See my above reply. The CAF is full of ITAR controlled items, there is no realistic way to cut all ITAR items out of the CAF, but that doesn't mean we need to go full America. Pretending it's a binary between full America and zero ITAR is disingenuous.
Politics matter, whether or not you like it. Perhaps previous generation's lack of understanding of the importance of politics is part of why the CAF has gone though such a long drought of support.
Given the context many people are talking about where the concern is the US cutting off access to key systems and grounding our aircraft, it very much is a binary. If you want increased sovereignty and control on the overall platform, sure the Gripen provides a better case than the F-35 at a basic level, although I think its a false economy and generally a waste of our time/resources which I will explain later.
The CAF has been going through a continual drought of support since the inceptions of its various branches, none of this is new and the boom of funding is more an outlier in history than anything else. Like many other blunders in the history of RCAF procurement, we only stand to lose capability at this crossroads and end up with another sub-par platform we'll end up replacing in short order. As I stated before, the public only has a fleeting interest in procurements like this, primarily due to the "America bad" wave washing over the country now. They'll be onto the next news story and outrage before the end of the day.
Exports matter as far as raw numbers, but if we aren't buying the same block/model of F-35 the numbers matter somewhat less. If our F-35s are Block 4 and Spain's are Block 2 or 3, how much commonality is there between the aircraft?
On the flip side, if Canada is the other major operator of Gripens, we have a greater say in how and when upgrades are made, and a greater chance of perhaps some of that R&D money coming to Canada. Isn't the UK running into issues getting some of their weapons integrated into the F-35 because the UK weapons aren't a priority for the USAF/LM?
Considering how one of the primary advantages of the F-35 is things like its highly advanced Multifunction Advanced Data Link which allows all F-35's to seamlessly share and merge sensor data to a far greater degree than the standard NATO LINK systems, raw numbers are quite important. F-35's afaik are able to do this regardless of their block/model as this was one of the key features which helped push widescale NATO/western aligned national adoption of the F-35, out of the box interoperability. One of the biggest advantages of this is also the ability for the F-35 to feed this same data back to AEGIS capable warships, including the RCN's upcoming River class destroyers. Parts commonality is another issue given the few various blocks however, the amount of F-35 operators around the world gives us far greater fieldability versus the small Gripen operator footprint. There are differences and upgrades, but it doesn't preclude cross use of infrastructure.
Sure Canada would get a greater say in the timeline and composition of Gripen upgrades, but we'd fundamentally be on the hook for putting much more of our own (limited) aerospace knowledge at work to assist and more importantly, coughing up a lot more money just on the R&D, let alone the actual adoption and fielding. This isn't the case with the F-35, given how it has the might of the US MIC bankrolling the upgrades to such an important program, alongside a bevy of other nations continuing to pay into and assist with development through the JSF program. We are still a long term JSF partner and get our voice heard, while we take on substantially less risk in all departments for a better end product.
Canada would be taking on substantially more risk for the Gripen and its future development, even before you get into the fact that the Gripen is a small airframe originally designed in the 1980's that has already seen substantial development to make it to its current model. The Gripen is workable for many current requirements, but it has very limited future upgrade potential and is a design that will be obsolete long before the end of its service life.
So we sign on to get a much larger stake in a far smaller and less capable program, while taking on substantially more risk for a platform which will need replacement sooner than its counterpart.
The UK is running into issues because afaik LM was trying to shuffle most of the big integration work onto their upcoming tech refresh and blocks for the F-35, which themselves are already behind schedule and have snowballed into a larger mess.
Politicians will always look for job numbers to make them look good. Again, this isn't new or specific to SAAB. GM, Ford, LM, L3 Harris, etc.. all lie about job numbers to get government support too. I suspect one wouldn't have to dig too far to find a bunch of LM promises that are fake too, but let's keep pretending this is a SAAB problem.
Saab doesn't deserve to get away with spouting nonsense just because other companies do it, especially when they have been so brazen to launch this out into the public space with their lobbying moves. Their proposal is one of the worst examples I've seen of these ghost jobs in quite sometime.
You mean the competitions that were initially rigged in favour of the F-35, then re-run, but so messed up that two of the other competitors didn't even bother running?
I've been in enough meetings about requirements over the years to have both directly heard, and heard second-hand how people talk about rigging competitions to favour a particular outcome. With the main concern being keeping the rigging sufficiently subtle that the G&M can't easily pick it up...
I have zero doubt the F-35 is more capable than the Gripen, but I have serious doubts about the delta between the two as presented by the RCAF and the F-35 lobbyists.
Yes, I am entirely aware of the storied history of the RCAF and the F-35. It is not surprising that the RCAF has wanted to procure the aircraft when we've been a paying partner on its development program since the 1990's, especially when none of the available competitors could match the capabilities either promises or proven at various times. For as much as the contests were "rigged", I'm not as willing to give leeway to the Europeans, given how commonly do this whole ordeal of losing/being about to lose a competition, only to throw up their hands yelling "YOU CHEATED" and either walking out/making a legal challenge which inevitably gets thrown out.
The fact that the Gripen has lost every single competition it has come up against the F-35 in cements the difference in my opinion, Saab's glossy brochure does not seem convincing to nations who seem to take their defence seriously. Everybody who possibly can is trying to either develop their own stealth fighter design or jump into an ongoing program, the Gripen very much is yesterdays aircraft.
Have you considered that part of the reason the public doesn't care about the CAF is that the CAF doesn't care about public opinion until the public has already turned on us?
I don't buy that, the public has never truly cared about the CAF besides chastising them when things go wrong, giving some half hearted respect at Remembrance Day and crying for them to show up when everything falls apart in the country. Chasing public opinion is a fickle thing and I don't view it as particularly worthwhile, especially with regard to their tacit approval for programs and items they know literally nothing about.
The RCAF is knee-capped right now because our fighters are worn out, and the public didn't see any benefit in buying new ones. There were no jobs in it for them, and no real stakes if the RCAF was forced to keep flying F-18s for the next 20 years.
Right now there is public support for defence spending, and in particular defence spending in Canada. If we build enough of a defence industry in Canada, it can become a useful voting/lobbying block to ensure that the CAF stays kitted out with new equipment when jobs are in danger of disappearing. Alternatively, we can keep doing what we have been doing for the last 30+ years and just spend south of the border, and wait for the public to not care about the CAF again...
As per usual, the public is happy to pull the wool down over their eyes and kick the can down the road if it means not spending money. They don't truly care about what we buy outside of a quick self congratulatory pat on the back, and a feel good story about sticking it to the bad Americans.
I'd be much more supportive of the idea of re-establishing the Canadian military aviation industry if it wasn't attached to an industry laggard and a sub-par, non-standard platform that is a dubious purchase for the RCAF. What happens if Canada does agree to this deal, dumps billions and likely 5-10 years of time into developing an assembly and R&D capability alongside Saab, only to fulfill our own Gripen order and find out we have a dead platform. Saab is moving on to their own questionable attempts at a next generation fighter and unmanned platforms, which they have minimal expertise in either, similar to Canada. Ukraine doesn't make its huge Gripen buy, and Canada is left with an assembly plant fighting with Brazil and Sweden for the meagre remains of Gripen orders to a few South American and East Asian nations.
I'd much rather we take on a major American or European aerospace defence partner if we are serious about rebuilding the industry, focusing on developing our own/a joint unmanned fighter and potentially joining and existing next gen European fighter program. Saab is one of the worst partners available for Canada to attach itself too, especially if they get their roots into Quebec and turn into another corporate welfare queen we need to constantly appease.
