![\"U.S.](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/U.S.-Air-Force-F-35-Fighter-with-Flag.jpg\")
<\/p>\nYes, the rumored split between F-35s and Sweden\u2019s Gripen could be real. Canada may be building a two-fighter air force without ever deciding to build one.<\/p>\n
Ottawa\u2019s review of its planned F-35 purchase is now closing in on a year and a half old, and somewhere in that stretch, the government spent real money on a decision that makes the unanswered question considerably harder to ignore.<\/p>\n
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U.S. Air Force Maj. Sean \u201cRambo\u201d Loughlin, pilot of the F-35A Demonstration Team, performs aerial maneuvers during a performance at Luke Days Airshow at Luke Air Force Base, Arizona, March 20, 2026. The team showcases the capabilities of the Air Force\u2019s premier fifth-generation fighter to inspire current and future generations of Airmen. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Nicholas Rupiper)<\/p>\n
On June 30, Kongsberg announced a 4.7 billion Norwegian kroner contract to arm an undisclosed customer\u2019s F-35s with its Joint Strike Missile<\/a>.<\/p>\n On July 8, at the NATO summit<\/a> in Ankara, Prime Minister Mark Carney confirmed Canada as that customer, in a deal he valued at roughly 800 million Canadian dollars, about 564 million American dollars.<\/p>\n Much of the commentary since has treated the purchase as evidence that a reported split between F-35s and Sweden\u2019s JAS 39 Gripen<\/a> is basically settled.<\/p>\n A Hungarian Air Force JAS-39 Gripen is seen taxiing across the runway after completing a successful training scramble. I think that gets it backward. The purchase doesn\u2019t tell us that Canada is abandoning a two-fighter air force or committing to one.<\/p>\n It tells us something narrower: Ottawa is making real, expensive decisions about what its F-35s will do without ever saying, in public, how many there will be or what job they\u2019d share with a Gripen fleet if one arrives<\/a>.<\/p>\n A Missile Doesn\u2019t Settle the Question It Raises<\/p>\n The weapon itself isn\u2019t complicated. It launches from inside the F-35\u2019s weapons bay, so the jet maintains its stealth signature, and it reaches out roughly 350 kilometers against ships and land targets.<\/p>\n Canada joins Norway, Australia, Japan, Germany, and the United States as buyers, all arming aircraft for serious strike missions<\/a>, not just home-defense scrambles<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Future Fighter Capability Project has included weapons procurement since December 2022<\/a>, when Ottawa approved the F-35 program in full, years before Carney ordered the current review.<\/p>\n JAS 39 Gripen E. Image Credit: Creative Commons.<\/p>\n So the missile contract could just as easily be a program running on rails laid down earlier as a fresh signal about how the review ends. Read it as proof of anything larger, and you\u2019re interpreting tea leaves, not procurement paperwork.<\/p>\n What the purchase does establish is that the F-35s Canada keeps, whatever the eventual number, are meant to do real strike work. That\u2019s a narrower claim than most of the coverage has allowed it to be.<\/p>\n The Version Where None of This Is Strange<\/p>\n None of this rules out a mixed fleet, though, and there\u2019s a coherent theory that makes the purchase look sensible.<\/p>\n Gripens fly the routine missions, sovereignty patrols, and quick-reaction scrambles, while a smaller F-35 force gets held back for missions that actually need stealth and sensor fusion.<\/p>\n Arm that smaller force with a serious stand-off weapon, and you\u2019ve got a defense ministry doing exactly what it should.<\/p>\n Nobody in the Canadian government has said that\u2019s the plan.<\/p>\n Not once, on the record.<\/p>\n \ufeff<\/p>\n The division of labor I just described exists because people outside government, myself included a paragraph ago, have built it to make Ottawa\u2019s disconnected decisions look like they add up to something.<\/p>\n A review that spent months weighing training and maintenance costs against interoperability with U.S. forces almost certainly modeled this internally.<\/p>\n Modeling something and explaining it publicly are different acts, and only the second one is missing.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t the first time Canada has let a fighter decision drag on for years. The last replacement search took the better part of a decade, including a campaign pledge to rule out the F-35 that a later government simply reversed.<\/p>\n Why the Possibility Survives Its Own Best Argument<\/p>\n Canada\u2019s own defense review, reported last August<\/a>, argued strongly against splitting the order, citing the training and maintenance costs of running two fleets and the depth of integration with American forces.<\/p>\n The review stopped short of a formal recommendation, but the internal case it made was blunt.