The most important question in Canada's fighter jet decision may not be about either fighter jet!
While Ottawa's review of the F-35 purchase drags into its second year, the nature of air combat itself is being rewritten.
In June 2026, the United States Air Force signed its first production contracts for more than 150 AI-piloted "loyal wingman" drones... formally, Collaborative Combat Aircraft... (CCA) built by Anduril and General Atomics at roughly $30 million apiece! (About a third the price of an F-35!)
The stated goal: at least 1,000 semi-autonomous wingmen flying alongside American fighters by the end of the decade.
These are not surveillance drones.
They are uncrewed fighter aircraft, designated in the fighter series for the first time in USAF history... designed to scout ahead of crewed jets, jam radars, carry missiles, and absorb the risks no air force wants to spend a pilot on!
Boeing's Australian-built MQ-28 Ghost Bat made its first static appearance at Farnborough this month.
The United Kingdom already has its first autonomous collaborative platform in RAF service.
Japan, China, Türkiye, and India are all building their own!
Which raises an awkward question for Canada: "We are spending years deciding between two crewed fighters while the rest of the alliance decides how to team crewed fighters with uncrewed ones!"
The answer we choose will quietly determine which AI-wingman ecosystem Canada joins... and on whose terms!
Where the Fighter Decision Stands:
A quick recap for readers just joining this file.
Canada signed for 88 F-35As in January 2023, in a program now costed above $27 billion.
One day after becoming prime minister in March 2025, Mark Carney ordered a review of the purchase... a direct response to American tariff pressure and the broader deterioration in Canada – U.S. trust! (Canada remains legally committed to the first 16 aircraft, with deliveries beginning this year!)
Since then, the options have multiplied.
In January 2026, Saab formally offered Canada 72 Gripen E fighters plus six GlobalEye early-warning aircraft, with Canadian assembly and an estimated 12,600 Canadian jobs attached.
By late May, La Presse reported that a mixed fleet of roughly 30 F-35As and 60 Gripens had emerged as the review's preferred outcome!
A June CBC report described an even larger option: A 140-jet force combining 72–88 F-35As with up to 72 Canadian-built Gripens!
Reporting now suggests no announcement before the U.S. midterm elections in November 2026... "Ottawa apparently prefers not to hand Washington a grievance during an American campaign season!"
The AI Wingman Race Changes the Question:
Here is where the drone story cuts into the fighter story... in both directions!
The case for the F-35 just got stronger!
The American CCA program is years ahead of everyone else's, and the F-35 is being built as its quarterback.
The FQ-42 and FQ-44 drones now entering production are designed to fly alongside F-22s, F-35s, and the future F-47, and the USAF is already exploring foreign military sales of the CCA to allies.
An F-35 fleet gives Canada a plug-and-play path into the most mature drone-teaming ecosystem in existence... no small thing for NORAD, where seamless interoperability with the USAF is the whole point!
But... so did the case for the Gripen!!!
The entire premise of Carney's review is that Canada is dangerously exposed to U.S. - controlled defence supply chains!
If that worries you about a fighter's software, it should worry you twice as much about autonomous combat aircraft whose AI, weapons authorization, and upgrade path all run through Washington!
Saab's counter-offer speaks directly to this anxiety... and it is more credible than most Canadians realize!
In mid-2025, Saab and the German AI firm Helsing flew a Gripen E in Swedish airspace under the control of an AI agent called Centaur, which executed beyond-visual-range combat manoeuvres against a human-piloted Gripen D, tracked targets with onboard sensors, and cued the pilot when to fire.
The system had trained itself through more than 500,000 simulated flight hours. It was a genuine world first for an operational front-line fighter, and it was possible because the Gripen E's software architecture allows new functions to be integrated and re-certified in days rather than years — the exact quality Canada's 2021 evaluation scored at 28 out of 100 for "upgradability." (Flawed!)
Hold that thought!
Saab has also suggested Canada could become a development partner in Sweden's next-generation combat air program, KFS... the program building Sweden's future stealth fighter and its family of wingman drones.
Combined with Canadian Gripen assembly and technology transfer, that is an offer to make Canada a co-developer of the next generation of this technology rather than a customer for the last one!
The honest caveat: Saab's wingman drone does not yet exist!
Its demonstrator will not fly until 2027, an engine supplier has not been secured, and the American designs are already in weapons testing!
SO... The Gripen path buys sovereignty and industrial participation in a future capability... the F-35 path buys access to a present one!
That is the real trade, and no press release from either company will state it that plainly!
The 2021 Evaluation Deserves a Second Look:
Defenders of the original F-35 decision point to the leaked scorecard from the 'Future Fighter Capability Project:' (The F-35 scored 95 percent on military capability... the Gripen E just 33 percent! Case closed for bias... eh?)
When two aircraft with fundamentally different design philosophies produce a result this lopsided... the criteria are doing as much work as the airplanes!
An evaluation that heavily rewards stealth penetration of defended airspace will always crown the only stealth aircraft in the competition.
Whether deep-strike stealth is the right thing to weigh at half the scorecard for a country whose actual daily missions are Arctic sovereignty patrols and NORAD interception over enormous distances is precisely the question the evaluation never had to answer.
Two further facts sharpen the concern!
The Swedish business press has reported, citing confidential sources, that Ottawa applied a risk coefficient that significantly reduced the Gripen's scores simply because it was a new-series aircraft... and National Defence has refused to disclose its methodology, citing procurement integrity!
And two of the competition's European entrants, Dassault and Airbus, withdrew before final scoring as well... with Airbus explicitly arguing the terms favoured the F-35!
None of this proves the Gripen would have won a differently weighted competition! "A department confident in its methodology would publish it... the refusal to do so is the strongest single piece of evidence that the 2021 evaluation answered a narrower question than... What does Canada need?"
What This Decision Is Actually About:
Strip away the horse race and the Carney review comes down to this: "Does Canada want to be a renter in the American air-power system, or a junior partner in building a European one?"
Tenancy has real advantages... the best aircraft, the most mature drone ecosystem, frictionless NORAD integration.
It also has the disadvantage Canadians have spent eighteen months relearning: "The landlord can change the terms... Partnership offers sovereignty, jobs, technology transfer, and a seat at the table for the AI-teaming era!"
And the skeptics deserve the last word on sovereignty's limits: "Geography does not move. Continental air defence, NORAD data-sharing, and wartime coordination will run through Washington regardless of which airframe sits on the ramp at Cold Lake!
The Gripen cannot buy Canada independence from the United States!
What it can buy is leverage, options, and an industrial base... which, in 2026, may be the more honest definition of sovereignty anyway!
The government's own delay tells you it understands the stakes!
A decision that was supposed to take three months is now timed around American elections!
Whatever Ottawa announces after November, remember that the fine print about drones, software, and who controls the upgrades will matter more in 2035... than who's logo is on the tail!
Allan's Canadian Perspective covers Canadian defence procurement, energy policy, and Canada–U.S. strategic dynamics. Previous coverage in this series includes the F-35 review timeline and the Canadian Patrol Submarine Project decision!
.jpg)
