In the latest twist in Canada’s long-running saga to field a new fighter, the country’s defense minister has said that Ottawa is “interested in learning more about” the Global Combat Air Program (GCAP) next-generation fighter. GCAP is currently a trinational effort, led by the United Kingdom and involving Italy and Japan. Its centerpiece is the Tempest crewed fighter. A demonstrator for this jet is currently taking shape with BAE Systems in the United Kingdom.
David McGuinty, the Minister of National Defense of Canada, made the remarks after a meeting in Tokyo with his Japanese counterpart, Shinjiro Koizumi. Breaking Defense reports that McGuinty confirmed he had spoken with Koizumi about the GCAP, which the Canadian official described as a “promising initiative.”
“We are interested in learning more about it. I’ll take it back to my team and see what it looks like,” McGuinty told Reuters.
Until now, no senior Canadian official appears to have spoken publicly about interest in GCAP. However, the development comes as Ottawa weighs up the option of a split fighter buy, which would involve acquiring the U.S.-made F-35 and one other type. This thinking has been driven by a growing rift between Ottawa and Washington.
However, the possibility of Canada coming on board GCAP as an ‘observer’ had been raised in March of this year. According to The Asahi Shimbun, a Japanese daily newspaper, unnamed Japanese officials disclosed that, during a previous meeting, McGuinty and Koizumi discussed such an arrangement.
Canada’s joining GCAP with observer status would provide it access to information on the program and could be a stepping-stone to deeper involvement.
Earlier this week, Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto raised the possibility of other nations joining GCAP, noting that, were that to happen, “we would be completely willing, because the more there are, the greater the chances of creating something and bringing down costs.”
Crosetto then identified Canada as “the country most interested [in GCAP] at the moment.” He said he would be “fully open” to Canada joining as an observer.
For Canada, however, GCAP would require a rethink of Canada’s potential pursuit of a split-buy approach to its new fighter.
Until now, the Saab Gripen E had been identified as the most likely candidate to be bought alongside the F-35.
Sweden has made a strong push to sell Gripen to Ottawa, and Saab offered to build the jet in Canada, in an effort to secure support for its previous bid, which it lost to Lockheed Martin. Since then, Saab has also emerged as the preferred candidate to supply Canada with its future airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) via its GlobalEye.
In April of this year, McGuinty confirmed that Ottawa was still reviewing its earlier plan to buy 88 F-35s.
“The review of the purchase of the F-35s is continuing… We are taking the necessary time to study very, very closely the question of the fighter fleet,” McGuinty told the Senate’s defense committee.
The split-buy option emerged since Canada has already made a firm commitment to buy 16 F-35As to start replacing its aging CF-18 Hornets. Canada’s industry also has a significant degree of involvement in the Joint Strike Fighter program.
Canada currently has around 75 CF-18A/B+ jets and has also added 18 upgraded former Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) F/A-18A/Bs, plus seven more as spares, to help bolster its fleet.
Of Canada’s first 16 F-35s, four have already been paid for in full, while parts for eight others have also been purchased. The first Canadian F-35s were expected to be delivered for training at Luke Air Force Base, Arizona, in 2026.
Back in 2023, Canada’s Liberal government announced plans to buy 88 F-35s, a decision that appeared to bring closure to what had already been a very protracted process. You can read about this here.
However, amid growing trade tensions and a war of words with the United States, Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney launched a review of the F-35 program shortly after taking office in the spring of 2025.
There are other arguments for a split buy, too. Back in 2019, the cost of buying the planned 88 F-35s was put at $19 billion. Now it has rocketed to $27.7 billion, not including weapons and infrastructure.
Bill Blair, who was Canada’s defense minister when the review of the F-35 buy was launched last year, pointed to the advantages of a mixed fleet, saying it would give the RCAF more options to handle different types of threats.
“What happens if you have to persist in that space for months and months and years? The tool that you use, is it the right tool to do that job?” Blair said. “We need to have a whole wide range of capability sets to deal with all the eventualities that we could face.”
