From Greta to Gripen, Swedish exports are junk

Sweden’s exports are really hit and miss. Greta Thunberg? Not so great. Zyns? Absolutely amazing. The Gripen? A disaster in the making.

An F-35 Lightning II, marked AA-1, takes off Oct. 23 at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. The F-35 Integrated Test Force staff concluded an air-start test. (Wikimedia Commons)

Sweden’s exports are really hit and miss. Greta Thunberg? Not so great. Zyns? Absolutely amazing. The Gripen? A disaster in the making. And now, in what looks like pure “Elbows Up” political theatre, Prime Minister Mark Carney seems ready to drag Canada into a fighter-jet nightmare, apparently more interested in scoring points against Donald Trump than securing our national defence.

A spotty record like that is the last thing you want in a fighter jet program, where reliability is life and death and any failure can cost a Canadian pilot their lives.

For years, dating back to 2015, then-Liberal leader Justin Trudeau campaigned on not buying the Lockheed Martin F-35, calling it too expensive. After winning the election, his government ignored the fighter replacement question for over five years, leaving the military in limbo, until finally signing an agreement in 2023 to purchase 88 aircraft, with the first tranche of 16 formally committed.

For all intents and purposes, this was settled. But earlier in 2025, following trade tensions with the United States and the election of Mark Carney as Prime Minister, Ottawa suddenly announced that it was no longer ruling out buying fighters from other countries, flirting with a move that could betray our closest ally, undermine our defence industry, and cost Canadian taxpayers billions in penalties. All, apparently, in the name of political branding and “Elbows Up” posturing.

SAAB has claimed it would build the JAS-39E Gripen in Canada, creating up to 10,000 jobs. But a deal of that scale would take months to negotiate, years to construct new facilities, and require enormous time to hire and train qualified staff. More importantly, Canada cannot afford to operate two different frontline combat aircraft at the same time. We have not done so since 1995, when the CF-5 was retired. Analysts in both Canadian Defence Review and The War Zone have pointed out that abandoning or splitting the F-35 fleet would be astronomically expensive. Two fleets mean different hangars, different maintenance systems, different engines, different weapons, and different training pipelines, essentially doubling the cost for a country that already struggles to meet NATO’s basic spending commitments.

Even the Gripen E is not the “independent alternative” some claim. It uses an American engine, the General Electric F414G, which means Canadian dependence on U.S. defence supply chains would continue anyway. Worse, the Gripen E barely exists in meaningful numbers. Sweden only accepted its first production aircraft recently, and Brazil, despite building a local assembly line in 2022, has yet to receive a single locally produced jet. SAAB itself admits that only about 200 employees are directly involved in Gripen production in Brazil, making Ottawa’s 10,000-jobs promise look more like political theatre than serious policy.

Meanwhile, the Russia-Ukraine war has provided a brutal real-world demonstration of why Canada must commit to a fifth-generation fighter. Russia’s use of the long-range R-37M air to air missile, fired from MiG-31s and Su-35S fighters, has allowed it to destroy Ukrainian aircraft from distances exceeding 200km. Ukraine has acknowledged multiple losses to such attacks. A non-stealth aircraft like the Gripen E, even with strong electronic warfare systems, would still appear clearly enough on radar for Russian fighters and SAM systems to secure the “first shot.” In modern air combat against peer adversaries, where detection equals death, stealth is not a luxury. It is survival.

By contrast, Canada has been involved in the F-35 program since 1997. Our aerospace industry has already secured up to 3,300 Canadian jobs tied to production and sustainment. This is not a hypothetical promise, it is a real, functioning industrial ecosystem that Canada helped build. Risking those jobs by tearing up the deal and reducing the order would undermine years of work and damage our reputation with allies who expect Canada to honour long-term defence commitments. Denmark, Sweden’s neighbor, for example, had its own public clash with the United States over Greenland, but still went ahead and ordered 16 more F-35s because defence decisions are too important to base on temporary political grievances.

As former RCAF General and Chief of the Defence Staff under Harper Tom Lawson put it, “there is simply nothing available in the free world that comes close to the quality of the F-35.” He is right. The aircraft has already proven itself in operations across multiple theatres, including recent Israeli strikes that penetrated Iranian air-defence networks, some of the hardest targets on Earth, essentially unopposed.

The Gripen, by comparison, has a minimal combat record and no proven ability to survive or suppress modern integrated air-defence systems. The cost gap between Gripen E and the F-35 has narrowed considerably, but once existing weapons integration, training, upgrades, and long-term sustainment are included, the F-35 remains the only aircraft capable of meeting Canada’s strategic needs for the next 40 years. Finland, Sweden’s other neighbor, 4 years ago evaluated the Gripen E against the F-35, and the F-35 won by a significant margin due to it having superior sensors and other unique features.

Finally, cancelling the F-35 purchase now would carry enormous economic and diplomatic risks. It would almost certainly provoke retaliation from an already mostly hostile U.S. administration, risk a trade backlash, destabilize our floundering defence industrial base, and push Canada closer toward recession. No responsible government should gamble our national economy and national security on an unproven aircraft with a small user base.

Canada’s defence decisions must be guided by the men and women who will fly these jets into harm’s way, not by political vanity projects, regional job-creation pitches, or opportunistic messaging. Choosing anything other than the F-35 at this stage would be a step backward for Canada’s sovereignty, its allies, and its safety.

If Canada is serious about defending its skies, standing with its allies, and protecting its citizens, then the F-35 is not merely the best choice. It is the only choice. Hit or miss may work for Swedish exports. It has no place in Canada’s national defence.