Belgium's newly purchased Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II fighter jets fly as they arrive at the Florennes military airbase, southern Belgium, in October.DIRK WAEM/AFP/Getty Images
Lieutenant-General (retired) Yvan Blondin was commander of the Royal Canadian Air Force from 2012 to 2015. Justin Massie is a professor of political science at UQAM and co-director of the Network for Strategic Analysis.
Canada is apparently considering acquiring a mixed fleet of fighter jets. But this decision is being considered without any real strategic thinking.
Economic considerations seem to be taking precedence over military imperatives, even though several experts and military leaders strongly recommend a single fleet of F-35s, which is considered more consistent with continental defence needs.
With the King of Sweden set to visit Canada this week in part to sell Gripen aircraft from the Swedish company Saab, there is talk that Canada could reduce its order for the fifth-generation F-35s in favour of the 4.5-plus-generation Gripen. This would be a major mistake, both operationally and logistically, as well as financially.
A mixed fleet designed to fulfill the same roles for Canada’s defence would require considerable duplication of infrastructure, maintenance, personnel training, training aircraft and specialized personnel, while also requiring more fighter pilots, a resource that the RCAF already sorely lacks. Such a decision would result in a four-to-five-year delay in ramp-up, just as the CF-18s reach the end of their service life around 2032. It is already too late to question the planned transition to the F-35 without seriously weakening Canada’s ability to defend its territory and fulfill its NORAD obligations.
The full acquisition of the F-35 fleet remains the only realistic and viable option for defending North America in partnership with the United States.
However, the European dimension of Canadian defence policy poses a distinct challenge that can be met very well, and perhaps better, by a second European fleet. There is no guarantee that the United States will continue to support security and deterrence operations in Europe in the coming decades, given the uncertain evolution of its foreign policy. Canada must therefore prepare for the possibility of military engagement in Europe without American support, a scenario reminiscent of the early years of the two world wars.
However, the F-35 may not be deployed without Washington’s tacit approval, which controls the aircraft’s software, sensitive data flows and maintenance systems. This dependence limits Canadian operational sovereignty in a European context. Thus, while the F-35 is perfectly suited to continental defence, it does not alone constitute a satisfactory response to Canada’s strategic autonomy requirements.
It is in this context that a mixed fleet could become relevant, but only in the medium term, beyond 2035 – and only once the RCAF has made up its personnel shortfalls, collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) systems become available, and the sixth-generation fighter programs that are currently in development have reached sufficient maturity. A second fleet should therefore be considered not as an immediate alternative to the F-35, but as a strategic complement enabling Canada to have a credible expeditionary capability in Europe that is less dependent on U.S. approval and well-integrated with European military technology infrastructures.
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This fleet could be limited to 25 to 30 modernized aircraft from the 4.5-plus generation, as they will operate with 60 to 75 combat drones, which will also eventually be used to accompany future sixth-generation fighter aircraft. This second fleet would thus serve as a technological bridge, enabling a smooth transition to the next-generation air combat systems expected to arrive in the late 2040s.
Three European programs are currently structuring the development of sixth-generation jets around distinct technological ecosystems. The first is FCAS, a Franco-German-Spanish partnership aimed at producing a new-generation fighter, a combat drone and a combat cloud, with the Rafale F5 as an intermediate step.
The second is GCAP, bringing together Britain, Japan and Italy around the development of the Tempest fighter jet, possibly combined with a future collaborative combat aircraft.
The third is Saab’s F series, a Swedish project centred on the Gripen E/F and a future sixth-generation platform accompanied by three families of drones. Canada would benefit from organizing a competition between these three options in order to assess which one best meets its military needs, its technological sovereignty objectives, and the strengthening of its industrial and technological base.
Such a competition should include the associated surveillance capabilities, including the likely choice of GlobalEye for early warning, in order to ensure the overall consistency of the systems.
The choice of one of these future ecosystems would rapidly involve our high-tech military industry in a sixth-generation partnership development for decades, while guiding the selection of its first element, the 4.5+ platform, for which Canada could begin planning production today with a view to achieving initial operational capability in 2035.
By relying on a dual presence – the F-35 for continental defence and a European platform for expeditionary operations and sixth-generation readiness – Canada could play a unique role as a bridge between Europe and the United States, promote interoperability between competing systems, and become a crucial industrial partner for NATO’s resilience.
Such a strategy would also strengthen its ability to contribute credibly to deterrence in Europe, while preserving its strategic autonomy. It would therefore be a mistake to try to impose a poorly calibrated mixed fleet today, one that is impossible to integrate within the critical time frame, disconnected from the RCAF’s current capabilities, and of no strategic military relevance.
The most coherent option would be to complete the acquisition of the F-35 in order to preserve the defence of the North American continent, while planning, with our military experts, a gradual expansion beyond 2035 toward a second European fleet integrated into an emerging sixth-generation ecosystem. This approach, which would still require a decade of development and acquisitions, could involve our military industry right away and would guarantee Canada a more sovereign posture that is militarily and strategically relevant, and better aligned with the technological developments of the 21st century.