At this point, the only commitment is to buy 16 F-35s. Mark Carney will be making the final decision on whether to proceed with purchases of another 72 of the stealth fighters.

The F-35 is a poison pill for Canadian defence sovereignty against a hostile America. We cannot win against an invasion, but with the Gripen we can make it a phyrric victory for them.

    • rekabis@lemmy.caOP
      3·
      14 hours ago

      I know what he’s talking about: not against American pilots, but as make-believe American pilots.

      Which is a good idea, but not perfect: American pilots will have noticeably different behaviours and tactics, and even personality types that are (generally) not found up here. While training against other Canadians in an F-35 is great, it’s not as good as training against Americans in an F-35.

      But that’s the trick - how do we get America, using F-35 aircraft, to help us to train up our Gripen pilots?

      And when our original order of 88 or so F-35 planes could, if completely cancelled and on a per-dollar basis, buy 420 Gripens straight from Europe, how do we get America to unknowingly train up so many Gripen pilots?