Sovereign of Greenland, and the first NATO member ever invaded by another NATO member.
At 03:00 on a Friday, engineers at Wright-Patterson revoke access for five allied air forces. By 08:30 GMT the maintenance consoles at RAF Marham start timing out.
Availability across the allied F-35 force falls by more than half in seventy-two hours. The United Kingdom brings forensic logs to Brussels showing the severance was administrative, deliberate, and American.
Twenty minutes into an Article 4 session the shouting starts. When France and Britain call a vote on mutual defence solidarity, the American delegation collects its binders and leaves thirty-one ambassadors sitting in silence.
We left the room. Thirty-one countries wanted to vote on what America is allowed to do in America's own hemisphere. You don't get a vote on us. That was never the deal. A lot of people are finding that out this week.
Ospreys touch down at Kangerlussuaq at 17:30 UTC and an amphibious insertion takes the port at Nuuk. Danish Arctic Command offers no lethal resistance under cabinet orders to document rather than die.
Second morning with no flying at Marham. You get used to the noise and then you notice the shape of it missing. Something is up.
Unusual: zero F-35B movements out of Marham today, zero out of Leeuwarden, and Ørland is quiet too. Three national fleets standing down on the same morning is not weather.
0300 Eastern this morning, Wright-Patt and Fort Worth revoked ODIN access for five allied networks. UK, NL, IT, NO, DK. Telemetry, supply diagnostics, mission data files. All of it, at once, on purpose. This was ordered. It is not an outage.
Breaking: RAF grounds F-35 fleet after loss of US-operated data services. Netherlands, Denmark and Norway confirm similar groundings. Emergency NATO session called.
Sorry, a stupid question. Does "grounded" mean they are broken, or that someone has told them not to fly? I cannot work out from the news which one it is and they seem very different to me.
Not a stupid question at all — it is THE question and the reporting is bad at it. They are not broken. Every one of those aircraft could take off right now. A safety system will not clear them because it cannot phone home to a server in the United States. So: …
Oh. That is much worse, isn't it.
Every defence procurement committee on earth opened a new agenda item this morning and the item is one sentence long: "what in our inventory has a switch we do not own?" I do software. The answer is going to be "almost everything" and it is going to take four …
Prime Minister Frederiksen: "This is an unprecedented, hostile breach of sovereign defence agreements. We are seeking immediate bilateral consultations with the White House."
Serious question from someone who builds things for a living: if you were the Japanese or the Koreans this morning, would you sign the next order? Because I would not. And that is my industry. That is my town.
The important detail is which aircraft are still flying combat air patrols this morning. Typhoon. Rafale. Gripen. Not one of them depends on a server in Texas. Twenty years of procurement argument settled in seventy-two hours.
Seeing a lot of "US hacked the F-35" takes. That is not what happened and the real thing is worse. The F-35 is not a plane you own. It is a plane you subscribe to. Three feeds keep a jet legal to fly: 1. Mission Data Files. Weekly. Tells th…
Everyone is asking whether there is a kill switch. Wrong question. There is no kill switch. There is a subscription. And the vendor has stopped taking your money.
We built those planes. We sold them those planes. We maintain those planes — at OUR cost, on OUR computers, for THIRTY YEARS. Now they want the planes without us. Doesn't work that way. Never did. They just never had to think about it before.
THANK YOU. Thirty years of paying for their defence while they lecture us about our own elections. If they want an air force they can build an air force.
I teach 8th grade. Tomorrow morning a room full of thirteen year olds is going to ask me whether we just sabotaged our allies' planes, and I do not have a good answer. Whatever this is, it is going to be in a textbook. Please think about which paragraph.
Genuine question and not a gotcha: who buys the next batch? I have spent thirty-one years welding things that get sold overseas. If the customer finds out the switch is in Texas, the customer buys French next time. That is my pension you are negotiating with.
I did two tours with Danes. Small army, no complaints, went where we went. You can think Europe underpays and still think this was a filthy way to do it. Both of those fit in one head. Mine has been holding them all afternoon.
I do not really understand what happened with the aeroplanes. My grandson says it is serious. Is it serious?
Eleanor, it is serious but nobody is hurt and nobody is likely to be hurt tonight. Some allied aircraft cannot fly because a computer service was switched off. Go and look at your birds. I mean that kindly. There is nothing you can do about it before morning.
Thank you dear. I had a woodpecker today.
I am a plumber in Copenhagen. I have never written anything political here in nine years. The Americans have switched off our aeroplanes. I do not know what to do with that sentence. My father worked at the base at Karup. We were the good ones. We went to Afgh…
The North Atlantic Council is convening in extraordinary session at the request of Denmark, Germany, France and the United Kingdom under Article 4 of the Washington Treaty.
