Canada’s Purchase of the F-35: Are We Stuck with It?

I was trying to avoid this, but I suppose it’s time to discuss Canada’s purchase of the F-35 jet fighter, especially in light of the Trump regime’s repeated threats to Canada, our economy, and our sovereignty.

First, a caveat—a massive one. I was Army, not Air Force. I’ve never even seen an F-35 in person (yet). However, over the course of a long military career, I received extensive training in joint operations, including the use of airpower, and I’m fairly familiar with fighter aircraft, their capabilities, and their employment. This won’t be a technical article in any event, so I hope you’ll bear with me and with the amount of background I’m including here. It’s important to understand how we got to where we are.

Some History

Post-war Canada has had a difficult relationship with fighter aircraft. In the 1950s defence build-up during the Cold War, Canada leveraged its experience building aircraft during the Second World War to create an advanced aerospace industry virtually from scratch. We designed and built the CF-100 Canuck interceptor and the CF-105 Arrow supersonic fighter, although the latter was cancelled in a blaze of controversy. Canada also built a wide variety of aircraft under licence and fitted them with Canadian-designed and -built jet engines.

While the cancellation of the Arrow gutted Canada’s ability to design and construct domestic jet fighters, we still managed to build large numbers of aircraft—particularly the CF-104 Starfighter—under licence. However, the 1960s and ’70s gradually saw a decline in our ability to do even this. While we still had (and have) a relatively robust aerospace industry, our ability to produce a supersonic fighter aircraft is long gone.

With this in mind, when the time came to replace the Starfighters and CF-101 Voodoos in the late 1970s, Canada settled on procuring a foreign aircraft off the shelf. Thus, we contracted with a U.S. company, McDonnell Douglas, to procure 138 CF-18 Hornets. At the time, these were very advanced but quite expensive. Where Canada had literally hundreds of aircraft in service 20 years before, the size of the fleet dwindled.

Canada has been flying the CF-18 ever since. While the aircraft have been upgraded, most are around 40 years old and long past their expiration date. The fact that the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) is still flying them is indicative of the political dithering and interference that characterizes most large Canadian defence procurement programs. We’ve been trying to replace the CF-18 for about two decades.

Enter the F-35

By 1997, the writing was on the wall for the CF-18, and Canada entered the American Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program as a Level 3 participant. This involved the commitment of $160 million USD in exchange for the ability of Canadian companies to compete for contracts related to the JSF’s development and production. Critically, unlike some other international participants in the program, Canada did not commit to actually buying the aircraft. After a competitive process, the U.S. government announced the award of a production contract to Lockheed Martin for their prototype, and the JSF became the F-35 Lightning II.

In 2010—thirteen years after entering the project—the Harper government announced the purchase of 65 F-35s without a competition, likely because Canada had already participated in the development and production of the aircraft. This immediately led to the inevitable complaints that arise every time the Canadian government procures defence equipment, this time exacerbated by the sole-source purchasing. Worse, the American prototype and testing program was experiencing significant teething problems and rising costs associated with the F-35’s engine and electronic systems.

Two years later, in 2012, the Conservative government, always looking for ways to cut costs (defence spending as part of GDP hit an all-time low of 0.9% around this time), and citing these issues and rising costs, put the entire project on hold. The RCAF was left with what were now called “Legacy Hornets” that they attempted to keep relevant through a series of upgrades. Further, the National Fighter Procurement Secretariat was created to assess the program and recommend other options. Critically, Canada kept paying into the JSF program in an effort to retain the industrial benefits gained from F-35 production.

Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II (Lockheed Martin)

The Dithering Starts

In 2015, the Liberals seized upon these issues to demand the outright cancellation of the Canadian contract for the F-35, citing the problems the U.S. had with the prototypes. Justin Trudeau famously said the aircraft “didn’t work” and that it was unsuited to Canadian needs, although he didn’t exactly explain how. I remember warning a senior Liberal politician that the F-35 was too important to the U.S. and that the Americans would “spend their way” out of its problem, which is precisely what happened.

The Trudeau government directed a complete restart and a full competition. As this started, the government hit upon the idea that the CF-18 fleet was “too old” and that a “capability gap” existed. Thus, in 2016, they decided to make an “interim purchase” of 18 Boeing F-18E/F Super Hornets. This didn’t last long. Boeing quickly found itself embroiled in a trade dispute with the government’s darling, Bombardier, and Canada cancelled the purchase in 2017 after the Trump administration imposed massive tariffs on Bombardier’s C-Series airliner (sound familiar?).

Now, the RCAF was left with nothing as the new fighter aircraft competition dragged on. 25 old Australian Legacy Hornets were bought to keep fleet numbers up and to provide spare parts, as the Royal Australian Air Force began to take deliveries of its own F-35s. Meanwhile, the competition finally started in 2019. Two obvious European alternatives, the Eurofighter Typhoon and the Dassault Rafale, dropped out very early, leaving the F-35, the Super Hornet, and the Swedish Gripen E as the contenders. Eventually, after a final evaluation between the F-35 and the Gripen E, the F-35 was selected again. It was January 2023, a full decade after the F-35 was put “on hold” and 25 years after Canada entered the JSF program.

