[00:11:38]Canada has been extending the CF-18's service life under what is called the Hornet Extension Project, adding upgraded radar and avionics to keep the aircraft viable through the early 2030s.

[00:11:51]It recently integrated the AIM-120D3 advanced air-to-air missile into the CF-18 fleet after live-fire testing in Florida, which extends its interception range. But, these are stopgap measures.

[00:12:05]They do not change the fundamental trajectory of a 40-year-old airframe approaching its structural limit.

[00:12:11]Whatever Canada decides to buy, it needs to decide soon.

[00:12:15]Because the CF-18 cannot wait much longer.

[00:12:19]And the F-35 review is not the only front on which Washington is pressing Ottawa.

[00:12:25]The Pentagon official who spoke after the PJBD pause made clear that the F-35 decision is connected to a larger spending demand.

[00:12:34]Canada needs, in Washington's view, a concrete plan with actual resource commitments to raise its core defense spending from 2% of GDP annually to 3.5% of GDP by 2035.

[00:12:50]NATO allies, under American pressure, agreed last year to a new benchmark of spending 5% of GDP on defense and security by 2035.

[00:13:00]Canada's 3.5% target is part of that larger framework.

[00:13:06]Canada announced in March that it had finally hit the original 2% benchmark, with total defense spending reaching roughly 63 billion Canadian dollars in the last fiscal year.

[00:13:18]The announcement was significant politically.

[00:13:21]For years, Canada has been near the bottom of NATO allies on defense spending, alongside Belgium and Spain.

[00:13:28]Hitting 2% was real progress. But questions immediately surfaced about how that 2% figure was calculated.

[00:13:37]Critics noted that Canada's methodology included items like landscaping at military bases and civilian airport infrastructure upgrades.

[00:13:45]And more critically, the federal budget released last November and the spring economic update released in April contained no five-year projection for how defense spending would grow toward the 3.5% target.

[00:13:59]Defense analysts described it as committing to a destination without providing a map.

[00:14:06]Dave Perry, president of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, said Canada provided only very high-level information about where the dollars went in reaching 2% and offered no detail about the path from where it is now to 3.5%.

[00:14:22]The CD Howe Institute reached the same conclusion.

[00:14:26]Canada's federal government has no credible plan for getting to 3.5%.

[00:14:31]That word again, credible.

[00:14:34]Carney responded to the PJBD suspension by saying he would not overplay its importance.

[00:14:40]His defense minister deflected questions about it at a press conference in Moose Jaw and instead listed recent military investments.

[00:14:48]Former Conservative leader Erin O'Toole called the move profoundly misguided.

[00:14:53]Former Conservative Premier Jason Kenney said the same.

[00:14:57]Even Republican Congressman Don Bacon, hardly a voice of Canadian solidarity, called it counterproductive.

[00:15:04]Former Liberal MP John McKay described it as strange and questioned aloud how freezing a defense forum enhanced either trade negotiations or Canada's willingness to buy F-35s.

[00:15:17]And that is the tension at the core of all of this.

[00:15:20]The harder Washington pushes, the less likely it is to get what it wants.

[00:15:25]Carney's political identity is built around Canadian sovereignty and independence from American economic pressure.

[00:15:31]Publicly capitulating to Pentagon demands over F-35s in the current environment would be politically toxic.

[00:15:38]His government was elected partly on a platform of standing up to Trump.

[00:15:43]Walking into Lockheed Martin's offices and signing over 70 more jets on American demand is not consistent with that political brand.

[00:15:53]At the same time, the military argument for the F-35 is strong, and Canadian defense officials know it.

[00:16:00]Major General Chris McKenna, a senior RCAF officer and operational commander within NORAD, effectively endorsed the F-35 in December 2025, saying that while it is a sovereign decision for Canada to make, he was clear about what NORAD operationally requires.

[00:16:20]Canada also just took observer status in GCAP, the Global Combat Air Program, the sixth-generation fighter initiative led by the United Kingdom, Japan, and Italy.

[00:16:31]That move is a signal.

[00:16:32]It means Canada is keeping options open, not just for this generation of aircraft, but for the one after it.

[00:16:40]It is a message to Washington that Canada's military procurement future does not have to run through Lockheed Martin. But here is the number that ties everything together, and that almost no one is talking about in the mainstream coverage of this story.

[00:16:55]The life cycle cost of the original 88 jet F-35 program, as of the most recent audit, is now estimated at 27.7 billion Canadian dollars.

[00:17:07]That is up from the 19 billion figure in the original 2023 contract, a 46% increase.

[00:17:14]Those rising costs are one of the reasons Carney ordered the review in the first place.

[00:17:19]And there is nothing in the current fiscal framework that maps how Canada gets from 63 billion in annual defense spending to the 150 billion per year that 5% of GDP would require by 2035.

[00:17:34]The gap between the commitments Canada has made and the plans it has actually produced is the gap the Pentagon is calling out. Not rhetorically and not as a negotiating tactic. As a structural problem with real consequences for how North American airspace gets defended.

[00:17:53]Because here is the operational reality underneath all the politics. Russian SU-142 maritime patrol aircraft have been operating near Canadian airspace with increasing frequency.

[00:18:06]That is not a hypothetical threat. That is something NORAD is already scrambling to respond to.

[00:18:12]The CF-18 is the aircraft doing that work today.

[00:18:16]By 2032, the CF-18 will be gone.

[00:18:20]What replaces it determines whether Canada can do that job itself or whether it increasingly depends on American jets flying over Canadian territory to do it.

[00:18:29]The Pentagon did not pause a 1940s advisory board over symbolism.

[00:18:34]It paused it to send a message about what happens next if Ottawa keeps the review open, keeps the spending plans vague, and keeps shopping in Stockholm while Russian patrol aircraft come closer to the Arctic every year.

[00:18:48]Whether that pressure works, whether it accelerates a decision or hardens political resistance in Ottawa, is the question that defines where this alliance goes from the middle of 2026.

[00:18:59]The two countries share the longest undefended border in the world.

[00:19:03]A single integrated air defense command and a geographic reality that does not change regardless of who is in power in either capital.

[00:19:13]The PJBD has been a cornerstone of that relationship since World War II.

[00:19:18]The fact that it was paused on a social media post with a link to a speech about middle power sovereignty tells you exactly how much has changed in 12 months.

[00:19:28]And neither government has told its public what the realistic ending to this looks like.

[00:19:34]Thanks for watching.

[00:19:36]I really appreciate every one of you sticking with me through these deep dives.

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