Hence why Canada is now considering bailing on its purchase of F-35s.
The prospect of getting cut off is hardly theoretical: the US already partially halted support for Ukraine's F-16s (I'm not sure where this stands at this precise moment).
The US is clearly demonstrating it is an unreliable partner in defence. Western nations cannot buy into a platform when its supplier might go from being a democratic part of the West to aligning with dictators and autocrats literally overnight. This doesn't just mean that platforms like F-35 are vastly less desirable to Western militaries, it also means that other things we thought we could rely upon, like the nuclear umbrella, are also unreliable, which is likely to lead to nuclear proliferation.
The part I thought was interesting was how Israel “secured rights to modify” their F35 deliveries. Like… what kind of airplane that costs 100s of millions requires additional contracts for “replace component” rights? How insane is this contract? Its so unreasonable to assume that the value of the fighter to the manifacturers is only in the maintenance. Its like the BMW heater subscription, only for national defence.
during development and going into first flight, it was fairly open discussion that israel 'was' an original partner whom was funded by usa, and thus why israeli flag was not on the a/c during promo but israel and their tech companies had input into development.
many times it was also discussed that israeli pilots would ask to have their engines deliver above spec thrust, sort of like tunning your turbo car... it created a whole logistical black hole but it certainly was technically possible. perhaps 15 years later someone finally figure out how to cater to that market.
When you have the only working 5th-generation multirole fighter on the export market then you can drive a pretty hard bargain. That's how monopolies work.
Some partners are more equal than others. There are 3+ program levels depending on how much funding they put into the initial development and how many units they committed to order. This impacts the level of access they get. The UK is the only Level 1 partner. Italy and Netherlands are at Level 2. Others are down at Level 3 (except Israel, which had sufficient political influence to negotiate a special deal despite a relatively small investment).
I sympathize with the F-35 customers who are now feeling uneasy about their choice due to recent changes in US foreign policy. But that's the risk you take when you fail to adequately fund your military and try to get by on the cheap. Most of them had the option of joining at Level 1 at the time, and had they done so they would have much more leverage today.
> I sympathize with the F-35 customers who are now feeling uneasy about their choice due to recent changes in US foreign policy. But that's the risk you take when you fail to adequately fund your military and try to get by on the cheap. Most of them had the option of joining at Level 1 at the time, and had they done so they would have much more leverage today.
Your personal opinion is proven to be absurd and baseless for the single fact that the UK, a level 1 partner, was very vocal in its frustration for the "lack of U.S. commitment to grant access to the technology that would allow the UK to maintain and upgrade its F-35s without U.S. involvement."
You need to face the fact that as of now the US is an unreliable and untrustable partner, and depending on them for defense, even when it's to meet their end of the treaties, is extremely risky.
Are we still pretending that any contract with the USA is binding ? Lets assume , trump kicks the bucket and vance succeeds him. Do you think a contract with Israel is still save, when a raging anti semite (who jumped selensky partlly because of that) is in power ? There are no laws, contracts and recourse in amedieval world. Sorry to all the unemployed lawyers
>But that's the risk you take when you fail to adequately fund your military and try to get by on the cheap. Most of them had the option of joining at Level 1 at the time, and had they done so they would have much more leverage today.
Weird logic. US is equally unrealiable no matter what level you bought yourself in to.
> But that's the risk you take when you fail to adequately fund your military and try to get by on the cheap.
Except it's nuts to pretend like this system hasn't been working out great for the US. Competent leaders have expanded it for a reason.
> Most of them had the option of joining at Level 1 at the time, and had they done so they would have much more leverage today.
I think that Trump/Vance have run their mouth about the UK in roughly the same ways that they have about Canada and Ukraine and your claim is far from obvious. We have leaders who are stupid and will trash a good thing without a second thought.
Well, no, unless they're also insisting on annexing the UK, and crippled UK military hardware while they're in an existential war. I haven't seen such reported.
I don't see how your point is relevant to the current topic which is narrowly about how investment (or not) into the F-35 program relates to input into the direction of the program.
The UK is a Tier 1 partner. The administration seems like it's one Xanax-fueled dream away from saying the UK should be the 52nd state and suspending technical support in the exact same way the US has done to Ukraine.
That's the relationship between the two. The problem is not that these nations weren't Tier 1 partners. The problem is that the current administration cannot be negotiated with in the most damning sense of "these people can't even be trusted to work for their own self-interest."
As the UK is also a Level 1 partner if they were so inclined they could provide the resources necessary to allow lower level partners to operate and maintain their F-35s?
No, neither the USA or UK are really independent on this program. They are mutually dependent on each other.
The USA does have all of the technical data packages so in theory we could probably get domestic suppliers to make the components we currently get from the UK but it would take several years. The reverse isn't true, though. The UK simply no longer has the capacity to support such a complex program on their own. They sacrificed their defense industry years ago and accepted dependence on the USA so that they could fund social programs.
I'm not suggesting that the UK attempts to make all the parts that are made in partner countries, merely that they have access to the information required to do so.
If that's the case they maybe they would be able to help the other partner countries develop the parts that they would otherwise require America to make.
I have read that the base price of a Boeing/Airbus jet is typically negotiated below zero, based on the decades of maintenance contracts and spare parts that will have to be purchased over its lifetime.
the above is absolutely true on the commercial engine side, especially for government subsidized companies such as RR... there is a big contention against RR's practices but most mfgs still give the engines at a very large discount, not negative. i don't think it's true for the actual airframe, the numbers would be completely off and airframe does not have the same going back to the factory for refurb requirements.
