They have closed their runways to us. Their runways — which we paid for, which we built, which we have defended since before their parliaments existed in their current form.
So we'll fly out of Maine. It's further. It costs more. Every tanker crew in this country is about to work harder than they have ever worked and I am asking them to do it.
And when this is finished, we are going to have a very serious conversation in this country about why the United States Air Force ever needed permission from anybody to fly.
Every sortie from the domestic hubs runs more than 3,200 nautical miles round trip. Within days, mechanics in Greenland were reporting critical shortages of de-icing fluid and cold-weather lubricants, and fuel burn was outrunning the reserve at Pituffik.