287

Europe and Canada Are Finally Saying No to the U.S. F-35 Stealth Fighter, Motivated By a Desire For “Strategic Autonomy” (nationalsecurityjournal.org)

submitted 6 days ago by Scotty@scribe.disroot.org to c/canada@lemmy.ca

85 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Archived link

European nations and Canada are “pushing away” from the F-35, motivated by a desire for “strategic autonomy” and political friction with the Trump administration
Spain officially canceled its F-35 purchase in August 2025, opting for European-built alternatives. Switzerland is now also reviewing its 36-jet deal after being hit with a “shocking” $1.3 billion price hike and new 39% U.S. tariffs, and recent reports suggest that Portugal has not opted to purchase the U.S. jets
Instead of the F-35, they are increasingly looking to European alternatives, such as the Eurofighter Typhoon and the Future Combat Air System (FCAS).
Canada’s 88-jet deal is also in “limbo,” as PM Mark Carney, angered by Trump’s “51st state” comments and trade disputes, ordered a review of the 72 un-committed jets
Technological and industrial sovereignty are significant reasons why some countries are opting not to purchase the F-35. Some European nations prioritize developing their own defense industries and technological bases. Buying American-made F-35s would make them dependent on US supply chains and could suppress the development of their own next-generation aircraft programs. ...

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[+] Sunshine@piefed.social 49 points 6 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

[deleted]

[-] mintiefresh@piefed.social 26 points 6 days ago

I find it wild that we are still considering buying military planes from a country that is threatening our sovereignty lol. I'm sure it's more complex but ..... also, it doesn't have to be. Just buy from somewhere else.

[-] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 23 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I think as of now RCAF still wants them and the deal isn't off yet. I imagine it's also a card that's used in the negotiations with the US. I wouldn't be surprised if we end up staying with the F35s.

[-] HumanOnEarth@lemmy.ca 13 points 6 days ago

I imagine they will stall as long as they can to see if MAGA loses their grip. 0% chance of agreeing to the rest of the F-35s if MAGA is still in power.

[-] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 9 points 6 days ago

I hope you're right and I do think that's likely what's happening but I'm not certain.

[-] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 5 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

It's understandable that the RCAF still wants it; There's literally no other option with the same capabilities. The Gripen is an excellent plane, but it's not a fifth gen fighter. Unless we want to start buying planes from China, we're SOL if we want another fifth gen option. I'm not personally advocating to continue with the purchase, I think we should go ahead and build the Gripen here in Canada and use that as a stopgap while we get on board with one of the European sixth gen fighter programs. But I can absolutely see why the RCAF doesn't feel the same way. They're a small air force and they need every advantage they can get. Based on its performance against F-16s I have no doubt the Gripen could shoot down Russian fighters at a ten to one rate, but I also have no doubt that the F-35 would be closer to a hundred to one rate (in Fermi approximation terms), and one could certainly argue that we need that if we end up on the front lines of a war with Russia.

I still lean towards the Gripen, but I'll admit I go back and forth on this. It's not a cut and dry decision either way.

[-] TheTimeKnife@lemmy.world 5 points 5 days ago

Most people don't really understand the problem. It's either make a deal with an ally run by lunatics, or suffer a decade long capability gap that your military may not be able to overcome.

There are no other 5th gen options, and 4++ are becoming more vulnerable with the proliferation of effective air defense. The first available 6th gen outside of US export controls will be on the wrong side of 2030.

This is an incredibly difficult choice for Canada with no perfect options.

Both China and Russia are expanding their arctic presence. The US is electing nationalist demagogues on a platform of betraying our allies. It's possible Canada may have a peer to peer conflict in the next 5 to 10 years. Canada possibly can't afford that big of a capability gap if that's the case.

[-] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 3 points 4 days ago

You've hit the nail on the head here.

I don't know what the right answer is on this one. On balance, I lean towards getting the Gripen as a stopgap and prioritizing access to those European sixth gen projects. Select the one that looks the best suited for our needs and go in hard on collaborating on it.

This is part of why I think the Gripen makes sense; we can build it here, which opens up the possibility of being able to build a sixth gen later, instead of having to wait in line for our order to ship. The F-35 gives us better capabilities now, but doesn't solve the underlying problems down the road.

There is, I think, a version of events where we sign a deal with Saab to build Gripens in Canada to export to buyers like Ukraine, and then go ahead and take the F-35 order anyway. Most likely, we use this to extract concessions in other areas from the Americans, pointing at our new domestic fighter plane industry as a very credible threat to walk away from the F-35 deal. Then, if we're smart about this, we continue to build up our ability to domestically produce fighter craft, with an eye on that sixth gen project. This would make a lot of sense in the context of Carney's stated goal of making Canada a defence supplier to the EU, while still leaving us with an interim platform that can handle anything the Russians throw at us.

load more comments (6 replies)

[-] kent_eh@lemmy.ca 10 points 6 days ago

I imagine it's also a card that's used in the negotiations with the US.

