Key Points and Summary – Canada’s fighter debate is back at a boil. Ottawa legally committed to an initial 16 F-35As, but is now reviewing whether to continue with the full plan to replace the CF-18 fleet.
-The stakes are simple: NORAD and Arctic defense, NATO credibility, and an aging Hornet force stretched by pilot shortages and maintenance delays.
-Supporters argue the F-35 is the only option that fits Canada’s alliances and geography; skeptics cite cost growth, infrastructure slips, and industrial dependence.
-With the CF-18s approaching their practical limits and first F-35 deliveries slated to begin mid-decade, Canada’s choice is less about preferences than deadlines.
-The mistake: a call on the F-35 should never have taken so many years, with constant back and forth on a decision. Now, the heat is on.
Canada’s F-35 Moment: Replace The CF-18s Or Drift Into A Capability Gap
Canada’s fighter problem isn’t abstract—it’s arithmetic. The CF-18 Hornet fleet was designed for another era, then modernized repeatedly to keep pace with NORAD alert requirements, NATO missions, and a homeland defense geography that stretches from the Arctic archipelago to the Pacific and Atlantic approaches.
Canada’s Air Force has squeezed every ounce from the jets through avionics upgrades, structural life-extensions, and smarter maintenance.
But even good engineering can’t beat the calendar. The longer Canada waits, the more the availability math narrows: fewer airframes on the line, more cannibalization, more training shortfalls, and harder choices about which commitments to meet.
Two pressures sharpen the timeline. First, NORAD increasingly depends on stealth-era sensors and tactics to track cruise missiles, hypersonic threats, and low-observable aircraft across the Arctic. Intercepting those threats isn’t the same job the CF-18 was built to do. Second, NATO expects real contributions from allies with advanced economies, especially in air policing, air defense, and strike. An aging fleet held together by ingenuity can fly sovereignty patrols; it won’t sustain the sorties a crisis would demand.
How We Got Here on Canada’s F-35: A Decade Of Whiplash
If the saga feels endless, that’s because it is.
A U.S. Air Force F-35A Lightning II participating in NATO exercise Ramstein Flag 24 flies over the west coast of Greece, Oct. 4, 2024. Over 130 fighter and enabler aircraft from Greece, Canada, France, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom and United States are training side by side to improve tactics and foster more robust integration, demonstrating NATO’s resolve, commitment and ability to deter potential adversaries and defend the Alliance. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Emili Koonce)
Canada flirted with the F-35 years ago, then paused, reopened the competition, and ultimately selected it again—formally committing funding to the first 16 aircraft and laying out a plan to build to a larger fleet over the coming decade.
Then politics and procurement realities re-entered the room: cost escalations tied to exchange rates and facilities; schedule friction on base infrastructure; and broader anxieties about dependence on U.S. suppliers at a moment of choppy bilateral trade.
This is the paradox Canadian governments keep running into: the more Ottawa seeks to de-risk a big buy with new reviews and consultations, the more time risk accumulates on the operational side.
The CF-18s don’t get younger while committees meet. And every extra year of bridging investments into the legacy fleet is a year of money not going into the next one.
Why The F-35 Keeps Winning—On Paper And In The Air
Forget the marketing and look at the map. Canada’s defense is distance: massive intercept lanes, sparse basing, and winter darkness over ice and water. In that world, the traits that actually matter are survivability, sensors, networking, and sustainment at scale with allies.
The F-35’s value proposition is not a top-speed number—it’s the ability to see first, share first, and shoot first inside a coalition that already flies thousands of the same jets. Its sensor fusion, data links, and mission-data ecosystem were designed for NORAD and NATO interoperability from the beginning. It can work seamlessly with U.S. AWACS and tankers, plug into Arctic air defense networks, and carry the weapons common across allied inventories.
Canada Air Force CF-18. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Just as important, Canada’s industrial base already participates in F-35 supply chains; walking away would sacrifice years of accumulated workshare without an obvious replacement.
What’s Driving The Latest Review—And Why Skeptics Aren’t Crazy
Canada’s current review isn’t happening in a vacuum. Three worries keep surfacing:
Topline Costs And Infrastructure. A fighter is more than an airframe. Hardened shelters, simulators, secure IT, and environmental controls for low-observable maintenance all carry price tags. When exchange rates swing and construction slips, the budget looks worse than the headline aircraft price suggests.
