For the first sales (Australia and either Norway or sweden, i dont remember), the US and lockheed Martin hid away the issues and lied on operating cost and availability.

For sales to NATO: you have to buy a plane that can carry the US bomb if you don't have one yourself (despite the fact that nukes will probably never be launched from aircrafts if at all).

For sales against competition, i don't have a lot of data, but you can check the Swiss 2022 competition between the F16, F18, Rafale, Gripen and F35, public data is scarce but basically, the Rafale and F18 would have been better on most points except VTOL and stealth. The choice however was probably economic (as while VTOL is nice, Swiss short airports are still longer than carriers, and stealth isn't that much of a factor in defense, especially in the Alps): they bought planes for less than half the price NATO countries did, and 60% of the money will be spent locally: basically 20% of the cost Germany and other NATO countries paid.

> despite the fact that nukes will probably never be launched from aircrafts if at all

"if at all": that's deterrence. I don't think any nuke-able aircraft small-country customer intent is to launch, but you gotta have the ability to.

"from aircrafts": when you have no submarines/silos and carting ground launch platforms around is impractical for your country, aircraft is the only remaining option to display deterrence factors.

Norway for sure, they have been in NATO since they helped found it in 1949. Us Swedes needed a while to think about it, and joined on March 7, 2024. Sweden does not have the F-35, since we build our own [1] multi-role military aircraft.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_JAS_39_Gripen

Typhoon would have been a good fit for Canada but the US vetoed it.