There are plenty of reasons why Canada should buy all 88 Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning fighter jets it said it would, for $19-billion, and a few big reasons not to. On balance, the F-35 loses, if only for geo-economic and geopolitical reasons.
Let’s start with the F-35 program’s advantages.
The fighter is a marvel, the most advanced plane of its kind on the global market that is available in large quantities. Its stealth capabilities, including a radar-absorbent fuselage, give it the ability to evade enemy detection. Its situational awareness and networking capabilities are truly awesome. Its radar is so sophisticated that it can not only spot aircraft at great distances, but identify their types.
Canada has been part of the F-35 program since the inception of the U.S. Department of Defence’s “Joint Strike Fighter” project in 1997. Today, about 110 Canadian companies are part of the F-35’s supply chain, and the first Canadian purchase arrives next year. The plane also makes sense because the Canadian military is highly attuned to U.S. weapons, and the soldiers and technicians who operate and fix them. Since the senseless destruction of Canada’s Avro Arrow interceptor plane by the John Diefenbaker government in 1959, Canada has only bought American fighter jets.
Now the disadvantages, and they are biggies.
Canada is besieged by U.S. tariffs. President Donald Trump wants to make Canada “the 51st state” (and to “own” Greenland and Gaza and take over the Panama Canal). This week, Prime Minister Mark Carney said the United States “is no longer a reliable partner” and that Canada must create “strategic autonomy for this country.”
Would you buy an F-35 from Mr. Trump? Seems like a reward for bad behaviour. Under his regime, the planes also pose a possible security risk for Canada.
While the “kill switch” that allegedly allows the Pentagon, Lockheed Martin or the White House to turn Canadian F-35s into runway ornaments is a myth, there are other ways to shut down the fleet, such as denying software upgrades or spare parts. For every hour of flying time, the aircraft needs more than four hours of maintenance.
“The ‘kill switch’ is the F-35’s global supply chain,” says Simon Smith, professor at the Royal Danish Defence College and editor of the Defence Studies journal. “No spare parts and they don’t fly – although this could potentially cause issues for the U.S. as well, as the supply chain works both ways.”
All of a sudden, rivals to the F-35 look appealing. Canada is legally and financially committed to buy only the first 16 of the 88 F-35s. The rest of the order – or more – could be filled by any of three European models: the Eurofighter Typhoon (made by the Airbus-BAE-Leonardo consortium), France’s Dassault Rafale or Sweden’s Saab Gripen.
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On the spare parts and upgrades argument, the Typhoon and Rafale make the most sense, since they are the most “European” of the three and use European engines, giving them a fairly high degree of autonomy from the U.S. supply chain. Less so the Gripen, which uses a licence-built version of a U.S. General Electric turbofan.
The big advantage of the Gripen, which placed second in Canada’s competition for new fighter jets in 2023, is that Saab offered to build the plane in Canada, creating thousands of jobs (there is a precedent – the Gripen has been built in Brazil for the Brazilian Air Force for the past two years). The Gripen is also cheaper to buy and operate, meaning you can purchase more of them for less money than the F-35s.
From a trade and geopolitical sense, going with a European fighter jet makes enormous sense. Mr. Carney wants to downgrade the United States as a strategic and trade partner and upgrade Europe. His first trip after he was sworn in as Prime Minister on March 14 was to London and Paris, not Washington.
Pushing Canada into the European defence supply chain, and vice versa, could bring considerable income, employment, research and development benefits to both sides. Canada and the European Union have both launched rearming campaigns. The European Commission alone is offering €150-billion ($232-billion) in funds to EU member states to buy weapons and is already courting Canada to take part in the program.
“Our co-operation with Canada has intensified and should be further enhanced, also to strengthen transatlantic security,” said the EC’s white paper on European defence readiness, published last week.
Canada has a huge dilemma. The F-35 purchase is now under review. If the winner of the April 28 federal election kills off the 72 planes that Canada has not yet committed to buy, Mr. Trump will no doubt fly into a savage rage and retaliate in some way. More tariffs?
There may be a win-win solution. How about this? Buy 44 of the F-35s and fill the rest of the order with European jets. That way, Canada is hedged. Forty-four jets is still a fat order that could keep the Americans happy. At the same time, forging a link with the European defence market would help fulfill Canada’s new strategic goals.
True, running two types of aircraft is expensive. But insulating Canada at least partly from Mr. Trump’s unhinged neo-colonialism campaign would be worth it.