Probably not negative, but component maintenance is a huge longtail revenue stream for avionics. Pretty much every electronic and mechanical component has to be pulled periodically and tested, which costs, and replaced or refurbished. My first proper job, that's how they made the majority of their revenue. They lost money on the development effort, maybe broke even after initial sales, and profited off the fact that aircraft are kept around for decades and every 5 years their part had to be pulled and sent back to them for testing and replacement.
The more Airbus or Boeing own inside the aircraft, the more they can play into this model. 787 is a great example of Boeing hurting themselves through their outsourcing, but greatly assisting their suppliers.
yes, what you're talking about is true for the supplier side, but it's still not accurate for A/C mfg. operators own the a/c and all the associated bits that would end up getting sent out for service, and they're the ones that are paying service fees to those OEM suppliers that supplied the A/C in the first place.
these day's there's not many "parts" outside of fuselage and flight IP that someone like Boeing/EMB, etc. owns that wasn't outsourced:engines, air data system, actuations, cabin, flight controls, landing gear, etc.. THere's nothing really that the A/C mfg could "service" to ever make back a 300mil airframe. the A/C sell for the fixed cost, sometimes the operator gets to select their own engine, but othewise they buy it for cash, not for future services. boeing and other A/Cs would not survive on maintenance plans because there's very little they actually maintain.
Maintenance is extraordinarily important for the long term usefulness of a fighter jet. There is even an official metric tracked called "maintenance man-hours per flight hour." The F-35, which was even designed to try to minimize this (while still being stealthy and lethal), requires ~5 hours of maintenance for every hour the jet is in the air. If you get cut off from parts your Air Force will be almost unable to fly in a few months.
Pretty much all modern fighters require replacement parts from the original manufacturer. There are not enough fighter jets to support an aftermarket parts manufacturer, especially one that could exist without getting sued by Lockheed, Northrop, and the like.
The main technical issue is that you have to reverse engineer the parts if you don't have original drawings and didn't get a legal license to make your own. All the technical bits on an F-35 have anti-tamper features designed to make reverse engineering almost impossible (in case a jet gets shot down over enemy territory the USA doesn't want the enemies to have an easy time figuring out the weak points or finding bugs to exploit).
If you want to see what fighter jets without legal repairability license turns into, look at Iran. The sanctions placed on Iran have meant that they've been stringing their inventory of jets along for decades without official parts. They cannibalize other jets, buy black market parts, and cobble together their own solutions to keep their Air Force going. Check out the Sedjil, which is a modified SAM, that they created to put on their F-14s because the USA stopped providing Phoenix missiles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedjil_(air-to-air_missile). Trying to keep an Air Force going without official permission is really challenging.
But Israel's case is a little different from the above discussion- negotiating for the rights to modify isn't really about replacement parts. They aren't that concerned that the USA will cut them off. Their negotiation is more because they want to put some of their own systems on the jet. In older 4th generation jets, integration of new systems could be straightforward; you can put it in an external pod with a standardized mounting pylon and standardized data bus. On the F-35 you obviously want to avoid hanging a bunch of extra pods off the jet, so you need to get engineering drawings and software details to figure out how to internally integrate your stuff. Because reverse engineering is hard, they pushed to get this technical information legally. The only time this effort is worth it is when you think your country's equipment outperforms what the original F-35 can do. You need a decent tech to beat the stock F-35 systems, but Israel probably has a few areas where they can do that. But even with the right to modify the F-35, Israel will be heavily reliant on original parts for maintenance. They do not have a big enough industrial base to make all the parts needed for the jet.
There are not enough fighter jets to support an aftermarket parts manufacturer, especially one that could exist without getting sued by Lockheed, Northrop, and the like.
This certainly applies to the aftermarket activities in the Westl, but entities doing that in Iran, Russia or Ukraine would not be liable to such measures. The question is more about technical capability.
> If you want to see what fighter jets without legal repairability license turns into, look at Iran. The sanctions placed on Iran have meant that they've been stringing their inventory of jets along for decades without official parts. [...]
True. Then again I see the ability for Iran to do this as a consequence of the effect of the sanctions and determination to make the best of domestic engineering potential. Quite a feat, I would say. The country has chemicals, electronics, mechanical engineering - and it trying to use it to create their own competing version of military platforms, starting with tanks, airplanes, drones, etc.
> The main technical issue is that you have to reverse engineer [...] All the technical bits on an F-35 have anti-tamper features designed to make reverse engineering almost impossible [...]
Very interesting! Almost impossible is a strong combination of words. Could you perhaps point me forward to some examples of such anti-tamper features?
Israel heavily modifies all of their jets I think. Supposedly stuff like allowing the engines to run at a dangerous thrust level because of situations like “Get there now or you won’t have a home to land in”.
For reference, this is called 'battleshort'. Overriding normal/safe operating limits in order to escape a situation that would destroy the vehicle anyway.
> Get there now or you won’t have a home to land in
Really? A country that engages with neighbours that are barely able to send primitive missiles, while its last generation (US) jets drop bombs straight on their capital cities any time they want, with total impunity? And you still repeat this "poor existentially threatened country" propaganda?
False. You can see this from the number of losses they suffered in their military campaigns: a tiny number of casualties compared to those inflicted to their enemies. Besides, it has been clear for many decades that the US would do absolutely anything to protect Israel, which means that the forces Israel can count on to defend itself in case of a real existential threat are basically those of the entire USA.
