NDP wants Carney to kill U.S. fighter jet contract in favour of Swedish aircraft

The US is no longer a reliable partner. With everything they’ve done over the last year why should we trust them with this deal? That they won’t change it or put restrictions, or exit tariffs on any of this? How do we know there won’t be spyware in the jets operating system, or a kill switch, or an override routine?

Choose the vendor who is willing to work with us. Saab is willing to give us the source code for the jets operating system. They’re willing to manufacture the jets in Canada.

The US will keep their operating system and be able to modify it with impunity. ‘Did your plane fall out of the sky? Our bad. Our latest patch had a bug and we didn’t find it until it was too late.’

“This is not just a fictional fear. Donald Trump did this to Ukraine. He threatened to withhold, and did withhold, parts to the F-16 fighter jet radar and left the Ukrainian Air Force in a lurch,” he said.

Yup.

Trump is loosely adopting the subscription model. Agree to the new TOS or have services withheld. On top of F-35s being far too costly than the USAF had ever wanted, as a JSF it’s a confusing jack-of-all trades; master of none, and so there’s obviously much more sensible options elsewhere.

When the end goal here is national defence, one needs to consider how it will be ultimately impacted by entering into a “deal” with the current USA. It’s entirely expected nations will browse on by and shop elsewhere

So do I!

I will support any move that takes money out of the US economy.

I assume he’s not committing to it either way until CUSMA is renegotiated. It’s probably a bargaining chip. On principal I do agree that we should scrap the entire F-35 contract in favour of Gripens though.

If john deere can brick tractors that Russians stole I bet these jets could be grounded without a boubt

So do most of the Canadian citizens but, regardless of the national temperature, we’re still heavily tied into the uber-complicated economic and cultural relationship we have with a superpower that is now a dying beast.

Realistically speaking:

• US fighters: stealthy, cost like hell, require good airfields and fancy maintenance (US assistance)
• Swedish fighters: cheaper, not stealthy, but fire missiles that hit halfway across a state, land on straight roads, low maintenance

If the buyer is Canada and their threat model involves Trump wanting to attack them, it’s a foregone conclusion. Get Gripen, equip with Meteor, get ready to kill some tasty AWACS.

As an American that’s certainly what I’d do

It would be the prudent thing to do. Regardless of whether there is an actual killswitch, the logistics chain is too big an issue if the USA decides to follow through with being a fuckwit against Canada.

For the long term, I guess the question for Euro-NATO would be: “Do we make our own JSF program, or should we have a bunch of specialized aircraft?”

I appreciate them saying this but NFP need to get their own house in order.

In my country, the local air force would prefer the Gripen because it’s cheaper to keep them flying.

NDP *and anyone with a brain