The American delegation has left the chamber. Not adjourned. Left. Picked up their binders and walked out while the vote was being called. Thirty-one ambassadors are still sitting in there.
I have covered this building for nine years. I have watched every kind of disagreement in it. A diplomat who came out said one sentence to me and went back in: "That was the end of it."
We left the room. Thirty-one countries wanted to vote on what America is allowed to do in America's own hemisphere. You don't get a vote on us. That was never the deal. A lot of people are finding that out this week.
I have spoken this afternoon with Washington, Copenhagen, Berlin, Brussels and London. The Alliance remains in session. Consultation is not optional between allies and it does not end because one chair is empty.
There are helicopters. A lot of helicopters, very low, coming in from the sea. I have never heard anything like this here.
They are American. They are in the harbour and they are at the government buildings and nobody is shooting. Our people are just standing there watching them. I do not understand what is happening.
Confirmed by DR, AFP and Reuters. Landings at Kangerlussuaq around 17:30 UTC, amphibious insertion into Nuuk harbour. Danish Joint Arctic Command under cabinet orders not to engage. No shots fired as of this posting.…
BREAKING: US forces have landed at Kangerlussuaq and taken control of port and government facilities in Nuuk. Danish Arctic Command has not resisted. Cabinet orders were to document, not to engage.
My mum is crying and my little brother thinks it is exciting because of the helicopters. I do not know how to explain to him that it is not exciting. I do not know how to explain it to me.
I have been driving since 2004 and I have never once pulled over to read the news. I am pulled over. Greenland. We invaded Greenland. I am sitting in a truck stop in Nebraska trying to make that sentence mean something.
Nobody was hurt. I want to hold onto that tonight because I work in an ICU and I know exactly what the other version looks like. Nobody was hurt. Everything else can be argued about tomorrow.
Prime Minister Frederiksen to the Folketing: "This is an act of lawless aggression and unprovoked imperial conquest by our supposed treaty partner."
In Latin America we have a very specific feeling this evening and there is no polite English word for it. It is not joy. Nobody wants this. It is the feeling of watching someone finally do to a rich friend what they have done to you for a century, and hearing …
Frederiksen's voice broke on the word "partner". I have never had a strong opinion about her. Tonight she is standing in the Folketing saying the thing out loud that all five million of us are thinking in our kitchens, and her voice broke, and I am not embarra…
My fellow Americans. This evening, at my direction, United States Marines secured the airfields and the harbour of Greenland. There was no resistance. Not one shot was fired and not one person was hurt, on either side, and I want the country to hear that first…
For the record, because we will be arguing about this for a decade: Article 5 cannot be invoked. Its machinery runs through a Council in which the attacking party holds a seat and a veto, and it was drafted to describe an attack from outside the Alliance. Ther…
"Judge me in a month." I have covered this alliance for nine years. Six hours ago the delegation walked out of a room in Brussels and four hours ago Marines landed on the territory of a founding ally. There is going to be a month. I do not think it is going to…
Not one shot fired and not one boy hurt. That is a President. Say what you want. Eighty years of talking about that island and he went and did it in an evening and nobody's mother got a phone call.
I have voted for this administration twice and I preached for it once, which I regret. We took another nation's land tonight because we wanted it and because they could not stop us. There is a word for that and it is in the Book, and it is not a word about str…
"judge me in a month" buddy i am judging you in real time on my phone in a warehouse break room and it is not going great
Kremlin: no comment. Foreign ministry: no statement. State television: fourteen minutes on Greenland, no commentary, footage only. The Russian milblogger channels are the only ones talking, and they are celebrating. Moscow itself is saying nothing at all, and …
My son enlisted in August. He is nineteen. He is at Bragg. I am not asking whether this was right. I am asking whether he is going somewhere cold. That is the only question I have and there is nobody to ask it.
Pastor, I have read your post four times. I do not agree with you. I think you are wrong about the country and I think you will regret saying it from the pulpit. But you are the first person on this app all night who sounded like they were wrestling with it in…
Tanya — nobody can tell you and anyone who says they can is guessing. What I can tell you: if he is at Bragg he is with the best-drilled people in the world and they take care of the nineteen year olds first. Keep the phone charged. Do not doomscroll at 3am, i…
My grandmother is 84. She said one sentence at dinner tonight and then went to bed. "So now they have found out what it is like." She was not being cruel. She has been waiting eighty years for somebody in the west to feel this for one evening.
Ma'am, that is more grace than I have shown anybody today. Thank you. I would rather be wrong in front of you than right in front of people who are enjoying this. There are a lot of them tonight, on both sides, and they frighten me more than the news does.