He is referring to highly specific types of situations, not speaking in a generic sense. It’s not about propaganda, it’s just a simple consequence of the region they’re in.
As a side note, terrorists successfully attack highly developed economies all the time. Having good jets doesn’t magically negate that possibility.
The purchase didn't make much sense in the first place. The F-35 is intended to operate in contested airspace, which Canada is not. It cannot intercept serious supersonic threats or maintain a strategic advantage in WVR/VFR escorts. If Russia is the threat, the F-35 is not a real defense.
It's a cool jet, but there's something to be said about having the right tool for the job. Canada doesn't need a joint strike fighter, they need a cost-effective interceptor.
Canada doesn't maintain a military for self defence. If it did we would have pursued nuclear weapon ambitions in the 1940s and focused overwhelming on terrestrial missile systems and attack submarines. Even the interception routine of playing the games with Russian bombers at the edge of airspace is just meaningless theatre -- not only would those bombers long have deployed cruise missiles in a real conflict, the vast majority of devastation would have come from ICBMs launched by ground and sea.
In reality our peacetime military has been a welfare project to assist the US in whatever (mis)adventures it gets in around the globe. Our choice of jets, guns, vehicles, and so on is predicated on "when the US drags us into some conflict or other, what equipment integrates with whatever their goals are". So when we signed up for the F-35, that was purchasing criteria.
The world is quite obviously changing. If Canada were seriously interested in true self defence against all realistic foes, it would be nuclear weapons and nuclear powered submarines...like the sort the US blocked us from being able to buy from the UK back in the 80s.
Canada should really consider creating its own nuclear deterrent. Or becoming the 51st state to get one. I think those are the two options. Trump has told the truth about dismantling his own government, its best to believe him on Canada and assume he intends to do the same to yours.
The US would tear itself apart if it attacked Canada any time in the next 50 years minimum. They are in an essentially M.A.D. situation with the US even without nukes because American citizens like Canadians and view them as brothers on top of Canada having tons of European ties and military treaties. Wasting money on nuclear weapons isn't going to put them in any better position than they are already in. The only effective strategy if the US started shit would be to bunker down and go full insurgency against occupation, throw out a bit of good pr/propaganda, and wait for internal US strife to collapse the nation as the US is left completely isolated from the entire world with enemies on all sides and within.
I'm not sure, but it is possible we do minor servicing on the missiles. e.g. swap out components for spares.
However the missiles are regularly rotated back in to the common pool in the USA for servicing. The schedule is such that the USA could disable our deterrent within a couple of years if they so desired.
So we have the nukes, but no independent way to deliver them.
Which ‘serious supersonic threats’ to Canada is the F-35 incapable of intercepting?
The problem isn’t a lack of F-35 capabilities, the problem is that Canada doesn’t know what it wants. AFAIK Canada only has two fighter bases, and given the fact that the country is arguably the largest in the world, this means Canada is not serious about intercepting adversary aircraft. Canada also hasn’t had over 100 fighters in a long time, so it doesn’t have a significant deployable force. So what does Canada want?
Realistically, as long as the US is a stable ally (which is currently in dispute), what does Canada need from its military? It's highly unlikely to be attacked based on distance to potential foes and proximity to the US. An attack from the US would be hard to defend on a military basis --- the difference in forces is overwhelming. Canada would need to heavily rely on alliances to defend against attack from the US, but logistics would be difficult; better to push on diplomacy and/or convincing US armed forces to refuse orders to attack their neighbor.
The Canadian armed forces participate in international missions in cooperation with other forces, and in domestic matters. You don't really need fighter aircraft for domestic missions; and for international missions you need whatever will work in coalitions. With a stable US pushing the F-35, the F-35 is a reasonable candidate for coalition work. Without a stable US, the F-35 is a poor candidate; presuming Canada would continue to be allied with NATO ex-US, whatever that group decides is the future is going to be a better choice.
Why should Canada do coalition missions? They have nothing to do with Canada. Coalition missions are euphemism for beating up a weaker country. As far as I can remember, the F-35 in Canada was always argued by those who want to play John Wayne in foreign lands.
If Canada can't defend against the US, then they should just accept they'll be swallowed by it or start making babies and populating the prairies. In the meantime, if Canada wants to contribute to defense of its allies, it should focus on creating a credible air counter to the Arctic.
Canada does coalition missions because Canada relies on allies for defense. We traipsed along on British misadventures for a century or so because we relied on them for defense and wanted to keep the British happy, and then we traipsed along on American misadventures for the last century because we relied on them for defense and wanted to keep them happy.
Every country on the planet is trying to catch up to the US - this isn’t Canada-specific. Canada’s only real differentiation is that they’re completely isolated, whereas at least Mexico has potential support from the southern direction.
The f-35 lacks the range and speed, coupled with the lack of airbases in Canada means that it is not very effective. Canada needs something like a Su-35, a big twin engine with a large range, but those aren't for sale, obviously.
It's not the F-35's fault it's not suitable for Canada. It was never intended for tundra. It's Canada's fault that for the last 20 years there's been no juicy tender for a long range fighter to entice the europeans or the yanks to come up with a suitable modification of one of their twin fighter jets.
An F-35 doesn't need to be faster than an SU-35 when it has triple the radar lock on distance and missiles the SU can't outrun. The thing has a radar cross-section of a US 25¢ coin and can see beyond the horizon on radar, the Russian planes would be dead before they could react to it. It's such a comically overpowered plane that talking about it makes one sound like a kid at a playground making up rules for his action figure in a make believe fight.
