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.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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 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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
Readit News
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.
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.
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.
Technically, they don’t need permission, but if they want access to the documentation, that costs extra. And sometimes it’s not available at any cost.
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.
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.
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?
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_CF-105_Arrow
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.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2025/03/07/france-to-t...
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.
- North Korea which has comically bad diplomacy, but also nukes; rendering them un-invade-able.
- Even Canada faces threats to its sovereignty from its closest ally. Nukes would render this concern moot.
Dead Comment
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.
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.
Many countries are now reevaluating their US dependence and I'm sure it's a very high priority throughout the world to reduce or eliminate it.
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.
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.
Iran in olden times. Venezuela recently. I wonder who is next?
Also denial of certification for 'shared nukes' for Eurofighter comes to mind.
Why is the word 'imagine' necessary?
--
Also, love the advert at the bottom "Hate subscriptions?"
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.
Really? Everyone I know has a subscription to make a phone call on one of those devices.
Everyone I know has a subscription to an internet provider for the Wi-Fi.
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...
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.
I have hopes for BAE Tempest.
https://www.stimson.org/2024/eu-defense-this-time-might-be-d...
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.
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.
> 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.
https://yle.fi/a/74-20150575
“Yeah, we’re fucked now that the US is turning into a dictatorship and a Russian ally!”?
That’s a fast track to those kill switches being deployed on hardware delivery.
In hindsight, Gripen or Rafale would've been a much better option. But few saw how different US foreign policy would soon get.
(I'm going to start thinking of my big ThinkPad T520 as an F-15E.)
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.
> 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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_37_Viggen
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.
Why it degrades? Any examples of that?
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.
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/how-much-of-the-f-35-is-brit...