{"id":299606,"date":"2025-11-22T12:31:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T12:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/299606\/"},"modified":"2025-11-22T12:31:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T12:31:08","slug":"sweden-offers-canada-a-chance-to-revive-its-near-dead-defence-aerospace-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/299606\/","title":{"rendered":"Sweden offers Canada a chance to revive its near-dead defence aerospace industry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Mikael Olsson, a Gripen test pilot, in front of a JAS 39 Gripen E in Lindkoping, Sweden, last week.Felix Odell\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

Every so often, the economic stars align to allow a country to create a new industry, or put an ambitious new spin on an old one, that tilts the jobs, innovation and wealth curves in an upward direction. <\/p>\n

For a brief, shining moment about 20 years ago, for instance, Finland\u2019s Nokia and Canada\u2019s BlackBerry came to own the mobile phone market. AI<\/a> is now propelling the U.S. economy.<\/p>\n

Today, the stars are aligning for Canada, which has been offered a rare opportunity to relaunch its once-vast, now virtually moribund, defence aerospace industry by an unlikely agent of change, Sweden<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Will Canada take it? The fear and loathing relationship between Ottawa and Washington certainly makes any decision fraught. It\u2019s entirely possible that, to avoid triggering another tantrum from U.S. President Donald Trump<\/a>, Prime Minister Mark Carney will take a pass. <\/p>\n

Opinion: The idea of a mixed fleet of Canadian fighter jets should not take flight<\/a><\/p>\n

Sweden\u2019s population is one-quarter that of Canada\u2019s, but the Scandinavian country excels in some advanced products, especially military flying machines. The Gripen fighter jet and the GlobalEye early-warning surveillance aircraft, both made by Saab, are considered globally competitive.<\/p>\n

Sweden has pitched the idea<\/a> of making both planes in Canada, since Saab\u2019s own factories lack the capacity to pump out either product in significant numbers as the order books fill up. Saab says that building the Gripen in Canada would create 10,000 jobs and that building the entire GlobalEye, which is based on the Canadian-made Bombardier 6500-series business jet, in Canada would create 3,000 jobs (the GlobalEye\u2019s radar, sensors and other military gear are currently installed in Sweden). <\/p>\n

Even if the jobs generated are half of what the company claims, the tally would be significant at a time when Mr. Trump\u2019s tariffs<\/a> are draining the Canadian auto, steel and aluminum industries of jobs. <\/p>\n

Sweden ramped up its offer this week, when King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia visited Canada and signed a strategic partnership between the two countries that includes \u201cbi-lateral co-operation\u201d on defence. At the same time, Saab executives met with Bombardier to discuss forming a joint venture to build the Gripen at a new Bombardier factory. Saab\u2019s offer to transfer the technology to Canada for both jets is contingent on Ottawa buying the planes for the Royal Canadian Air Force. <\/p>\n

For its evident hesitation to hit the \u201cSaab\u201d button, Ottawa can blame its fear of Mr. Trump. He wants Canada to buy American defence goodies, not Swedish. <\/p>\n

Since the start of the Cold War, Canada has relied exclusively on U.S. fighter jets, with the exception of the 1950s-era Avro Canada CF-100 Canuck, the last domestically developed and produced fighter to enter full service with the RCAF. Canada kept the trend intact in 2023, when it agreed to buy 88 Lockheed Martin F-35s for $19-billion. <\/p>\n

Eric Reguly: Canada\u2019s F-35 costs are soaring to crazy levels. Time to bring on the drones instead<\/a><\/p>\n

In March, about the time Mr. Trump began pummelling Canada with tariffs, Mr. Carney had second thoughts<\/a> about the F-35s and \u2013 elbows up \u2013 put the purchase under review, though by then the Department of National Defence had committed to buy 16 of them. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s well known that the DND\u2019s generals and procurement officers prefer the F-35 over the Gripen. Unlike the Gripen, the F-35 is a stealth aircraft and is said to have better \u201cnetworked warfare\u201d capabilities \u2013 the latest IT and AI systems to communicate with scattered air, ground and sea forces to provide an accurate picture of the combat theatre. <\/p>\n

The Gripen\u2019s big weakness is that it\u2019s not a stealth aircraft. But the plane does have advantages. The latest version is reputed to have fine electronic warfare capabilities. It\u2019s designed for harsh weather conditions, can operate from roads, has a quick \u201cturnaround time\u201d \u2013 the time it takes to rearm and refuel the plane in a war \u2013 is far cheaper to buy and operate than the F-35 and, crucially, offers sovereign control over its mission-system software updates. Canada\u2019s F-35s would rely on U.S.-controlled software and data flows, raising the question: Could the Pentagon turn them into hangar queens by denying them software upgrades?<\/p>\n

The Gripen\u2019s main selling point is not the Gripen itself, however; it\u2019s the opportunity to rebuild Canada\u2019s defence aerospace industry and strengthen the country\u2019s sovereignty by running a fleet of made-in-Canada aircraft that do not rely on the U.S. for software upgrades. If Bombardier doesn\u2019t botch its transformation from a civil aerospace company into a defence player, the industrial benefits could extend well beyond manufacturing into research and development. Canada could play a key role in designing the next version of the Gripen or an entirely new aircraft, one with or without pilots. <\/p>\n

With potential U.S. retaliation in mind, Canada could try to hedge its political risks by buying, say, 44 of the 88-plane order of F-35s and 50 to 70 Gripens. Canada\u2019s military chiefs would hate the expense of running a dual-aircraft fleet, and buying only half the F-35 order might still be enough to enrage Mr. Trump. <\/p>\n

But military chiefs are not in charge of industrial policy, and the U.S. President, in theory at least, will be gone by 2029. The Gripens and the GlobalEyes and the Canadian industry that would nurture them would be around for decades, not a few years. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Mikael Olsson, a Gripen test pilot, in front of a JAS 39 Gripen…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299607,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,44,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-299606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-news","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}