Buying F35, at this point, is a bribe to appease impetulent Trump
this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2026
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And the appeasement will only last a few weeks max, before he gets distracted by something else
My name's not Max, but thanks for the info.
EDIT: Aw, they edited the capitalization, making my dumb joke... more dumb.
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Gripen!
A mixed fleet is probably optimal. The Grippens are far more pragmatic to form the bulk of our fighter capability. A stealth fighter has unique benefits so keeping the 16 already committed to isn't unreasonable until 6th gen and beyond can be procured from actual allies.
The big mistake here is going all in on 88 F-35, when the future of aerospace defense is AI drone and missile/counter-missile defense. Not just because of American backstabbing. It's costs far exceeds its strategic value and in true Canadian fashion our defense paradigms are always one to three steps behind.
Edit: Militaries win with effective + cheap + scale. Not ultra-expensive showpieces (heh) with critical flaws that do not scale.
It'd be way more expensive to split the order. Canada needs arctic recon and interception. That's all it has ever needed. Gripen was built to do that mission. Going with Gripen would both put Canada with a cheaper platform that fulfills the mission, and it sticks a thumb in the eye of Trump's war machine.
That's all it has ever needed.
I appreciate the truth of your comment, but respectfully disagree.
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You don't build a defense force and strategy for the conflict you hope happens. Hubris kills.
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Our needs include all of NATO's needs, and to a far far smaller degree, any UN peacekeeking or similar function.
A 5th gen stealth fighter presents desirable attributes for specific purposes, but to your point they aren't the bulk of the work to be done.
The cost saving of a single fleet of F-35 also inject various fragilities of their own. Not the least of which is the catastrophic losses from a single plane going down from anything ranging from enemy action to training accident to supply chains fuckery.
I won't shed a single tear for the F-35 if we cancel the whole lot. But having some 5th gen makes sense. We should be going with the Brit or French led consortiums of middle powers, not US, Russia or China.
Exactly, there may be times a topline fighter is needed, but most missions for air superiority aren't going to be best plane vs. best plane.
We've seen in WWII, and we see in the asymmetric age of Ukraine and Iran wars, that a horde of thousand dollar problems wear down a million dollar problem solver.
The f-35s have kill switches in them. A fusible link that bricks them. Do not buy them.
I’m also not convinced their stealth capability is that great.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the US knew of flaws and that’s why they’re fine selling them.
I wanna say the Danish have already jail broken theirs, not saying we should get them and jail brake them just saying it is possible.
Cut your losses, and fuck america.
Canada needs to start building its own shit.
We had blackberry, we had Avro aero,we are capable of building things. We have good education. We should be building things and selling them. We dont uave a large population, but we are capable of that.
I will never understand what the hell went through Trudeau's mind when he thought going through with the F-35 deal was a good move.
He literally told Canadians that the Liberals would never go ahead with buying F-35s, and then trapped us into this predicament by going back on his word when it was clear as day how hilariously unreliable the aircraft were.
They're exceptionally reliable, and better than anything else at what they do. He went back on this word because he was actually put into rooms with airforce experts who made that clear, and he didn't expect the US to turn evil at the time.
Cost Per Flying Hour F-35A: $36,000 - $48,000 USD Gripen E/F: $7,000 - $36,200 USD Difference: ~25-75% cheaper for Gripen (varies by source) Maintenance Hours Per Sortie F-35: 20-25 man-hours Gripen: 6-8 man-hours Difference: Gripen requires ~70% less maintenance labor Operational Availability (Readiness) F-35: 70-75% Gripen: High 90% range Difference: Gripen achieves roughly 2x readiness rate Total Lifecycle Cost (8,000-hour lifespan) F-35: ~$400 million (operations only) Gripen E: ~$180 million (operations only) Difference: F-35 costs ~2.2x more to operate
Nice. I'm guessing the F-16 would be closer to the F-35?
And then any other stealth aircraft is going to blow both out of the water.
They're getting blasted out of the air in Iran right now. One confirmed with a second loss possible. How many F-16s has Ukraine lost in combat? I'm not saying the F-16 is a better aircraft than the F-35 but I think it does show that "stealth" isn't all that and an "old" aircraft like the F-16 or (for that matter) Gripen, with a modern sensor and weapons load-out, is actually pretty similar in capability.
Then what's dropping all the bombs straight onto Iran, lol?
Meanwhile, Ukraine keeps their F-16s well behind enemy lines fighting cheap drones.
I thought they said the F35s were terriblly expensive to maintain per hour of flying. Things can seem reliable in air if most of their time is on the ground getting replacement parts, and adjustments, but that quickly can lose a war by expenses.
Nope, you're probably thinking of the F-22. The F-35 got it back down to reasonable hanger time and care, at the cost of a long, multi-trillion dollar development period.
Per the other commenter the Gripen is a bit cheaper yet, but that's because it's built like a car from the 70's or something. All off-the-shelf parts combined in obvious ways with lots of allowances. The cost of that is it shows up to radar like a 70's car. It's basically just a very different aircraft for doing different things.
They are very expensive per flight hour, yes, but that's not the same thing as being unreliable. It's a high end weapon with a high end price tag.
Yes, that's my point, you can lose a war by expenses if your equipment needs a ton of preventative maintenance to stay reliable.
