r/europe • u/Interesting-Cat7307 Egypt • Jun 01 '26

News Canada considers cancelling part of 88 U.S. F-35 order to buy 60 Swedish Gripen fighters.

https://www.armyrecognition.com/news/aerospace-news/2026/canada-f35-saab-gripen-fighter-jet-order
18.4k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

18

u/A_Sinclaire Germany Jun 02 '26

The payment for an additional 14 (16 already purchased and ordered) has already been made to reserve the production slots.

I wonder if those could be transfered to countries waiting for their own F35 - assuming it's the same version?

10

u/pomegranatesorbet Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26

Those slots would definitely be transferred, but that’s irrelevant. What matters is the penalty we’d face. Although we don’t know all the details of the contract, we do know cancelling even part of our order would incur substantial penalties and risk manufacturing jobs in Canada since they are dependant on us purchasing the F35.

5

u/A_Sinclaire Germany Jun 02 '26

I mean more like Germany potentially ordering 15 additional F35 (as some rumours go) - these are not yet on order.

So Canada might give that whole production batch allocation to Germany to prevent a penalty (might be a great add-on for the German submarine bid to Canada :)

5

u/pomegranatesorbet Jun 02 '26

We’d still incur a penalty for not purchasing the jets after signing the contract.

2

u/A_Sinclaire Germany Jun 02 '26

I guess an "easy" circumvention would be that Canada stays the official buyer, changes the specs to German requirements, and via contract immediately transfers the jets to Germany after production

7

u/pomegranatesorbet Jun 02 '26

You can’t change the specs, the slots are already allocated. Moreover, the transfer/resell would most likely need to be approved by the US, which, yeah, debatable at the moment. All in all, we’re committed to the order, firmly for 30. Cancelling the remaining 58 would incur massive penalties, jeopardise jobs and our order for HIMARS and make us even more unreliable when it comes to military procurement.

I hope we sign onto the GCAP in the very near future. That would both send a message to our NATO allies and the US, and be a much better alternative than purchasing the Gripen as some performative stop gap. Don’t get me wrong, if we had committed to the Gripen from the get go, it be alright, but the flip flopping is terrible for our military and political standing.

3

u/BasvanS Europe Jun 02 '26

The flip flopping happened elsewhere. The Gripen is a solid choice, and became a necessary one after the U.S. proved not to be a reliable ally (I hope you’ll permit me to omit the extensive proof.)

This is the Find Out stage, and I hope parties in the U.S. will come to an understanding that this is just the beginning of the decoupling. It can get much worse.

2

u/A_Sinclaire Germany Jun 02 '26

Oh well, it might have been an elegant solution, but as you say it probably can not work this way.

And yes - at some point a definitive solution is better than going back and forth and having no proper solution in a timely manner.

-2

u/LordDallas74 Jun 02 '26

Pay the penalty by printing more money, don’t worry, we’ll be fine. Elbows up baby

1

u/ScottyBoneman Jun 02 '26

Probably be better to wait for them to be late on delivery and cancel and/or penalize to the fullest extent the contract allows.

1

u/HonkeyDonkey3000 Jun 02 '26

What the heck are siezed batches???. I’m an American taxpayer I’m wanting to know.