I think you oversell the F35 stealth. It really depend on the angle and speed of the plane, and the age of the radar (fwih the radar signature of a us coin was true in 2014, but optics and radars have improved too, especially recently, and especially thank to the Ukraine drone war feedback). The future seems to be fighter + cheaper drones with similar radar signature rather than full stealth. Which might be easier to do with the small f35 signature for sure.
But every military is aware that the plan to go full fox-3 (+ stealth) might die in the next decade, and we might be back to FOX-2 / dogfighting. Is it likely? Not really, but drone and AI change the battlefield to much to be sure of anything.
I think you're giving the F-35 a lot of unjustified credit. For one, Russian air doctrine has long fielded interchangeable radar/IR homing seekers specifically to target American stealth platforms. If your F-35 is afterburning so it can match an Su-35's supercruise speed, they can get smacked by an R-77 from BVR by a Russian jet just as easily as an AIM-120 could crush the Sukhoi. Radar stealth is not a panacea in the EOTS era, and the F-35's side/rear aspect stealth is not enough to make it invisible at every angle.
Furthermore, as much as I love a slick single-engine fighter, the F-35 is still fundamentally designed to operate in contested airspace. Canada, if they operated the jet for the next 50 years, would likely never have to use it for it's intended joint strike purpose. Unless you habitually molest the borders of other nations, the F-35 is not a purchase that makes a whole lot of sense to taxpayers. If the F-35 was truly "comically overpowered" then Congress wouldn't be asking to restart the F-22 production line, now would they?
> For one, Russian air doctrine has long fielded interchangeable radar/IR homing seekers specifically to target American stealth platforms. […]
Is that a demonstrated capability, or a claimed one? Because if there's one thing the war in Ukraine has shown, it's that Russia seriously overpromised on the performance of its high-tech hardware.
Congress wants to keep the A-10 Warthog flying even though the Air Force desperately wants to be rid of it because it's a good jobs program, there are considerations outside of battlefield prowess that go into their thinking. Not to completely dismiss their opinions because they probably have more information than we do, but their world is not warfare.
Even giving the Russians every capability that they claim to have, it is questionable if they can even keep producing much of the high end of their technology with the sanctions leveled against them. Without Western components they are unable to manufacture a decent range of their good stuff.
The Su-35 has a combat range of 1600 kilometers, and the two Canadian fighter bases are about 2750km apart, which means they can barely fight in the area directly between the bases! The Su-35 would not be an effective interceptor when so far from the threats either (as the response times would be terrible). If Canada wants to defend itself from aerial threats, it just needs more bases and more planes.
If a notional Canuck Su-35 couldn't do it, probably nothing could.
The Su-35 has one of the highest fuel fractions of any military aircraft at about 38% of max take-off weight. That's 9% higher than an F-22 and equates to 11,500kg of fuel.
Just conceptualise 11.5 tonnes of fuel - basically an American yellow school bus being hauled into the air by a fighter than can do Mach 2 and pull 9g.
To be fair though the F-35A has a remarkably high fuel capacity too, about 8,000kg. All that chunkiness has an advantage.
Jet fuel is about 7 pounds a gallon. So we’re talking about something like 4000 gallons. A bus is something 40 feet by 10 feet by 10 feet, which is like 20000 gallons. So it’s about a fifth of a school bus.
The US required that Canada buy the F-35 to be able to fit the communications equipment needed for NORAD.
I think the Eurofighter would have been a better fit for Canada. It is already built on multiple production lines, no problem adding another one in Canada for their aircraft.
Germany almost got the Eurofighter Typhoon, but it was not certified to carry nuclear weapons, and lacks SEAD mission capability for the next ~10 years.
There is nothing that can replace the Tornado in the German arsenal at the moment.
You are right, they did. Let me rephrase it: The F-35 purchase is about having a multi role platform in the next 10 years to have nuclear and SEAD mission capability.
Now let's talk program and unit cost and combat range.
The Arrow was a brilliant plane for its time and purpose. But its cancellation was not wrong (if perhaps immature) - if there are no Tu-92 to shoot down, there's no need for the Arrow.
It's like the CANDU that solved a problem (Canadian inability to enrich U and make welds for PWR) using a solution at hand (world's largest capacity to make heavy water) but that is now largely obsolete (the CANDU's have been increasing their enrichment is an attempt to gain market share).
EDIT: I know that Tu-92, like B-52s still fly as part of the triad. But when the Arrow was designed there was no triad, or even diad. But what does the Arrow do to Tu-92s that an (modern, not the '50s crap) AA missile can't do better?
What alternatives exist, for your model, that can intercept serious supersonic threats and maintain a strategic advantage in VFR escorts that the F-35 cannot?
An F-104 would do the job, with modern avionics and engineering. If you want to guarantee bomber intercept capability, you have to be ready to tackle the nightmare scenario planes in the formation. The F-35 could intercept a Tu-95M with ease, but so could a F-16 or a F-117 armed with Sidewinders. You have to be capable of intercepting the real threats like the Tu-160 or Flanker strike formations, neither of which the F-35 can do much about.
An F-104 with modern avionics and engineering is an undefined, non-existent airplane.
Historically, there are few aircraft that fit that niche. (Mig-25, Mig-31, F-104 as you said etc). It would be cool to have a modern interceptor like that (F-15Ex with the pods, CFTs, and pylons removed??), but there's no existing solution that fits what you seek.
The US hasn't blocked other countries from transferring more old F-16s to Ukraine.
