As part of its pitch to lure Canada to buy Gripen-E fighter jets, Saab has offered to establish a secure, sovereign data centre in Montreal to house critical, top-secret mission data and intelligence, CBC News has learned.

The company is framing it as a “unique advantage” in the battle to convince the government of Prime Minister Mark Carney to limit the purchase of U.S.-manufactured F-35s, which have all of their data stored at a Lockheed Martin centre in Fort Worth, Texas.

The purpose-built Saab data centre “will host all work on the fighter mission system,” Saab spokesperson Sierra Fullerton confirmed in a recent statement to CBC News.

The centre would be staffed by Canadians who possess “Canada/U.S. security clearance,” presumably to handle data related to the defence of North America through the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD).