The correct EU response would be to cancel hundreds of F-35 orders across the board, and instead, five more Gripen factories being built across the continent.
That is the only signal that would make a difference. Carney's Canada knows what's up.
It depends on what you mean by "correct" here. It would piss off the United States, which might secure a short-term political goal for some people, but the Gripen is not a complete replacement for what the F-35 offers. The Gripen is a platform tailored around Sweden's need for survivable road-mobile air dominance; the F-35 fulfills a nearly-opposite role as a preemptive strike aircraft intended for fully-intact threat environments.
I'm a huge fan of the Gripen myself, and it's arguably the better fighter aircraft if you're in a WVR dogfight against a monster airframe like the Su-35. That being said, air dominance is not the only role the F-35 was evaluated on. There are lots of great European fighter aircraft, but pretty much nothing that rivals the F-35 in strike capacity.
According to your own analysis, does not the Gripen fit NATO's goals much more than than the F-35 A?
NATO, until it was first destroyed via Desert Storm, was just supposed to defend us all from the imperialist ambitions of Moscow.
The Gripen has a dispersed field capability that can be supported by only 2 trained men, and a few conscripts + 2 x 20 TU containers... vs. F-35 A... I feel like only one product is correct for the EU, which has only defensive ambitions.
Meanwhile, with F-35 A, not only is the supply chain a question, but it cannot be deployed unless the selling country, and selling company, feels like it on that given day. This is right to repair/right to save your own effing country. Can someone please explain to me how we are at this point, in 2025?
I'm absolutely empathetic to the European sentiment - the Gripen should be a mainstay in EU air forces on merit alone, F-35 be damned. But many of the nations buying the F-35 aren't being swindled into it, they're filling a capability gap that really does threaten Russia in a meaningful way. Both systems can work together to leverage their advantages, and are designed to cooperate using Link 16. It doesn't have to be one-or-the-other, and buying both systems hedges against the possibility of either side pulling support.
If Europe doesn't want a deep strike capability against Russia, don't buy the F-35. Fill the gap with a regional stealth-bomber program like China did, or pool the various European stealth fighter projects together in a serious joint project. As-is, the only competitor to the F-35 can be bought from China, who will be more capricious with the supply chain in the long run.
That is the only signal that would make a difference. Carney's Canada knows what's up.