On or about 2025-03-07, the US apparently cut off intelligence support for the AN/ALQ-131 electronics countermeasures pods (jammers) carried on some F-16s. Those can still be used but will become less effective without constant software and configuration changes to adapt to changes in Russian radars. Some of that support might have at least partially resumed in recent days but the details haven't been publicly reported.
> The US hasn't blocked other countries from transferring more old F-16s to Ukraine.
Most of those transfers were done in the context of upgrading a fleet (with F-35); They did block the transfer initially.
> On or about 2025-03-07, the US apparently cut off intelligence support for the AN/ALQ-131 electronics countermeasures pods (jammers) carried on some F-16s
If you cutoff a feature of the equipment you sold, it is effectively a kill switch; its not really relevant what was the political rationale of cancelling the subscription. Thing is, this dumb flex move (it is possible to migrate the jammers to european platforms) just killed the F35 commercial roadmap, and will make the just-announced F47 a dud (it will be a struggle to find partnerships on this one with the same terms).
>- Ukraine exchanged nukes for beautiful promises.
Why do people keep parroting this false trope?
They had no other choice but to hand over their nukes since the nukes were never theirs to begin with, they belonged to Russia, and they had no launch codes for them anyway, which were in Moscow, nor the resources to maintain them.
And that's not exactly what the world needed at the time: unkempt nukes in the hands of a bankrupt and corrupt nation going through political and economic turmoil of the 90s USSR collapse, guaranteeing them to get "lost" and end up in the hands of despots and warlords.
So giving them up was the correct and only choice for them. Otherwise they would have been persuaded by force to give them up either through sanctions or even through military intervention.
Because it looks consistent, it's incredibly close to actual facts and it serves the narrative well.
But yeah, it is false.
First of all, broadly speaking, Budapest memorandum was not broken at a scale people think it was. The memorandum is quite short, go read it and decide for yourself whether it was failed. Bear in mind that the memorandum has no legal consequences, it's not binding at all.
Second, what you have said about the nukes is mostly correct. I have been living in Ukraine since before the independence and up until the war and let me tell you: people in the West have no idea how poor Ukraine was at the time. A wasteland. There was no funds to fuel ambulances in Kiev, let alone maintain the extremely expensive nukes. Nukes have an expiration date, and they would be rendered useless by the time Ukraine scrambled funds to maintain even a single one of them. Leave alone the fact that there was no (extremely expensive and complex) service facilities, no fissile material to maintain the nukes and no ways to procure or produce one.
Third, people in the west have no idea how corrupt Ukraine was (and I hate to say it - is). There is no doubt at all that some of the nukes would be lost.
So, there is no conceivable scenario in which Ukraine gets to keep and maintain those nukes in the nineties.
Ukraine in the early 90s hardly saw Russia as an adversary. After are all they invaded Moldova together.
Also back in the early 90s spending massive amounts of money you can't afford when your country is in an extremely horrible spot economically just in case you might need it 20 years later doesn't seem politically feasible (i.e. you need to be an authoritarian shithole like one of the countries you mentioned or slightly less authoritarian but consider a much larger neighbouring country to be an existential threat which again.. didn't make much sense in the early 90s)
In 1993, Ukraine wanted to "dismantle only 36 percent of its delivery vehicles and 42 percent of its warheads, leaving the rest under Ukrainian control." Only US promising them more money got them to change the position.
Perhaps so - but imagine they could somehow have had those nukes ready to go. History would've gone differently; likely in a much, much better direction.
To discuss more about future, I sometimes think about Taiwan and how they are not pursuing nukes at all costs as existential threat. Nothing else could guarantee their independence than nukes and they should make nukes even at the cost of country bankruptcy if they are serious. I think they probably are not really serious about invasion. They tried it last time and some opposition party exposed the secret to US.
Taiwan pursuing nukes by itself would be an excuse for an invasion by china. And Taiwan is mostly a small island; any hiccups on a nuclear program could have devastating consequences for the population.
You need to give my comment a very negative reading to come up with that answer.
My point - which I thought was very obvious - is that other countries should now pursue their own nuclear programmes because that is seemingly the only deterrent that works.
If Iran's nuclear program was operational there would be 100,000 less dead Palestinians, and the USA wouldn't be talking about building beachfront resorts there.
The point that you keep missing though is that I'm not describing my ideal state of the world. I'm describing the current state of the world.
Nukes are the only existential guarantee a state can have nowadays. The leaders of Iran would like their state to continue existing, and have set their strategy accordingly. After Russia invaded Ukraine, and Trump threatened Canada, other nations will be revisiting the calculus around nukes in the years to come.
This is much worse than the world order we had, but there you have it.
>Perhaps so - but imagine they could somehow have had those nukes ready to go.
What does imagining have to do with reality? Imagine you could fly, shoot lasers from your eyes and shit money out your ass. There's no point in talking about unrealistic hypotheticals. There was 0% chance UN or any world powers would approve Ukraine keeping any of those nukes they inherited from the USSR.
And even if we were to imagine they did get to keep them, given Ukraine's situation back then, it was a big chance that some of those nukes or fissile material would end up in the hands of warlords creating more way problems than what we have right now.
> History would've gone differently; likely in a much, much better direction.
And now Saddam or Ghaddafi or Binladen or 9/11 planes could have been carrying fissile material stolen from poorly kept nukes in Ukraine at the USSR breakup. How is that a better direction?
This is the issue when people make short sighted emotional arguments without considering the second order effects of what their decisions would cause. It's like the trolley problem.
