U.S. Ambassador Kathleen Kavalec Remarks to the Media in Response to Press Questions on F-35 LOA signing

Romanian Government, November 21, 2024   Question: How soon do you think that these F-35 airplanes could represent a performance for our country? How quickly would we be able to see an effect?Answer: As I said in my remarks, we expect that it will take some time to acquire the planes and get them here. We expect by 2030 these planes will be flying above Romania. In the meantime, Romania has the benefit of the F-16 fleet and its F-16 training center which will prepare for the transition to the F-35 program. Question: We have a war at our border, could we see these airplanes delivered to Romania faster?Answer: The planes will come as quickly as possible, in the meantime the F-16 are a big step above what you had before, you had the old Soviet-era MIGs. The transition to the F-16 program has been hugely important and you’ve seen how those F-16 has been used to scrambled when there have been signs of violations of the Romanian air space, those planes have gone up to scramble, to intercept anything that comes into the air space. So, I think you are well protected now, but this will take Romania even a step forward, both on behalf of Romanian security, but also on behalf of the NATO Alliance. Because these planes will also be part of air policing, Romania participates in NATO wide air policing, air policing occurs here in Romania, it occurs in other parts of NATO territory, so this will allow Romania to keep up with the rest of the alliance and to have an even stronger security footprint. Question: Are there any concerns regarding the defense of Romania till these planes will arrive taking into account the situation now in Ukraine and the war Russia started in Ukraine and the last evolution in the last days?Answer: Romania’s defense is based on its participation in NATO and there is no single system of defense that protects a country. What protects a country more than anything else is participating in a defensive alliance and Romania has been in NATO since 2004 and that is the gold standard of protection because it’s not just the systems you have, but it’s the allies you have that stand with you and the United States is proud to be one of those allies. Question: How exactly will the training of personnel be realized? Will Americans come here to our country? And how many? And when exactly?Answer: In terms of training pilots there will be a program, I don’t know all the details yet, but it will be a training here in Romania, we already have the F-16 training center which is set up already and is already training pilots so we will build on that for future training.   By U.S. Mission Romania