<\/p>\n Independent observers in Ottawa have expected for months that the government will keep the full order once the politics settle, and they may be right.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the strongest objection to everything that follows, and nothing here resolves it outright; it only gets outweighed by politics.<\/p>\n The political pull toward diversification hasn\u2019t disappeared, though.<\/p>\n Carney\u2019s government has spent much of the past year and a half in a trade dispute with Washington, giving it a clear reason to appear to be weaning itself off American suppliers.<\/p>\n Its Defence Industrial Strategy<\/a>, launched in February, names buying Canadian its explicit priority, with a target of awarding 70 percent of defence acquisitions to Canadian firms, backed by hundreds of billions in planned spending.<\/p>\n In May, Carney named Saab the preferred supplier<\/a> for Canada\u2019s future airborne early-warning aircraft, choosing a Swedish company over American alternatives and tying the program to Canadian production<\/a> for Canada and prospective allied orders.<\/p>\n Nothing is signed yet, and Carney said nothing about the fighter question when he made the announcement.<\/p>\n But the diversification instinct just moved from talking points into an actual major aircraft decision, and nothing about that instinct stops at the fighter fleet\u2019s edge.<\/p>\n A Pentagon official\u2019s<\/a> May complaints about this review were about how long it\u2019s taking, not an endorsement of any split, and the 30 F-35, 60 Gripen figure that keeps circulating traces to a single Canadian newspaper<\/a> report from May that neither government has confirmed.<\/p>\n What Washington Should Actually Press For<\/p>\n NORAD modernization, and any serious continental air and missile defense architecture, depends on Canada eventually settling what it intends to build, not just on which aircraft wins.<\/p>\n Ottawa has already committed 38.6 billion dollars<\/a> over twenty years to modernize its side of NORAD, including new radar, infrastructure, and quick-reaction basing sized around a fighter fleet whose final shape is still unresolved.<\/p>\n A fleet built on purpose, whichever aircraft it ends up favoring, at least comes with a rationale attached.<\/p>\n What doesn\u2019t come with one is a fleet assembled by accumulation, with nobody in government ever describing the concept behind it.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the outcome that produces capability gaps nobody planned for.<\/p>\n If Washington wants leverage here, it should press for the explanation rather than the number.<\/p>\n A fight over how many F-35s Canada buys turns this into a trade dispute about whose workers get the contracts.<\/p>\n A demand to know what each aircraft is actually for is harder to dodge, and it\u2019s the question Ottawa has spent seventeen months avoiding.<\/p>\n The Budget, Not the Headlines, Will Answer This<\/p>\n Ottawa\u2019s own defense department has already made the strongest case against a split fleet, and the government has left that case without a public answer for a year.<\/p>\n A live political incentive to diversify, paired with an unresolved objection from inside the department, is enough on its own to explain why the option stays open.<\/p>\n Nobody needs to be scheming for this outcome; it can happen the way most institutional drift happens, through nobody being forced to choose.<\/p>\n The next real signal will come from the budget, not another headline about Gripen or another line from McGuinty.<\/p>\n If money keeps moving into JSM integration and F-35 infrastructure while real money also starts moving toward Gripen production, Ottawa will have built its two-tier air force by budget line rather than by decision.<\/p>\n Someone will eventually have to say whether that was the plan all along or just the shape avoidance left behind.<\/p>\n If one of those funding tracks goes quiet while officials keep calling the review ongoing, the fleet will have answered the question that the government wouldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n About the Author: Dr. Andrew Latham<\/p>\n Andrew Latham<\/a> is a professor of international relations and political theory at Macalester College in Saint Paul, MN. You can follow him on X: @aakatham<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yes, the rumored split between F-35s and Sweden\u2019s Gripen could be real. 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Hungary took command of NATO\u2019s Baltic Air Policing mission in August 2022, deploying JAS-39 Gripen fighter jets to Siauliai Air Base in Lithuania for the third time since 2015. Air Policing is a long-running mission that operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It includes quick reaction fighter aircraft are ready to take off within minutes to intercept any aircraft that may threaten Allied airspace.<\/p>\n![\"JAS](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/JAS-39-Gripen-E.jpg\")
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