By Tim Ryan
Canada’s planned purchase of the Lockheed Martin stealth fighter jet, the F-35, could be headed for some turbulence.
Questions are being asked around official Ottawa about why Canadian taxpayers should spend $19 billion on a product from a country whose president has threatened to economically destroy Canada and then annex it as the 51st state.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats against Canada has also prompted some observers to suggest the Canadian government dump the F-35 and purchase the Saab Gripen. In the fighter jet competition that Canada held several years ago, the Gripen scored higher points when it came to industrial benefits for domestic industry. The Gripen also scored higher than the F-35 in long-term maintenance costs.
But Royal Canadian Air Force leaders had wanted the F-35 since the aircraft was first developed and their view prevailed.
Now with the U.S. becoming the main threat to Canada’s sovereignty, the RCAF support for the F-35 no longer makes sense.
But the F-35 has a bigger nemesis than Canadians angry that their tax dollars are going to a nation clearly interested in damaging, if not destroying, their country.
Trump’s top advisor, Elon Musk, has not hidden his contempt for the F-35. Nor has he shied away from promoting drones as the way of the future for aerial combat.
Here are some of Musk’s digs at the F-35 and fighter jets in general from November, 2024.
“Some US weapons systems are good, albeit overpriced, but please, in the name of all that is holy, let us stop the worst military value for money in history that is the F-35 program!” Musk wrote on X on Nov. 25, 2024. “The F-35 design was broken at the requirements level, because it was required to be too many things to too many people. This made it an expensive & complex jack of all trades, master of none. Success was never in the set of possible outcomes. And manned fighter jets are obsolete in the age of drones anyway. Will just get pilots killed.”
He later posted a photo of a drone swarm, with the following statement: "Meanwhile, some idiots are still building manned fighter jets like the F-35."
Musk is also not a fan of crewed fighter jets in general. This is what he has said: “Crewed fighter jets are an inefficient way to extend the range of missiles or drop bombs. A reusable drone can do so without all the overhead of a human pilot.
And fighter jets will be shot down very quickly if the opposing force has sophisticated SAM or drones, as shown by the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Fighter jets do have the advantage of helping Air Force officers get laid. Drones are much less effective in this regard”
All of this would be easily dismissed if it were not for one thing – Trump has selected Musk to review all Pentagon programs. Trump announced Feb. 7 that Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency team will conduct a major review of Department of Defense spending. "We're going to go through everything,” Trump told reporters.
The Department of Defense, with its budget of more than $800 billion U.S., is the largest department in the American government.
This could mean trouble for the F-35.
As the Ottawa Citizen reported, on Dec. 11, 2024 the New York Post, a Trump-aligned newspaper, published the claim that Trump had told F-35 manufacturer Lockheed Martin he would cancel the fighter jet program. Lockheed Martin responded with a statement that called the article “false reporting and fake news.”
In December 2016 Trump himself took aim at the F-35 in a Tweet: “The F-35 program and cost is out of control,” Trump announced. “Billions of dollars can and will be saved on military (and other) purchases after January 20th.”
The Department of National Defence told the Ottawa Citizen on Feb. 12, 2025 that it was not worried about the future of the F-35 program, despite all the negative views coming from the Trump White House and the president’s top advisor.
The Liberal government announced Jan. 9, 2023 that it will purchase 88 F-35s in a project that will cost $19 billion. National Defence officials also confirmed the full life-cycle cost for the F-35 project would eventually tally $70 billion.
Canada does not expect to receive its first F-35 fighter jet until 2026. Full operational capability for Canada’s F-35s is set for around 2032.
The RCAF has a lot riding on the stealth jet. The Canadian government altered its usual procurement approach for its fighter jet purchase after Trump threatened in 2019 to pull the F-35 from the Canadian competition. Usually, companies bidding on such large Canadian contracts are required to provide specific industrial and technological benefits, with dollar figures, that would be tied to the purchase of a particular piece of military equipment.
That was changed to allow the F-35 to compete.
Musk’s attacks on crewed aircraft has seen some pushback from retired USAF generals. Gen. T. Michael Moseley, the former chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force, wrote in Defense News that contrary to what he labelled as “trendy arguments” the United States still needs advanced bombers and fighters.
He conceded that small drones are changing the state of warfare but also pointed out that, as shown in the Ukraine-Russia conflict, such systems are largely isolated to being effective on tactical ground operations.
“Quadcopters with grenades targeting individual tanks or military personnel may be tactically useful in trench warfare, but they are of little relevance at the operational or strategic level,” Moseley wrote in the Nov. 1, 2024 issue of Defense News.
But Moseley also seems not to fully grasp how the war in Ukraine has unfolded. Drone swarm strikes have largely replaced attacks by manned aircraft. Such attacks have not only proved effective in destroying civilian infrastructure but they have been much less costly in terms of ‘bang for the buck’ on the battlefield. Drones are not only less expensive to produce and operate than manned aircraft, but they are expendable.