There will be other unintended outcomes from this. If the US can't be relied on as a military ally, then why should US clouds or the software it exports be trustworthy?
Couldn't the US government also kill all Windows workstations, iPhones or AWS servers? Of course they could.
Smaller companies or individuals may not care, but governments or bigger companies that are risk averse? Of course they'll care.
It's not an "open secret", it's a publicly known and legal fact that all countries retain export rights of the military HW they sell, not just the US.
If you want to re-sell the 100% made Swedish arms you already bought, to a third party, you'll also need Sweden's consent for that. This isn't a US exclusive thing.
Portugal hasn't cancelled any order, because there is none. There were initial talks about the F35 program, but no actual commitment. I agree on stepping away from the F35 (as it raises valid questions on the maintenance autonomy), but most media outlets got this incorrect - Portugal has not cancelled an order, it just said it wont be considering F35 anymore to replace our (fleet of 6, I think) F16.
The defense minister really said that, but we were not in formal negotation phase. I'm portuguese,and I actually fully support what was said (the minister of defense is not a popular guy)
> The US is clearly demonstrating it is an unreliable partner in defence.
This feels like exaggeration to me. How is the US an ‘unreliable partner’? Has any country had parts for their existing defense purchases restricted? This type of reaction to the US choosing to not spend its own taxpayer money or military equipment on a far away conflict doesn’t make sense.
If anything, the truth is the opposite. The other countries in NATO have been unreliable partners that did not meet their spending requirements. For example, Germany, France, and Canada all underspent but benefited from the US taxpayer spending a lot.
> Western nations cannot buy into a platform when its supplier might go from being a democratic part of the West to aligning with dictators and autocrats literally overnight.
The US is not aligning with dictators. Pushing for a resolution to a conflict that is costing the world hundreds of billions, not to mention huge amounts of Ukrainian lives, is the only reasonable path. The EU has literally no solution for this conflict - just complaints that America is now seeking resolution and doesn’t want to keep wasting money or lives.
Because you're buying a plane and the phone is an analogy. Separately, both iPhone and Android have essentially their full functionality available without *paying* for a subscription.
> both iPhone and Android have essentially their full functionality available without paying for a subscription.
This is untrue. iOS ships with several features that you cannot enable without government regulation or an annual developer fee.
Android is Open Source and therefore does have a full feature-set available free of charge. iOS undeniably ships with disabled entitlements that only paying users can access. Whether or not you consider these software limitations salient is debatable, but the fact they exist is concrete.
The F-35 is "essentially" full featured without American support, as long as the functionality you're referring to is the airfoil. We can make all sorts of silly definitions that confer innocence to OEMs, and many of them are both factually and practically wrong.
> Android is Open Source and therefore does have a full feature-set available free of charge.
This is assuming a pretty narrow definition of "full feature-set". It is a inacurrate to say there is feature parity between an Android phone running Google Play Services vs one that is not.
I think it’s broader than that: the entire U.S. tech industry has broad global influence due to our past reputation as a mostly-democratic, law-abiding country. Now everyone has to ask what Microsoft, Google, AWS, Red Hat, etc. would do to avoid risking their government contracts or possible consequences for their executives. Even in the open source world we have the Jia Tan example as something which must be in everyone’s threat model.
> Now everyone has to ask what Microsoft, Google, AWS, Red Hat, etc. would do to avoid risking their government contracts or possible consequences for their executives
As long as executive compensation is tied to stock performance, coorperations will only care about their stock price and the kinds of things that will affect it. I do not trust them regardless of who is in the White House. Their alignment of values/incentives is diametrically opposed to mine...
I’m not saying you should ever trust them completely but as UIP and the attacks on major law firms show we are now in a new, mob boss-like era where unambiguously illegal demands are not hypothetical. The threats we used to talk about were things like national security letters, which for all of their faults were at least a legal process administered by people who had some boundaries.
Especially when co-president Musk is tweeting that the F-35 is a dud and the US should leave NATO.
That's a double whammy for European countries who signed on to spend hundreds of billions on these planes in the belief that they're part of a NATO security umbrella. Now it seems like NATO will soon be in shambles and the planes might not even fly if that one drunk frat guy with Nazi tattoos running the Pentagon says so.
Finland bought F-35's recently, and the Finnish government is saying that nothing should change because America will hopefully be back to normal before the fighters are delivered. I don't think that kind of ostrich strategy is going to pay off.
Finland can't afford that kind of thing. It's a bit unique because it has a large and well-trained army (by European standards) but a smallish defense budget.
The Finnish military basically runs on the collective trauma of the last Russian invasion. There's a general conscription for male citizens, and reserve forces receive regular refresh training to keep their skills active. But you can't transform that kind of spirit into fighter planes.
I can’t find the article I read earlier. But they are working toward outside alliances also for military manufacturing with Canada, the UK and Japan and are explicitly excluding any US components.
Honestly, the annoyance probably extends beyond Lockheed Martin corporate.
It does not appear to have sunken in that damage to the F-35 export market will affect the per-unit cost of the F-35 and its parts for the US military. Given the amounts of money involved, it seems likely a really big abandonment of F-35 overseas will do more damage to the federal budget than all the oddball firings they're doing could offset.
TBH Lockmart F35 SaaS has been fucking over US DoD long before articles concerned over US fucking over foreign F35 operators. TLDR F35 operators beholden to uncle sam, but uncle sam has been beholden to lockmart fuckarounditis for the past 15 years. I think DoD would rather LM figure out ~2500 F35s the US plans to buy (75% of total) than a few 100 units by others.