I have no doubt that it is.

A smart negotiator doesn't play all their cards at the start. They gradually bring out their various pressure points over time when it is strategic to do so. And they hold back the "nuclear option" until it becomes necessary.

[-] nosuchanon@lemmy.world 9 points 5 days ago

Definitely didn’t have that on my bingo card. “Trump kills military industrial complex”

[-] puppinstuff@lemmy.ca 25 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I won’t trust Carney to fully scrap the deal after his embarrassing apology for the Ford ad last week. Keeping it in the maybe pile is more helpful for negotiation even though we would be better off with Typhoons or Gripens.

load more comments (9 replies)

[-] mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca 7 points 5 days ago

c'mon Canada, you can do better than "a review"

[-] bookmeat@lemmynsfw.com 2 points 4 days ago

They're trying, but there are already certain commitments.

[-] mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca 1 points 4 days ago

commitments to american companies?

there is no such thing as a commitment to a company of a country that threatened to invade you. sure, it can get legally messy. so be it. fuck them.

[-] Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 5 days ago

News about the kill switch hidden in Chinese built electric buses must've been a wake-up call.

[-] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 2 points 4 days ago

US military sales, by law, all have to have US controlled kill switches. This has been true since the 80s.

[-] Auli@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 days ago

Sure which law?

[-] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 7 points 5 days ago

Can you blame them? When the country that produces it elected someone so profoundly dumb, you need to be able to trust at that level.

[-] Wren@lemmy.today 15 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

The F-35s have been the kid in a toxic custody trial for fucking ever, already costing billions more than expected. The same shit happened over the F-22 and we're still using goddamn F-18s.

In the year 2125 we'll finally welcome in a new fleet of F-69's to retire a squadron of Hornets being held together by spit and glue.

[-] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 2 points 4 days ago

Just to give you an idea of how FUCKED our national priorities are: If we actually buy these lemons, it will cost more to just keep them unused in hangars per year than all the biomedical research in all diseases supported by federal grants.

The fact that we are wasting tens of billions on fighter jets with foreign controlled kill switches is just proof CAF spending has nothing to do with actual defence of Canada.

[-] HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 4 points 5 days ago

If only we hadn't shit-canned the Arrow half a century ago.

[-] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 3 points 4 days ago

The Arrow was just the 60s version of the F35. It was proper to cancel it. Tories killed off Avro because the US told them to. Then Mulroney killed off a lot of CDN industry, again, because the US told him to. Then Stephen Harper...you get the point.

[-] EtAl@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 5 days ago

I'm no expert, but I've heard that the reputation of the Arrow has been pumped up over the years. But we would have had our own military aeronautics industry in some way shape or form.

Really it's a moot point though. Drones do a lot of what jets used to do. We should take the money that would have been spent on those and use it to develop a homegrown drone industry right now.

[-] HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 2 points 5 days ago

I understand that, but the point is we could have had a home-grown aerospace industry a bit more robust than now. Some Arrow engineers ended up at NASA after all. And the engines!

[-] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 2 points 4 days ago

Some Arrow engineers ended up at NASA after all.

The rest ended up at Lougheed and McDonnell Douglas. We pissed away 50,000 of the best engineers this country has ever seen, and all the spin off industries they would have developed. This was the beginning of the end for innovation in Ontario industry.

load more comments (2 replies)

[-] Glytch@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago

Smart. Those planes come with so many strings attached they may as well be fly-by-wire.

[-] HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 7 points 5 days ago

Fly by subscription.

[-] mercano@lemmy.world 7 points 6 days ago

I’m curious what countries like Spain, Italy, and the UK will do. They all have smaller aircraft carriers that require short takeoff / vertical landing planes, a role currently being filled by the F-35B. I’m unaware of anything similar from other western aircraft manufacturers.

[-] FrederikNJS@lemmy.zip 6 points 5 days ago

The Saab Gripen has had some studies around whether it would be possible to adapt to carrier operation. Several countries seem to have expressed interest, but no commitments have been made yet. From wikipedia:

Saab studied a variant of the Gripen capable of operating from aircraft carriers in the 1990s. In 2009, it launched the Sea Gripen project in response to India's request for information on a carrier-based aircraft. Brazil may also require new carrier aircraft.[74][75] Following a meeting with Ministry of Defence (MoD) officials in May 2011, Saab agreed to establish a development center in the UK to expand on the Sea Gripen concept.[76]... ; further development of optionally manned and carrier versions would require customer commitment.[77][78] On 6 November 2014, the Brazilian Navy expressed interest in a carrier-based Gripen.[79]

[-] cassandrafatigue@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 6 days ago

Well, there's the very real possibility of having to fight the americans, who install kill switches and make everything proprietary so you can't make your own parts.

So, go without planes, or pay your most likely military enemy for the privilege of going without planes?

load more comments (18 replies)

load more comments (14 replies)

load more comments