Personnel And Readiness. A pilot and technician shortage strains the CF-18 today. Transitioning to F-35 training pipelines while keeping NORAD alert lines covered will require careful sequencing—and money up front to avoid a dip in output.
Industrial Dependence. The fear is simple: what happens if trade or politics sour at exactly the wrong moment? Critics argue for “diversifying” the fleet with non-U.S. jets. That sounds attractive until you cost out parallel training, spares, mission data, weapons, and the operational penalties of mixed fleets.
These aren’t trivial issues. They’re the issues you’d expect in any serious recapitalization. The question is whether they justify re-opening a decision that, realistically, will not yield a better military outcome on Canada’s timelines.
The CF-18 Squeeze: Life-Extension Has Limits
The Hornet Extension work has been prudent: avionics improvements, structural life added, and better sensors to wring more years from the jets. Even so, official planning has always treated the CF-18 as a bridge, not a destination—aiming to keep the fleet credible until the F-35A becomes operational. The catch is that life-extension curves are nonlinear: performance and reliability degrade faster near the end. Training risk grows as jets spend more time in heavy maintenance. And every year you stretch the Hornet, you accept more capability debt in the missions Canada actually needs to perform with allies.
Arctic Reality Check: Why Geography Favors Stealth
There’s a reason NORAD modernization plans and allied fighter choices converge around fifth-generation capabilities. The Arctic is empty—until it isn’t. Cruise missiles and long-range aircraft don’t announce themselves, and they don’t fly predictable routes in good weather during daylight hours. The best answer is a fighter that can find things, fuse inputs from other sensors, and survive inside modern air defenses if a crisis expands. That’s the F-35’s wheelhouse. Alternatives can fly the same range rings, but they won’t bring the same sensor-to-shooter network or the coalition depth Canada will depend on in any real emergency.
Could Ottawa Split The Buy? The Costs Of “Compromise”
One idea pops up in every round of this debate: take the first 16 F-35s to hedge the near term, then split the remainder among European types to spread risk and woo industrial offsets. Politically, that checks boxes. Operationally, it creates headaches Canada will live with for decades: two (or three) training pipelines, different weapons and mission-data ecosystems, separate sustainment chains, and fewer economies of scale on either fleet. In peacetime, that’s inefficient. In wartime, it’s a coordination tax—the opposite of what a binational air defense command like NORAD is built for.
What “Cancel” Would Really Mean
Canada could, in theory, walk away after its initial commitment. But canceling or freezing the rest of the buy would have consequences:
Capability Gap Risk. The CF-18 fleet would have to soldier on past the planned horizon with rising costs and falling readiness. At some point, numbers talk, and the math will force mission triage.
Alliance Signaling. Allies have long memories. A reversal would land badly with the United States inside NORAD and with NATO partners who have also shouldered the integration costs of the F-35 era. Washington could even retaliate in some way, considering tariff tensions.
Industrial Backlash. Canadian firms tied into the F-35 supply chain would see workshare jeopardized, with uncertain replacement opportunities on short notice.
No Free Lunch Elsewhere. Switching platforms won’t make the hard parts disappear. Any alternative would still need secure facilities, trained crews, weapons integration, mission-data reprogramming, and years of tactics development.
The Case For Committing—With Conditions
There’s a middle path between blind commitment and endless review: commit with hard milestones. Ottawa can—and should—tie further authorizations to specific deliverables:
Infrastructure On Schedule. Get basing and LO-maintenance facilities locked to real dates and hold contractors accountable.
People First. Expand pilot and maintainer pipelines early, with bonuses and retention tools sized for the F-35 transition.
Transparent Costs. Publish a living through-life cost range that captures currency risk and facilities, not just airframe prices, so Parliament and the public can see the whole iceberg.
Industrial Return. Secure, and publicize, Canadian workshare and tech-transfer wins that outlast a single government.
None of this is radical. It’s how you run a modern defense program when you’ve run out of runway on the old fleet.
Bottom Line: The Clock, Not The Politics, Should Decide
Canada’s fighter recapitalization has spun in circles for a decade because arguments about politics and optics kept outrunning arguments about geography and missions. The CF-18s gave the country far more than was asked of them; they can’t do it forever.
The F-35 is not cheap, and the transition won’t be painless—but it is the aircraft that best fits NORAD’s demands, NATO’s expectations, and the Arctic reality Canada lives with every day.
