Portugal has also said that it would abandon its purchase of F-35 jets. The stealth fighters were also proposed by Trump to India during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US.
As a full-blown trade war looms with America, Canada seeks to find replacements for the US-built F-35 stealth fighter aircraft, Defence Minister Bill Blair stated. The move, one of the first actions by new Cabinet Prime Minister Mark Carney, comes in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s introduction of a uniform 25% tariff on American goods originating in Canada.
“It was the fighter plane (F-35) our air force designated as the platform on which they needed it, but we are considering other options as well — do we need to have all these fighter planes as F-35,” Blair told CBC. In 2023, following decades of delays, the Canadian government targeted the US F-35 for its military and ordered an $19 billion contract for 88 aircraft with Lockheed Martin in June. The nation, already threatened with an annexation by Trump, already paid for the initial order of 16 planes to be delivered in 2026.
Blair, who kept his defence minister position in the Carney Cabinet, stated that the initial batch of jets could be accepted, and it could consider European manufacturers, including the Swedish-made Saab Gripen, for the remainder.
The Prime Minister asked me to go and look at those things and have some talks with other sources, especially where there are chances of putting together those fighter jets in Canada,” CBC had Blair quote. Maintenance, overhaul and software upgrades of the F-35 jets take place in the US.
Last year, a report by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) flagged rising costs and performance issues with the F-35, hailed as the most advanced and ambitious defence project of the United States
