You've hit the nail on the head here.

I don't know what the right answer is on this one. On balance, I lean towards getting the Gripen as a stopgap and prioritizing access to those European sixth gen projects. Select the one that looks the best suited for our needs and go in hard on collaborating on it.

This is part of why I think the Gripen makes sense; we can build it here, which opens up the possibility of being able to build a sixth gen later, instead of having to wait in line for our order to ship. The F-35 gives us better capabilities now, but doesn't solve the underlying problems down the road.

There is, I think, a version of events where we sign a deal with Saab to build Gripens in Canada to export to buyers like Ukraine, and then go ahead and take the F-35 order anyway. Most likely, we use this to extract concessions in other areas from the Americans, pointing at our new domestic fighter plane industry as a very credible threat to walk away from the F-35 deal. Then, if we're smart about this, we continue to build up our ability to domestically produce fighter craft, with an eye on that sixth gen project. This would make a lot of sense in the context of Carney's stated goal of making Canada a defence supplier to the EU, while still leaving us with an interim platform that can handle anything the Russians throw at us.