Canada

Man. This is why I shouldn’t engage in conversations with people on the internet. They think their uninformed ideas had in the moment behind a keyboard are equitable to people who have the head of the program’s business card on their desk.

The F-117 downing in Kosovo was due t mission planning failures. They flew the same routes, repeatedly, so the ground commander would know when and where to switch on radar as they opened their bomb bay doors. If you fly the same path at the same times you are going to get shot down when employing munitions. They also did have a very hard time defeating their effectiveness as it was the sole shoot down of the campaign in what was one of the most contested SAM airspace’s of the modern era.

That addressed, the technology in the have blue program is 20 years behind what originated the F-35 program. I have EOTS “glass” on my book shelf. I have written chapters of books on the plane, and had my hands inside the airframe. Believe me, it is not sensical to compare these things, nor does any knowledge of previous generations help you defeat it in the air.

When the US went to red flag the first time with F-35s, they scored a kill rate of 145 aircraft to 7 losses. This was with giving the enemy side a respawn protocol where they could fly back to a waypoint and then rejoin the the fight after dying to put further pressure on the F-35 blue team aircraft. It was a one sided slaughterhouse and all 7 kills on the F-45s occurred inside visual range. Literally nothing could beat it in beyond visual range combat.

This is an aircraft that can trap on a carrier deck at night in a storm automatically and did so in 27 repeated landings on a carrier during the program.

It has the most socialites data fusion of anything out there, letting it sort, weight, and analyze tract data from hundreds of sources simultaneously to then present the pilot with a singular picture. It supports complete off bore AICS shots with look through airframe capability, and an optical passive targeted suite that lets it detect adversary aircraft by the heat friction on their wings up to 35 miles away without radiating any energy limits own.

The radar when turned on can act as its own electronic warfare suite jamming, searching, and targeting hundreds of assets at once in both air and ground search. A ground based radar or AWACS, local other fighters, and even satellites can link to its sensor fusion package that automatically evaluates each piece of data to decide which is most correct to unify that display to the pilot without any pilot workload. This means you go from track to identify to target to shoot far faster than any other cockpit.

The F-35 even supports towed decoys to mimic a phantom airframe and lure missiles that do manage to target it. It is the single most advanced weapon to exist to date and the stealth piece of the puzzle is not its primary selling point.

It will see you, and shoot you down, before you can get a target lock on the airframe. By the time you detect it on search band radar you will be evading incoming missiles and it has already notched out of the fight and range of your missiles.

I cannot begin to illustrate how dominate the platform truly is in a short social media post.

All that however is irrelevant to the MISSION the Canadians need their air frame to fly. The budget point doesn’t justify the purchase for their lack of need of those features and being in bed with a bad actor government makes it worse.

As for utilization rate, during the above red flag exercise the airframes were at 90%.

The current CF-18s flown by Canada are at a 40% utilization rate and F-35As across the Air Force have a 48-55% utilization rate for single mission flight. Much of the limitations there are from the technology refresh 3 and 4 parts availability and service validation ongoing for retrofitting the older airframes to the TR3 and 4 hardware.

I will close by saying the Gripen is the best choice for Canada’s needs and budget and current geopolitical position, but comments like yours remind me how far remove most people behind a keyboard are from the aircraft.