The reasons for the F-35’s selection are important to the rest of this discussion. The F-35 is a fifth generation fighter with full stealth capabilities and very advanced sensors. Moreover, it was designed from the outset to work in an environment where the US Air Force would be the dominant partner. It is fully network enabled and has comprehensive data-sharing capabilities.

Canada contracted for 88 F-35s, a modest increase over the original Harper plan, but still well below the 138 CF-18s bought in the early 1980s. These are to be delivered starting next year in very small numbers, with the actual fleet due to arrive beginning in 2029, fifty years after the CF-18 was originally selected. As seems usual with Canadian defence planning, the timelines are far too long, the numbers too small and the lack of operational primacy is all too obvious.

Now What?

For Canada, working in a NORAD context, these are critical capabilities. NORAD exists basically to defend the United States, and the Canadian air defence system is completely integrated with the Americans. The F-35 is an American fighter, carrying American weapons, networked with an American-dominated continental air defence system. Moreover, the F-35 was designed from the outset to be the “standard” allied fighter and is flown—right now—by many of Canada’s NATO and other allies.

In a normal world, F-35 selection made perfect sense. The Gripen E was a less capable aircraft in many respects and its ability to integrate with NORAD - the critical piece - was in question. Yes, it was cheaper, but it was - and is - regarded as a lightweight fighter, although the E version is considerably more capable than previous versions. The Gripen’s positive attributes - rough field performance, ease of maintenance, dogfighting ability, and lower operating costs - were not (aside from the costs) seen as important in a NORAD context, where operation from fixed bases with a secure supply chain was assured. Indeed, at the time, having a “sovereign” aircraft, which was one of the Gripen’s selling points, wasn’t all that important. It is critical to understand that the F-35 was selected because of NORAD and its ability, as a fifth generation aircraft, to be network integrated with the US Air Force and other allies.

But there are issues. The very “advantages” of the F-35 - the integration of US weapons, the full network-enabled capability and a centralized supply chain are now severe disadvantages. Canada will not have sovereign control over the F-35 fleet and the US can likely shut it down with little or no warning or justification. Canada’s dilemma is that it will be in the US interest to keep the F-35 flying as long as it is a central part of continental air defence.

Enter Trump 2.0

The re-emergence of Donald Trump on the political scene has caused the entire F-35 purchase to be re-examined. Trump has proven to be openly hostile to Canada, beginning a trade war and calling for our annexation. Canada urgently needs to begin disentangling from the US as seismic shifts in the international order have caused our entire relationship with the United States to be placed into question. In this light, having an aircraft so integrated with the U.S., without any real sovereign capabilities, is—correctly—seen as a strategic liability. There have been calls for the F-35 contracts to be terminated and for the Gripen E to be purchased instead.

Frankly, this isn’t realistic. All the factors that resulted in the F-35’s selection in the first place still remain, and integration with NORAD is still a prime consideration. Complicating matters is the fact that Canada is still a Level 3 participant in the JSF program, with every F-35 containing some Canadian content. Canadian industry could lose these industrial contracts should our F-35 purchase be cancelled. Worse, Canada would likely incur significant contractual penalties.

SAAB’s Gripen E (credit SAAB)

The Path Forward

It seems that we’re stuck with the F-35, no matter what happens. Outright cancellation doesn’t seem to be a viable option. However, there are things that could be done. Canada could approach SAAB to discuss a new Gripen version, optimized for NATO service and free of U.S. components (the Gripen E has a US engine), as a second fleet to complement the F-35. We could do two things:

• Field the entire F-35 purchase with a focus on NORAD and purchase additional Gripen E aircraft for a new mission devoted to NATO and Europe, or

• Cut the F-35 purchase to the minimum required for NORAD and replace the balance with Gripen E. This keeps fleet numbers down.

Frankly, I lean towards the first option, even to the extent of basing the new Gripens in Europe as a deterrent and as a symbol of Canada’s commitment to NATO and the democratic West. This could be done fairly easily if we sought a partner with whom we could base the aircraft using existing infrastructure. The message it would send would reverberate in both Europe and in Washington.

Unfortunately, such an option requires a level of decisiveness and urgency heretofore not seen in Ottawa. What’s likely to happen is more of the usual: dithering and lack of interest. Canada will purchase the full tranche of F-35s and not even consider doing something over and above that. We’ll trust in Trump and the US, despite the massive changes to the international order and multiple existential threats.

I hope we don’t regret it.

---

A personal note. It is spring break here on the Black Cloud and I’ll be travelling off and on as a result. I may be fairly quiet until the end of March - unless something earth-shattering happens.