If Ottawa wants options in 2030, it has to make hard decisions in 2025. The real choice is simple: commit and manage the risks of moving forward, or delay and accept the risks of flying a legacy fleet into a future it wasn’t built to meet. One path is messy; the other is dangerous. Canada should choose the messy one. And, yes, that means the F-35 is Canada’s best option. Now get on with it.
About the Author: Harry J. Kazianis
Harry J. Kazianis (@Grecianformula) is Editor-In-Chief and President of National Security Journal. He was the former Senior Director of National Security Affairs at the Center for the National Interest (CFTNI), a foreign policy think tank founded by Richard Nixon based in Washington, DC. Harry has over a decade of experience in think tanks and national security publishing. His ideas have been published in the NY Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and many other outlets worldwide. He has held positions at CSIS, the Heritage Foundation, the University of Nottingham, and several other institutions related to national security research and studies. He is the former Executive Editor of the National Interest and the Diplomat. He holds a Master’s degree focusing on international affairs from Harvard University.
More Military
The U.S. Army’s Big Strategic Long Range Cannon (1,150 Mile Range) Mistake Still Stings
The F-4 Phantom II Has a Message for the U.S. Military
The Iowa-Class Battleships Have a Message for the U.S. Navy
Russia’s Kirov-Class Battlecruisers Have a Message for the U.S. Navy
Russia’s PAK DA Stealth Bomber Has a Message for the U.S. Air Force
Chris Tyler
September 21, 2025 at 2:09 pm
You’re right that “Allies have long memories”. Canada had seen a major political betrayal and threat of annexation that will not be soon forgotten. Buying into a platform with an dangerously unreliable and unpredictable partner that controls all the IP and owns all the spare part inventory regardless of location seems untenable. Add to this the absolutely massive and unending cost overruns and the infrastructure requirements and it looks like taking the last available exit ramp might actually be the right decision.
Kurt Walchyshyn
September 22, 2025 at 9:19 am
Regardless of the political awkwardness of our relationship with the current US administration, the mission requirements of NORAD and NATO will not be trivialized. People forget that the US WANTS NATO allies to be available, capable and current with their military obligations. Even now. Making parts and servicing of the F-35 contingent on capricious political interactions is counter-productive to the US administration’s mandate on these two files. The argument that the US would actively hamstring an ally to manipulate it politically is ridiculous and naïve. It doesn’t and has never worked that way. It never will. The US administration ALWAYS supports it’s military industrial complex. Time is up. We MUST have the F-35. There is no substitute to it, and being emotionally affronted and righteously indignant will never change that. The only way getting the JS9s makes any sense is as a stripped-down trainer and aerobatic platform to replace the dangwrpusly antiquated Tudors the Snowbirds currently fly.
Ron Fischer
September 22, 2025 at 4:21 pm
Ahh the same old argument, you so simply have to buy the US jet because it’s so much better than anything else….
Poppycock, the Gripen also has sensor fusion, it has better radar then F-35, and doesn’t crash in the arctic cold like F-35. Gripen is fully NATO compliant and currently used by several NATO militaries. Gripen is an excellent aircraft that has notched several F-35 kills
In exercises, we don’t need a jet where the USA holds all the strings for the next 30 years.
philip darcy street
September 22, 2025 at 10:46 pm
Mixed aircraft fleet USA government statics show for the last few years only 50 to 55% of F35 planes are at anytime fully mission ready to fly while Gripen, is 80 to 85% mission ready to fly and has a faster turn around. Brittan won the air battle with Germany because they could turn around the significantly smaller number of planes in a few hours. The planes were also dispersed. Having the F35 in 2 air bases is remnant of the 6 day war Israel fought were they destroyed all the planes in a few days. Gripens can be dispersed fly more often, available more often giving air time to train and fly. Mixed fleet buy 32 F35 planes and 68 Gripen E/F planes, each flight wing is generally 4 planes one plane is F35 3 others, Gripen E/F based percentage of planes with mission ready you can 19 flight wings. Gripens can be dispersed and fly up to meet the F35. Dispersed Gripens can add a layer of base protection to F35 2 main bases BUT not be stationed at F35 BASES necessarily. BRITAN dispersed the planes and squardrons meet in the air to form wings. If we do not learn from history we are doomed to repeat it.
H Burnham
September 23, 2025 at 8:36 am
So I went through this “article” multiple times, did not see any mention of, “51st State”, “Border is an imaginary line” or “Kill Switch”. You would think any journalism would actually dive into the reasons why there is hesitation. Fact is, the F35 is now Political suicide for a Canadian politician, and that is Trump’s fault.