It has been gratifying to see Canada's political culture actually contest the selection of F-35 over the years, in a way that the political cultures of so many other client states of the American empire have not. But what I don't understand is how Gripen comes to be seen as the leading alternative offering meaningfully greater sovereignty than F-35. The engine is American and Washington can embargo it anytime they feel like it. Either sovereign capability matters, and therefore neither aircraft is acceptable, or it doesn't and F-35 is therefore a fairly strong contender.
Embargo won't switch off the plane(unlike F-35, btw).
I.e. it's a reasonable compromise, which also happens to add significant value to the mix(Hi Lo), as it significantly expands the force for given level of money. And plan A is still fighting with americans anyway.
Canada’s best bet is to shelf the fighter altogether and go asymmetric.
Tbh even if you're going full Iran/Vietnam, it's better to have fighters. Even v US.
The problem isn't that "fighters don't work against US" - they do. They should "just" rely on adequate enough, survivable enough, numerous enough and modern enough system.
Note that in most modern US campaigns, in specific engagements americans didn't necessarily had decisive edge (and in Vietnam, where they did, it wasn't necessarily decisive in their favour, while engaged by aircraft which were...modern, but weren't best available).
What US did have was
some degree of tech edge(usually overestimated into "impossible") and reliably working equipment. Match this - and you can introduce a threat.
For better or worse, Gripen E in the coming ~10 years is a reasonably modern aircraft. Not a F-47, but it's certainly comparable to mig-21PF over Vietnam.
