There’s something almost poetic about the F-35 debates playing out on opposite sides of the Atlantic. In Canada and the United Kingdom, two of America’s oldest and most deeply integrated allies, the fifth-generation fighter jet has become less a question of capability than of national identity—and an excuse to avoid the challenging work of actually thinking strategically. The common thread? Neither country seems to know what it wants its armed forces to do. Both cling to delusions of sovereignty while outsourcing tough decisions to budget cycles, procurement lobbies, and political mood swings.
Let’s start with Canada, which never fails to surprise when it comes to defense confusion. After years of political posturing, Ottawa finally committed in 2023 to buying 88 F-35s at a cost of C$19 billion. It was supposed to be a definitive step—a recognition that Canada needed to modernize its air force in a world of resurging great power rivalry. That should have settled things.
But this is Canada, and nothing is ever settled when it comes to defense. Just last month, Defense Minister Bill Blair floated the idea of “reconsidering” the purchase. Not because the aircraft suddenly doesn’t meet requirements. Not because new technology has emerged. No—because Donald Trump is back in the White House.
Apparently, a few Trumpian broadsides about tariffs and annexation have prompted Canadian officials to wonder if buying American-made jets puts national sovereignty at risk. Never mind that the Royal Canadian Air Force has operated American aircraft for generations. Never mind the deep integration of U.S.-Canadian defense infrastructure through NORAD and NATO. Suddenly, the F-35 is being cast as a threat to independence. In its place? The Saab Gripen, now rebranded as the geopolitically “clean” alternative.
Let’s be clear: this is a fantasy. The Gripen runs on the General Electric F414 engine—an American-made system subject to U.S. export controls under ITAR. That means Canada would still be dependent on Washington for spare parts, software updates, and re-export approval. If Ottawa thinks this offers strategic independence, it’s either being misled or it’s misleading the public.
And yet the Gripen proposal persists, marketed as the nationalist alternative to the big bad American jet. This isn’t strategy—it’s theatre. The entire debate reveals just how disconnected Canadian defense planning has become from the real world. The government doesn’t seem to know what kind of air force it needs because it hasn’t answered the underlying question: what role does Canada want to play in the world?
Here’s the geopolitical reality: Canada sits astride three critical theaters—the Arctic, the North Atlantic, and the North Pacific. These regions are becoming more contested, not less. Whether it’s Russian Arctic activity, Chinese naval expansion in the Pacific, or North Atlantic anti-submarine warfare, Canada cannot duck out of great power competition. Its geography makes it a frontline state. And yet its defense discourse remains parochial, reactive, and strategically unserious.
Now look across the Atlantic. Britain, unlike Canada, was an early and enthusiastic partner in the F-35 program. It designed its new Queen Elizabeth-class carriers specifically around the STOVL F-35B variant. It has integrated the aircraft into both Royal Navy and RAF operations. British industry—particularly BAE Systems—has profited enormously, producing key components for every F-35 built. And yet, somehow, the UK debate is also spiraling into confusion.
The problem in Britain isn’t buyer’s remorse. It’s buyer’s incoherence. The government has promised to boost defense spending to 3% of GDP by 2027, but it hasn’t explained how that money will be spent—or why. The defense establishment is being pulled in multiple directions: maintain the F-35 program, extend the life of the Typhoon, and develop the next-gen Tempest fighter. But without a clear vision of Britain’s strategic priorities, the airpower debate has devolved into a squabble over industrial jobs and defense contracts.
Critics on the left call the F-35 an overpriced American import that undermines British defense sovereignty. On the right, Tempest is pitched as a techno-nationalist moonshot—proof that post-Brexit Britain can still lead in military innovation. But no one seems to be asking the basic question: what is the UK trying to achieve militarily? What role does it see for itself in a multipolar world?
Britain, like Canada, is clinging to legacy roles—global Britain, peacekeeping Canada—while the world moves on. It wants to be seen as a serious player, but it won’t make serious choices. Carrier strike without enough jets. Commitments to Indo-Pacific patrols without the logistical lift to sustain them. Fighter development programs that duplicate allies’ efforts without adding new capabilities. None of this is grand strategy. It’s nostalgic delusion.
And this gets to the heart of the matter. The F-35 debate in both countries is a symptom, not the disease. The real problem is the total absence of grand strategy—a clear alignment of ends, ways, and means. The military is treated like a domestic jobs program or a prop in sovereignty pantomimes. Procurement becomes a form of national branding rather than a sober analysis of what capabilities are needed, against what threats, and in what time frame.
This lack of seriousness is becoming dangerous. The F-35 is not a perfect aircraft. It’s expensive. Sustainment remains a headache. Operational sovereignty is still tied up in American software black boxes. But it is also the only fifth-generation fighter available at scale, interoperable with NATO, and proven in operational theaters. If you need to fight—and both Canada and Britain may—you want it in your inventory.
The temptation in both Ottawa and London is to use the F-35 as a foil for larger frustrations: frustration with U.S. unpredictability, frustration with industrial decline, frustration with alliance politics. But these frustrations are not strategies. The job of a state is to think geopolitically, not emotionally. And geopolitics today demands air superiority, alliance integration, and deterrence credibility. The F-35, for all its flaws, helps provide that.
What neither country can afford is another decade of indecision dressed up as principle. Gripen isn’t a strategy. Tempest isn’t a strategy. “Sovereignty” isn’t a strategy. Grand strategy is hard. It means making trade-offs, accepting limits, and thinking in decades rather than news cycles. That’s precisely what’s missing in both capitals.
Here’s the bitter truth: if Canada and Britain don’t figure out what they are and what they’re for—militarily, geopolitically, civilizationally—then no fighter jet will save them. Not the F-35, not the Gripen, not some future paper airplane called Tempest. Procurement without strategy is just a very expensive form of denial.
And in this world, denial is not a viable defense posture.
Andrew Latham, Ph.D., a tenured professor at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He is also a Senior Washington Fellow with the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy in Ottawa and a non-resident fellow with Defense Priorities, a think tank in Washington, DC. This first appeared in RealClearDefense.