The Commander of the Finnish Air Force gave an interview on the matter (Finland recently purchased 64 F-35As). He dismissed any concerns, of course – what else could he officially say?
> He expressed confidence that the United States and Lockheed Martin would ensure the operational capability of Finland’s F-35 fleet in all circumstances, given the decades-long partnership. He also noted that all modern weapons systems, including those used in Europe, contain software components primarily originating from the United States.
What he said amounts to “all modern weapons systems can be disabled at the whim of the United States”. And the reference to “years of partnership” highlights the sudden about-face that is now happening with respect to many of those partnerships.
These planes that we sell, not just the F-35, all come with a bevy of support from US folks. I have friends and family that travel that globe, visiting US allies, in order to support, train, and meet with counterparts in the respective countries to assist their use of US aircraft they purchase. These friends and fmaily also get flown around if there are any accidents or investigations involving these planes. The F-35 is just the next step in the "subscription service".
Being a bit proud of where i grew up I will posit the JAS 39 Gripen as a contender. Developed since the seventies and still in active production after six? revisions or so.
The Saab JAS 39E Gripen is fine for what it is, and perfectly capable of limited missions like homeland defense. But it's not survivable for penetrating strikes into defended airspace (i.e. Russia). And it's quite small which, while an advantage in some scenarios, means that if you load it up with external fuel tanks and ordinance for a long range strike mission then performance and efficiency goes to crap.
The Gripen is powered by the US-made GE F414 engine, so any purchases can still be vetoed by the US government and buyers will be dependent on US supply chains for maintenance.
Gripen has already been mentioned, but I've never heard a fact about SAAB's AJ-37 Viggen that didn't make me smile ear-to-ear:
> The aircraft was also designed from the beginning to be easy to repair and service, even for personnel without much training.
> The digital central computer was the first of its kind in the world, automating and taking over tasks previously requiring a navigator/copilot
> The airframe also incorporated a thrust reverser to use during landings and land manoeuvres, which [...] enabled operations from 500 m airstrips with minimal support.
> By the mid-1980s, Swedish Viggen fighter pilots [...] had managed to achieve radar lock-on with radar on the SR-71 on numerous occasions. Despite heavy jamming from the SR-71, target illumination was maintained by feeding target location from ground-based radars to the fire-control computer in the Viggen.
All around one of the coolest fighter jets ever made. Swedish engineering makes me eat my big fat American heart out every time.
However it used an engine based on the P&W JT8D which made it subject to US export approval. For this reason,for example, it lost a big export order to India.
SAAB had originally considered the British Olympus engine for the Viggen, which would have had higher fuel consumption but faster responsiveness and no export tangles.
From a European perspective, the Panavia Tornado. Was heavily involved in that project from an avionics perspective. To this day I learned more on that than I did at any startup, tech company or bullshit merchant. It was engineering at its finest.
>Software Updates: The F-35 is driven by complex software systems that require constant updates to maintain operational effectiveness, security, and functionality. Without these updates, the jet's capabilities degrade over time.
It's hilarious (really borderline treasonous) as a "joint strike fighter" program, no none US partners thought maybe they could secure some sort of sole-source provider deal to at least have some leverage. Well I think Martin Baker does all ejection seats.
This is why Israelis wrote their own software for the F-35I
Defense vendors backdooring/degrading/IFF-ing their products when sold for export has been a thing for many decades. Heck the UK sold enigma machines to a bunch of countries after WW2, specifically because they could break its code.
This issue is why there is a French and UK and Swedish (and Russian) defense industry.
The UK is the only Level 1 partner on the F-35 program and they are the sole source providers for several essential components. They have significant leverage.
Could that become a problem with any electronic product made by US companies? If their government demands Apple, Google & Co. to remotely brick computers, phones, and tablets for whatever reason, why should I bother buying them in the first place?
The "issues" described here seem to me to be basically just run-of-the-mill aquisitions considerations. Is anyone out there buying any kind of enterprize-grade hardware in any industry and not doing the due dilligence to consider operating costs over the lifetime of the unit? All technology of sufficient complexity requires a supply chain to be in place to support it. Folks are not just waking up today and realising those F-35s they bought will need to be supported or maintained.
The only thing remotely newsworthy here may be a story around a loss in global confidence in the US "brand", but I think the actual implications of that (if any) still remain to be seen....
Let's hope Europe finally starts developing their own again. It will be good for jobs and technical knowledge. Globalization can be good but for critical things like weapons or also chips, it's better to have capability at home.
I think Trump may be miscalculating the situation. The Ukraine war already caused a shift of some countries away from the West towards Russia/China. With Trump being so openly hostile towards former allies, the US may lose influence world wide.
Europe has the Eurofighter Typhoon and is working collectively on its successor. France has the Rafale. Even if the F-35 is superior, Europe has plenty of fighter tech to continue developing as a comparable platform. This is true for virtually all American military tech: Patriot/SAMPT, Abrams/Leopard, etc.
What Europe doesn't currently have is the production capacity to match American capacity, but that's exactly what they're changing now.
The other big thing I’m wondering about is how much the invasion of Ukraine has people reconsidering super-expensive fighters versus drones and missiles. It feels like the cost-benefit ratio has fundamentally shifted in a way everyone is still fully updating their tactics for.
