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.

▲ lloeki 7 months ago | parent | next [-]

> 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.

▲

orwin 7 months ago | parent [-]

If the US need Belgium planes to launch nukes, well, europe is truly fucked anyway.

If the US had the French doctrine i.e. any army moving toward France's strategic assets will be targeted with a "warning" shot (yes, the warning shot is to be nuclear), but it does not, US nuclear force is for retaliation only. It will never be launched from planes in the foreseeable future. Which is more than the operational lifetime of F35.

No, this is bully tactics and frankly i really, really hope that Trump dissolve NATO so Belgium don't have to buy planes that can fly 30% of the time.

	▲	EasyMark 7 months ago \| parent [-]
		Whatever money it saves over the short term for a country, dissolving NATO is a big blank check for Putin and Xi to whatever, whenever they want, including (attempted) genocide of “previous” NATO countries, like what is happening in Ukraine.

▲ unwind 7 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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

▲ JohnBooty 7 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

    stealth isn't that much of a factor in defense, especially in the Alps

I'm far from an expert. Can you elaborate?

I know that mountains can help planes evade radar and missiles.

But any fighters used in a defense role (against Russia presumably) are definitely going to need to contend with (Russia's apparently rather capable) air to air missiles.

I think they might well need to deal with SAM as well. Sx00 batteries are portable and presumably an invading Russian force would be bringing them along for the ride with ground forces. So I don't know; stealth seems like one of the most important things these days, if you're planning on engaging anybody with modern air to air missiles.

	▲	orwin 7 months ago \| parent [-]
		If you only have to contend in air battle and do not need ground control, like in a mountainous area, multipurpose jets will likely act as mobile SAM batteries. The range of METEOR missiles make it unlikely that your plane will be detected before it has time to launch, and even then, will be out of range of SAMs. The issue is that stealth mostly make sense on SEAD/DEAD (where frankly, BVR missiles and AWACS make even more sense), or bombing runs. It isn't useful in CAS where having more ordonance is better (if your enemy only have manpads and VSHORAD you are safe with any modern plane), only SHORAD with more than 15km range are threatening, and nowaday you have missiles that will target those from a longer range. Just equip yourself with those, destroy SHORAD SAM/Radars with ARMs, engage enemy army with Apaches (or if you have the means, LORA), go back, refuel, go again (that, you can't do with f35 in Beast mode, because they overheat. Other plane have refueling issues too, but none of them have that long of a downtime between runs) Overall, i really dislike the idea of multipurpose stealth jets: it limit your electronic warfare capacity (the issues with the new f35 radar array were caused by its nose profile), it isn't usefull for real CAS, and it greatly increase costs. To me, you can go two ways. The first would be multiple costly, but dedicated planes that will be superior to your ennemy in their field: the F22, or the B2 (or the A-10). I even like the B21 concept, i'm not anti-US planes, i like the f35 engine (well, no, not really, i think it isn't safe, and make emergency landing extremely dangerous, but i like the principle behind), i dislike the motivation or idea behind the f35. The other planes the USAF have are great, and have reasons to be as they are. The second would be to have a multirole jet, cheap, with high availability, easy to maintain, to train all of your pilot on it (with 200 real flying hours/year, not simulator, wink wink Russia). Unless you fight the USA, this will likely be enough to at least give you a fighting chance. stealth here is just another cost factor that will lead you to have less planes, less pilots, and more operating costs. The reason Switzerland chose the f35 is that it was sold at 45% of its original cost, and with the promise to have 60% of that cost spent locally, to swiss industry.

▲ rjsw 7 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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

▲ numpad0 7 months ago | parent | prev [-]

> stealth isn't that much of a factor in defense, especially in the Alps

I'm confident that DCS and War Thunder pilots would disagree to that