Of course they do. They don’t want to be the 51st state of the USA. Chances of that becoming true increase the more they have planes that can be disabled remotely by the imperialistic Trump war machine.

Only 40% of F-35 planes are currently operational during non war times.

Now imagine how difficult it would be to keep this in the air during war when US keeps the parts for their own planes.

Now even further, imagine a world when the US is either a neutral party or an enemy, and zero of those planes are flying.

Interesting. I wonder why they're considering the Gripen instead of the Eurofighter Typhoon (German/British/Italian/Spanish) or Dassault Rafale (French). To be honest I really don't know what the differences would be.

I'm kinda shocked people have strong opinions on fighter planes of all things. I barely know those two models of plane exist. I would answer "don't know".

This is the way! Not as technologically advanced as the F-35, but much better than a switched-off F-35 anyway.

Can't believe 12% chose North Korea

Jets is the least needed thing for a non existant threat

To me it's the fighter jet equivalent of getting a Fairphone vs. iPhone. We won't be beholden to John Ternus and other US administration bootlickers, and in addition we'd have the ability to leverage Canadian expertise to make the Gripen better for all members. Like an iPhone, the F35 probably is a well put-together package, but we pretty much get it as-is with little control over operation and maintenance.

The f35 strikes me as being an impossible wartime asset. It’s tremendously complicated and needs a lot of support. We’re seeing in Ukraine that cheap assets can eliminate very expensive assets pretty easily, and as with previous industrialized wars, the ability to churn out many military assets beats technology.

In the current political climate, no country (except perhaps Israel) should be part of the f35 failure of a program.

Keep in mind that even a US NORAD commander has said that the F-35 is not the best fighter for North American defence.

This jet buying bullshit is porn for boomers.

Me too, ditch the F35

How about ballistic missiles and drones?