I can't imagine the scale of doctrine rewriting that will be done over the next 10 years, constantly argued by companies like Lockheed Martin who are so heavily invested in large scale expensive platforms (while simultaneously drooling over new contracts for drones).
It's not just planes, either. WW3 was going to be a huge tank battle fought in Europe. I don't think we've seen the end of tanks, but I suspect we'll see them no longer being the central weapon around which combat formations are built.
It depends where those people are expecting to fight. Small drones have proven effective for defensive, attritional warfare on geographically constrained battlefields. But the US military is pivoting to fight China in an island hopping campaign in the western Pacific Ocean, where ranges are orders of magnitude longer and a little battery powered drone can't get anywhere. There it looks like super-expensive fighters will be the only way to accomplish the mission.
Yes - I’m just not sure _Europe_ is thinking that way. If your goal is deterring Russia and being able to handle other territorial defense roles, you aren't giving that the same weight.
The pacific theater is also complicated by the high support requirements and limited airfields, which China must have plans to attack early in any war. Again, if you’re primarily focused on defending Europe you have a much easier version of that problem because it’s your territory and most of it is land, not ocean.
> where ranges are orders of magnitude longer and a little battery powered drone can't get anywhere.
Why would that be? For one, they could be launched in swarms from shipping containers aboard many dispersed vessels.
If those vessels would be too suspicious and/or vulnerable at the time, they could still be launched from submarines, maybe themselves robotic, cheaper to manufacture. Or from something like a cruise missile, like a swarm of dandelions, from a swarm of cruise missiles, or whatever larger (disposable) drone-launching platform may emerge.
which is highly capable but a particularly bad choice for a developing country, especially one that has bad relations with the U.S. Iran showed great ingenuity in maintaining and upgrading the planes as well as missiles for them.
It’s on the order of 10 million lines of code running some very specialized, very complex hardware. The reason everyone was buying them is because it’s even more expensive to develop that on your own but I’d be surprised if there isn’t a lot of reconsideration going on now.
As a simple question, some people say there isn’t a “kill switch” which I’d bet is true in the sense that there isn’t an admin panel somewhere you could just ground Finland with but … how could you be confident about anything in a codebase that large? That’s even before you consider whether, say, the chaotic DOGE cuts haven’t created an opening for Russia or China to find something exploitable even if the original designers didn’t intend it to be.
The purchase of the Saab Gripen by Brazil also included a technology transfer component so the planes can be serviced and kept in shape without being dependent on Sweden. The plane engine is American so apparently they are able to influence sales through this as well as the normal bully/soft power/shenanigans the US use.
From my understanding, Israel pretty much did exactly this; however, I remember listening to a British military expert on Deutsche Welle explaining that when a nation reverse engineers the F-35, it locks them out of a lot of intelligence sharing from the US that keeps the F-35 military hardware functioning versus their opponents (Russia, Iran, China, etc). Keep in mind that as a nation develops new military capabilities, its opponents will react to this and switch up their own hardware/tactics so these updates are incredibly important to keep the fighter jet effective over time. Not as much of a problem for Israel since they have well established and funded intelligence agencies and a local military industry that can do this themselves. Their main opponents are also not as militarily capable as Europe's (Russia) so that probably plays a role as well.
I don't think it's a matter of reverse engineering. What I read indicated Israel paid the vendor for access to the source code, which makes a little more sense.
(the reason given was kind of interesting, involving a prediction that within a decade the stealth technology of fifth-gen fighters might very well be compromised by improved sensor and signal processing technology, and Israel wanted to stay on the pointy end of that)
There was a time when an Ally used to mean something—to be clear, it still does for the most part, despite the US Administration's shift away from its allies toward Russia.
An "Alliance" used to be built on core principles, trust, and alignment, it's not just a fancy word.
So the question is, why would an Ally of yours need to spend resources to reverse engineer technology you're willing to exchange with him, and vice versa?
Looking back, maybe it's not such a bad idea when an Ally shows signs of shifting to an adversarial position against you.
Or because Israel has sold technology to China before against the US's wishes.
Lockheed and its contractors have no interest in betting their intellectual property, nor the US in betting our national security advantage, to the whims of the current administration of whomever buys our F-35s. Therefore the avionics are constructed with robust anti-tampering/RE mechanisms. You can have them, but you can't make more or sell the secret sauce.
Leaks and property theft happen, both internally and on the outside - even the anecdotes of the War Thunder leaks are a good example of it.
With that said, it looks like what's happening is that Europe, Canada, and probably more to come, have no interest in betting their National Security on the whims of one guy pulling the rug on them, as Trump did to Ukraine to appease Putin.
The problem here isn't IP theft - it's about reliability.
The code was written by programmers working in shifts because LM was so late already. Probably easier to just rewrite than try to reverse engineer that crap.
I've read speculation about robocars that will drive themselves back to the dealership if you're late on a payment. An F-35 can operate as a big drone. They don't even have to send Maverick to repo it. On its next outing it can fly itself home at the administration's whim. Which may be inconvenient for the pilot, their wingman, their mission, etc.
The prospect of getting cut off is hardly theoretical: the US already partially halted support for Ukraine's F-16s (I'm not sure where this stands at this precise moment).
The US is clearly demonstrating it is an unreliable partner in defence. Western nations cannot buy into a platform when its supplier might go from being a democratic part of the West to aligning with dictators and autocrats literally overnight. This doesn't just mean that platforms like F-35 are vastly less desirable to Western militaries, it also means that other things we thought we could rely upon, like the nuclear umbrella, are also unreliable, which is likely to lead to nuclear proliferation.