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The F-35 isn't hilariously unreliable, that's Russian propaganda that they laundered through known lying fuckwad Pierre Sprey.
As for why we went with it... Because the CAF wanted it. Putting aside all other considerations, it is the better aircraft. And at the time the notion of the US completely stabbing us in the back didn't seem like a realistic possibility.
We absolutely should switch to buying the Gripen now, what Saab are offering is amazing and there are very good reasons to get away from the US. But let's not start pretending that all of that was true when we signed the deal. At the time, the arguments against the F-35 were mostly fabricated bullshit that Russia fed us because they didn't want all of NATO to be armed with a weapon system they have no effective way to counter.
I'd also argue that if all of NATO has the same aerial weapons platform, that leaves us vulnerable in a way that diversity doesn't. If the F-35 has a vulnerability that the Saab doesn't, then we're still okay. If the F-35 is ALL we have, then we're screwed.
Standards are great. Let's make sure we have commonality of ammunition and logistics. But some duplication of weapons platforms is a good idea.
That's completely valid, but it doesn't necessarily outweigh the benefits of just how much the F-35 outclasses all the other options available.
This is, more than anything, an issue of the rest of NATO abandoning weapon development and relying on the US to do it instead. You're right that this homogeneity brings potential vulnerabilities, but that's a problem that needs long term solutions.
Saab are developing a sixth gen fighter, and when that becomes available I can absolutely see the arguments for adopting it, but right now the arguments are a lot more complicated. While there are plenty of good arguments against the F-35, none of them really address the degree to which it overmatches every competing option. That's a factor that simply cannot be ignored.
That's fair, but I'm not fully convinced that the F-35 is so overmatching in a Canadian context. We have a lot of territory to cover, so we want planes that are able to handle rough runway conditions, rough weather, and have a long range. The F-35 is a bit of a princess, and I don't think its airframe compromises are as valuable in a Canadian defense context as they might be in an offensive context supporting the latest American adventurism abroad.
Having the ability to select lower-cost options that are Good Enough In The Context might be worth the higher cost of maintaining two supply lines. Plus, not every mission is going to need the F-35. Having to shoehorn the F-35 into every possible mission seems wasteful, if we can have a plane that costs half as much for the lighter missions, or twice as many of the cheaper plane.
Having the ability to select lower-cost options that are Good Enough In The Context might be worth the higher cost of maintaining two supply lines. Plus, not every mission is going to need the F-35. Having to shoehorn the F-35 into every possible mission seems wasteful, if we can have a plane that costs half as much for the lighter missions, or twice as many of the cheaper plane.
Yeah, I've seen this idea floated that we may go for a split fleet of about 40 F-35s and 80 Gripens (which I assume is what you're nodding at). To my mind this sounds like an excellent solution, both for the reasons you outlined above, and because it addresses both the Russian threat and our own need to be less dependent on the US, militarily and economically. It gives us a weapons platform that substantially overmatches anything in the Russian fleet, and a weapons platform that we can reliably fly and maintain in any hypothetical future conflict.
In regards to how the F-35 fares in a defensive context, there's a pernicious myth that stealth only matters for first strike. If that's what you're alluding to, the simple reality is that all warfare is about stealth. That's why our soldiers don't only wear camouflage when they're attacking. Seeing the enemy before they see you is the single biggest advantage you can possibly have in any form of warfare. That's true of infantry, tanks, ships, airplanes... It doesn't matter. Stealth wins fights, no matter the context, with very few exceptions.
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I understand the whole Norad interoperability, but I truly agree with your thought.
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its not, were not buying those fucking planes
Have the Iranians shot down a Gripen yet?
Have they ever had a Gripen within missile range?
Grippens flying over Canadian airspace are outside of Iran's range, so we should be fine there.
100% Gripen
I'm not even sure that's a good deal, honestly. They wouldn't be any good on missions abroad, and would they actually last long if the US invaded? Hopefully the military is thinking it through carefully, and the politicians are listening.
Maybe we buy 30 billion in RBS SAMs from Sweden instead.
I don't think our conventional military would last long if the US invaded regardless of the F35 or Gripen. The only hope in that situation is that the US sucks at occupying territory, and they would double suck in winter. That is if Daniel Smith, Scot Moe, Ford and their followers don't just roll out the red carpet.
The neat thing about the Gripen is that it theoretically could run in a guerilla-type scenario. It takes an unskilled ground crew of IIRC five, and can take off and land on a dirt runway. If that's enough, I have no idea.
The F-35 could be useful for hitting the US back in the very short term, but is very dependent on working airbase infrastructure and supply chains, which would be obliterated in about the time it takes their planes to reach us. Edit: And them not using a killswitch.
We've already spent a quarter billion on the RBS-70s, which adds up to around 75 MANPADs occupiers would have to worry about when landing and taking off, maybe more if there's more missiles in the order than launchers.
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On one side no one wants the American option.
On the other side they cost way more.
There's a reason it's not debated.
The 12600 jobs should be the only number the government should take into account.
I fully expect Canada to go ahead with more F-35s. Not the full order, but more than just the current 16. We seem to be all-in on NORAD/Golden Dome participation and investment and the Arctic bases being invested in are being invested in with F-35 compatability in mind. Looks like a slow walk because the direction we're headed will be politically unpopular.
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