Well, stealth is part of the definition of 5th gen, so the F-35 is kind of the only one in production. The Chinese and Russian equivalents are rumoured to be not actually that stealthy.

Ignoring the "generations", Gripen vs. F-35 is an apples-to-oranges comparison; they follow totally different philosophies.

Gripens are designed to be a workable fighter jet, while being operable out of an improvised runway with a small, untrained ground crew. It has air intakes that are resistant to swallowing rocks and only needs 500m to take off, for example. Notably, Sweden was preparing to slow down an invasion by a neighboring superior force with it until their allies could arrive, and that's reminiscent of our situation now.

Meanwhile, F-35s are designed for general air operations in a large military, while being stealthy. They managed very impressively few sacrifices on maintainability and performance to get that stealth, but it still needs a massive supply chain to run. You're not launching it from somewhere in the bush. I'm not even sure if a standard airport will cut it. Stealth is nice, though, for obvious reasons.

They both are NATO compliant and have network-centric warfare capabilities

I think Canada needs to accept a stopgap measure - the Gripen, Typhoon, Rafale, or Super Hornet - and dive headfirst into GCAP. FCAS is tempting as well, but GCAP is farther along and the countries are probably closer in goals to Canada.

I'm not sure how serious your comment is but anyway...what you're describing is a decades-long reorientation of military doctrine and procurement strategy. Getting a different multi-role fighter is already a huge expense with lots of ramifications but no need to throw the baby out with the bath water.

Edit: IMO, if you really wanted to alter air force strategy to deter the US, you should look to Sweden and Finland who have been facing an asymmetric threat for decades. Aquire the Gripen, train with the Swedes in how to run and operate a distributed air force of small independent units capable of generating and performing missions from random roads in the woods.

The problem is that in the event of a conflict with the US, those jets would be entirely unusable because they'd shut them down. And we'd be billions of dollars down.

It would be better to spend that money elsewhere, even if it's out of date, than to have nothing.

Screw this "waiting another 10-15 years." We need to join the GCAP program, and get seriously active.

Lead time is necessarily immense, but we could both shorten it and improve the end product.

"Waiting for someone else to develop" has been a symptom of Canada's Aerospace industry since the Arrow was shitcanned, and has crept into our national subconscious stream. We need to attack that attitude.

At that point China, Russia and America will be at their 6th

Well thats what we need to be putting our money in right now (speaking as a european). Even if america does not turn full authoritarian in the next 4 years and we get them back to our site, we can not sit this out right now. We need to be able to fight for our own interests, thats one of the few things Trump is right about (even though it is simply an excuse to drop us).

South Korea won't sell theirs will they?

It was a serious finalist, and that's even more impressive when you considered that our airforce went into the bid already knowing they wanted the F-35.

They kept the bid's website up, and IIRC basically said "we're around if you change your mind".

I remember someone saying that countries don’t have friends, only interests

Charles de Gaulle. He was full of shit on that one, though. Countries have domestic politics.

Saab Gripen

The fighter from the 80s?

Europe doesn't have a 5th gen fighter, and they're beholden enough to the US that they did nothing when we blew up their natural gas pipeline, forcing them to buy our natural gas at exorbitant prices, during winter and are trying to fund our war even after we've stopped. America's other vassals aren't going to help you stop America.

China exports the J-35, Russia exports the Su-57. Making Lockheed stock crater when even Canada abandons them would light a fire under more congress member's asses than anything else you can do.

Then again, it's not like GD, LM, and Boeing would ever let their politicians fuck up the bag.