Were Canada to procure the Tempest, it would surely have to wait longer than 2035 — the prospect of GCAP’s fighter entering service at this date, as planned, is highly unlikely. Canada would be fourth in line behind the three core partners. Ottawa would need to buy more F-35s, perhaps around two thirds of its original intended number, or around 60 aircraft, and also keep the best of its CF-18s in service for longer, if that’s even possible. The Hornets are getting very old and disappearing from service abroad. Supporting them will become increasingly problematic. When the Tempest finally arrived, it would provide a flipped high-low fighter mix. This is essentially the same approach that the United Kingdom, Italy, and Japan — all current F-35 operators — are taking.
However, the Tempest does appear to be especially well-suited to Canada’s fighter requirement.
The design of the jet will stress extreme range and a large payload — roughly twice that of the F-35A. Senior GCAP officials have said the jet could potentially carry enough internal fuel to fly across the Atlantic without refueling.
While these attributes are optimized for a future conflict in the Indo-Pacific region, they are equally applicable to dealing with the ‘tyranny of distance’ and the increasing Russian threat posed around Canada’s enormous land mass, which extends far into the highly strategic Arctic region.
“Both China and Russia have fifth-generation fighter aircraft and fifth-generation missiles that are able to go at much greater speeds and with much more that are holding Western allies at risk at this moment in time,” the commander of the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), Lt. Gen. Jamie Speiser-Blanchet, said in the past.
Plans to arm the Tempest with larger air-to-air missiles offering a longer range than those currently used by any of the three GCAP partner countries have also been revealed, as you can read about here.
If Canada decides it wants a sixth-generation combat aircraft to tackle current and emerging threats from China and Russia, the GCAP might be the only realistic choice. The rival pan-European Future Combat Air System (FCAS) has collapsed, and there is little chance of Canada getting its hand on the Boeing F-47.
But any kind of split buy “would duplicate a certain amount of infrastructure and training,” Speiser-Blanchet admitted.
In some cases, however, there could be cost-benefit arguments in having a mixed fighter fleet, as well as the important factor of not relying entirely upon one source of this type of combat equipment.
There is also the question of how feasible it would be for Canada to join GCAP at this point, at least in terms of industrial participation and steering requirements. The latter point seems next to impossible, with national requirements already set, and most of the workshare agreement has also been divided up between the three partners.
The same applies to India, which has also looked at joining GCAP in the past.
There has been talk of Saudi Arabia possibly joining GCAP in some capacity, and, more recently, Poland has been reported as being interested in buying the aircraft, too.
With that in mind, Canada’s best shot might be to buy the jet ‘off the shelf,’ rather than hope for industrial windfalls.
At the same time, Canada and the United Kingdom are partners on some other key military programs, including the Royal Canadian Navy’s future River class Canadian Surface Combatants, derived from BAE Systems’ Type 26 design for the U.K. Royal Navy.
Returning to the Tempest, the broader GCAP program still has to survive considerable challenges, both technical and political, that lie ahead.
As we have explained many times in the past, the process of creating an all-new fighter, especially one incorporating stealth technologies, brings very lengthy development times and high costs.
At this point, BAE Systems is in the process of building a demonstrator as part of the GCAP program, with a first flight planned by the end of 2027.
The latest rendering of that demonstrator appears at the top of the story. Notably, it retains the Typhoon’s EJ200 turbofan engines, with non-stealthy nozzles. The Tempest will have an all-new powerplant.
As we have argued in the past, the more time that passes, and the more deeply intertwined with the F-35 Canada becomes, the arguments in favor of a split fighter buy become harder to justify. Buying the Tempest would certainly not be the cheapest option, and would force a rethink of timelines, but it does underscore the fact that Canadian officials are casting their net wider, looking at very high-end capabilities, and seeking to build deeper strategic relationships outside of the United States.
Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com