A decade ago Bombardier was a byword for corporate near-death — overextended, debt-laden, forced to sell off its train and commercial-jet businesses to survive. It ended 2025 having declared its turnaround complete, and the numbers back the claim: revenue of US$9.55 billion, up 10 percent; adjusted EBITDA up 15 percent to about US$1.56 billion; more than US$400 million of debt repaid; and a leverage ratio cut from 2.9 times earnings to 1.9. The company delivered 157 aircraft and finished the year with a backlog of US$17.5 billion — up US$3.1 billion, a 22 percent jump, and its highest in a decade after a single new customer placed a 50-aircraft order. On a unit book-to-bill of 1.4, demand is now running ahead of what Bombardier can build.

That is a business-recovery story. The more interesting one is what is pulling it forward.

The defence pivot

Bombardier’s fastest-growing segment is defence — specifically, military-configured versions of its business jets, used for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, VIP transport, maritime patrol and command-and-control. This revenue has more than doubled, from around US$1 billion in 2020 to US$2.4 billion in 2024, and in 2025 the defence business surpassed US$1 billion with 16 deliveries. The logic is straightforward once you see it: a business jet adapted for a military mission can be procured far faster and more flexibly than a purpose-built military aircraft, and as NATO members expand and upgrade fleets, that speed is exactly what they want.

The clearest signal of where this leads came in June 2025, when Bombardier and Sweden’s Saab signed a joint declaration of intent regarding the sale of Saab’s GlobalEye early-warning aircraft — built on a Bombardier Global platform — to France. A Canadian airframe, Swedish radar and mission systems, a French buyer: a defence export of real significance, and a template for how Bombardier turns civilian aircraft into strategic assets.

The Quebec anchor

Strip away the defence narrative and Bombardier is still one of the load-bearing columns of the Canadian industrial economy. It accounts for roughly a quarter of Canada’s aerospace manufacturing output. Quebec’s aircraft exports reached C$11.2 billion in 2024, close to a tenth of the province’s export value, and the company’s projected manufacturing over the second half of the decade is estimated to contribute tens of billions in GDP and support tens of thousands of jobs a year. Its Montreal supply chain — Pratt & Whitney Canada, CAE, hundreds of small and mid-sized suppliers — is among the most sophisticated manufacturing ecosystems the country has. When people talk about Canadian advanced manufacturing as something worth protecting, this cluster is a large part of what they mean.

The question that comes with the customers

And, as with any company selling flying hardware to governments, there is a foreign-policy question stitched into the customer list. Who buys a Bombardier business jet for government or military use is not a neutral commercial fact. The flagship Global 7500 and 8000 have intercontinental range — enough to fly nonstop between almost any two points on Earth — which makes them the aircraft of choice for heads of state and senior military commanders, allied and otherwise. The customer base includes democracies and governments with more complicated records, and the same discretion applies here as to any defence export: capability, once sold, is used by the buyer on the buyer’s terms.

Bombardier has earned its recovery, and the backlog gives it a runway the company has not had in years. But the shape of its comeback is worth noticing. The Montreal firm that once built trains and regional jets for civilian life has found its most reliable growth in outfitting the world’s militaries — a quieter kind of Canadian defence export, wearing the livery of a private jet.

Reading list

  • Bombardier 2025 annual results (February 2026)
  • FlightGlobal coverage of Bombardier’s defence unit
  • Bombardier–Saab GlobalEye declaration of intent (2025)
  • Bombardier economic-footprint studies (2024–2029)