this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
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U.S. could hold a 'red card' over Canada's Gripen fighter jet option (www.cbc.ca)
submitted 3 days ago by HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works to c/canada@lemmy.ca
18 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

There is a way the U.S. could play hardball with Canada, if the Liberal government of Prime Minister Mark Carney decides it wants to limit its purchase of F-35s in favour of the Gripen.

Critics who favour the Lockheed-Martin stealth fighter have long argued that the Swedish-built Gripen would not be interoperable with American aircraft and the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD).

That's not what you see at the NATO air policing mission in Iceland, where Danish-owned F-35s have been training and operating alongside Swedish JAS-39 Gripens-Cs.

Commanders of both the Swedish and Danish air forces, speaking at the airfield in Keflavik on Tuesday, said the aircraft have been performing well together.

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[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 days ago (2 children)

What is the difference if we buy 20 fighter jets or zero?

Our biggest threats have 250X that number. Canadians are delusional if they think a few subs or fighter jets is going to stop the US. But if we go into massive debt, drop healthcare and education for more toys, we might as well be the US.

[–] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago

Imagine you and twenty of your friends have ganged up on someone in a fight. Would feel exactly as confident if they were armed with a knife as you would if they were armed with nothing?

It's not always about being able to win the fight. Sometimes it's just about making the fight costly enough that the other party decides its not worth it.

This, by the way, is exactly why our military is still pushing for the F-35, despite the very high political costs and risks that it now comes with. When you get down to the brass tacks of what an air war between Canada and Russia would look like, the unavoidable factor is that Russia simply does not have any 5th gen fighters. Even on paper their only claimed 5th gen simply isn't. The specs they've announced for the Su-57 it barely qualify as stealthy. And it's well known that Russia overstates their specs (whereas NATO tends to understate ours). We also know from what's been happening Ukraine that Russian radar is dogshit.

Everything in Russia's current air fleet, including their grand total of 6 "5th gen" fighters, would get stomped into the ground by an F-35. Stealth is a huge force multiplier. When you can kill the enemy without them even seeing you, it's not even a fight, it's just a turkey shoot. Even a small fleet of F-35s would inflict unimaginable damage on the Russian air force. They'd be limited only by their ability to maintain locations to launch from, and their available supply of fuel, parts and munitions.

Something like that dramatically alters the calculations when it comes to considering any kind of attack.

[–] rbos@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

There's a pretty massive qualitative difference between 1 and 0. A small amount of jets means we can actually respond to flyover probes. Yes, the threat is asymmetric, but there has to be some token ability to respond.

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I'd rather have a whole bunch of anti air systems with thousands of drones

It'll be a fraction of the cost of the F35 or the grippen, won't help you with attacking but fuck does it work well with defense, see Ukraine

[–] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Canada's geography isn't exactly conducive to relying on anti-air systems alone. It's the same reason Trump's golden dome is a fantasy; he's trying to recreate Iron Dome, but Iron Dome only works because Isreal is tiny. Canada isn't.

There's also a huge cost to air defense systems. Just for some rough perspective, a single Patriot missile system costs as much as 10 F-35s. A Patriot covers a radius of about 160km, an F-35, without midair refueling, covers a radius of about 1800km.

You simply cannot create the same kind of air defence network with ground batteries only as you can with aerial interceptors, and when you need to cover a country as large as ours that makes a huge difference. Far from being a fraction of the cost, your proposal would actually be orders magnitude more expensive.

Even when you throw drones into the picture they're simply not going to adjust that calculation in any meaningful way. A drone capable of intercepting enemy aircraft or missiles as effectively as a fighter plane is going to cost as much as a fighter plane. There's really no avoiding that.

[–] rbos@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yeah. I'd like to see fighter planes, or heavy drones, built without the needs of g-sensitive, heat-intolerant, oxygen-needing meatsacks. The major problem is communication links and jamming, but on our own territory, keeping a pilot in a bunker with a good link to a plane seems like a better bet.

[–] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

This is an idea that's been toyed with, but simply doesn't give the same kind of situational awareness that a human pilot directly in the situation has, not to mention the issues with communication links, which not only present the problem of jamming as you said, but also make stealth much more difficult. With a human pilot, the craft can shut off all radio comms for a much lower signature.

What we're seeing instead as the expected path forward is a hybrid approach; wingman drones.

You build a top of the line stealth fighter, and then you give it two drone buddies, which can be remotely fed instructions by the human operated craft. You retain situational awareness, and from a flying platform you can fall back to laser communication; unjammable and undetectable. Pilot safety is significantly enhanced because they can hang back and let the drones engage, and each pilot (a very expensive asset) can now command significantly more firepower.

Saab are working on this for their upcoming sixth gen fighter, which I'd very much like to see us collaborate on developing.