The article doesn't mention it, but there is an increasing worry that the USA could remotely disable some jet functionalities at will, or that any basic operation should be monitored and approved by them. So, this is not a reliable weapon that any country would like, unless the politicians agree to be vassals for life.
randunel · 2h ago
The US also stated that they "tone them down 10%" when selling them to other countries.
2OEH8eoCRo0 · 2h ago
Cite a source please.
potatolicious · 2h ago
You can literally just Google this, there are many sources. Literally the top of the Google results:
All of these are in the top-10 first results when you search for this.
dunham · 2h ago
All of those links appear to be discussing the F-47 and this thread is discussing the F-35.
Delk · 1h ago
To be fair, the exact sentence is "we like to tone them down about 10%", which suggests a more common practice rather than only a plan specifically for the F-47.
Of course it's also a quote from Trump, so who knows how much of it is from his random sentence generator. Although I'd guess he's quoting another official or someone from the defence industry.
7jjjjjjj · 3h ago
Even if there isn't a literal kill switch, there might as well be. Without a constant stream of maintenence and operations support from the USA there things are no good.
cpursley · 3h ago
And the F-35 is very very high maintenance. Requires much more ground maintenance time that it's predecessors or competitors. That's a real problem in an active combat situation because it means less plans in the sky.
fooblaster · 2h ago
It actually requires substantially less maintenance time if you look at the equivalent force it replaces, for example the associated awacs capability needed for a sortie for previous gen fighters.
Honestly, it's just absurd to think that any jet fighter is somehow low maintenance. The issue here isn't the f35, it's the host country becoming a unreliable/hostile partner.
bigyabai · 1h ago
> if you look at the equivalent force it replaces
And what if you look at the equivalent force it's competing with on the market? It's a bit pricey once you factor in CAS and supersonic interceptors to fill the gaps.
> The issue here isn't the f35, it's the host country becoming a unreliable/hostile partner.
Here? The issue is the F-35. What happened to Pakistan's F-16s when America became an unreliable/hostile partner to them? They kept flying them for decades, that's what happened. Same with Ukraine's Su-27s, Iran's F-14s, North Korea's MiG-29s... plenty of countries keep other nation's keepsakes in the air. The jet abides.
The F-35 has to be bought as a subscription package, you can't "own" features like sensor fusion without the US' consent. All but one nation has been denied the right to modify the airframe, everyone else is basically just renting the jet with permission to go eat an R-77T when the time comes.
spwa4 · 2h ago
Apparently one aspect has to do with the inevitable result of a what a stealth fighter is: it can deploy weapons far further than it can see. So without comlinks with intelligence from a specific satellite system, it loses half its features.
Second for the on-board radars to evade detection they need to be reprogrammed with the latest updates regularly. Not so much because the programming has a kill switch but because otherwise "adversaries" could still turn out to have rockets that can home in on an F-35.
And even in the case of the US, you don't have to shoot down that many F-35s to get them all.
2OEH8eoCRo0 · 2h ago
Exactly. I doubt there are literal kill switches but if the US stops supporting you there doesn't need to be.
scott_w · 3h ago
Yep, I think people arguing “there is no kill switch” miss this point. There doesn’t need to be if the lack of updates makes an F-35 an expensive, inferior version of a jet they could buy elsewhere!
antonymoose · 3h ago
Sure, but in any case the nations buying the F-35 are so tied at the hip to the United States it would be fantasy to expect them to break off in any meaningful timeframe relative to the lifespan of the plane.
Beyond that, is there a viable competitor available for an US allied nation to purchase?
cm2187 · 2h ago
I don't think the concern is that they would turn hostile to the US, but rather that they would need to strike a country that for one reason or another, the US doesn't want them to strike (though of course you also have to weight the risk of a coup and of a hostile regime coming to power into a formerly friendly country).
Fictitious scenarios: let's say the US sells F35 to Taiwan. China tries to invade Taiwan. Taiwan wants to use the F35 to fight Chinese forces. China makes a deal with the US to limit the economic impact on the US of the invasion of Taiwan, and the US president of the time thinks maintaining a good trade relationship with China is more important than Taiwan remaining an independent democracy, and will therefore curb Taiwan's ability to use those F35. Not completely far fetched. Doesn't mean Taiwan has gone rogue.
The US tries to keep good relationship with Pakistan, while at the same time considering selling some weapons to India. You can imagine why India would prefer the older French Rafale (the French are much less demanding about what you do with their weapons, though there is the precedent of helping the UK with the Exocet it sold to Argentina during the Falklands war). The middle east is also full of those complex relationships.
mongol · 2h ago
> Beyond that, is there a viable competitor available for an US allied nation to purchase?
US allied is a concept that is quickly losing its meaning. As the current administration no longer treats allies as allies, most European fighters are more viable
maksimur · 2h ago
> Beyond that, is there a viable competitor available for an US allied nation to purchase?
Not available yet, but Korean KF-21 and Turkish Kaan/TF-X (which Spain is thinking about buying/co-producing IIRC), though they're both considered 4.5th gen fighter jets rather than 5th like the F-35.
xdennis · 2h ago
> Beyond that, is there a viable competitor available for an US allied nation to purchase?
Rafale, Typhoon, Gripen. None are as good as the F35, but all are better alternatives to a bricked airplane.
Trump already demonstrated how even older models (F16 given by Europeans) can be bricked in Ukraine simply by not providing support.
spwa4 · 2h ago
Military procurement is not about what is the best system, it is about who gets the money.
Plus every other party has far inferior fighters to "the West" anyway. And then you calculate ... you are not going to successfully defend against the F-35 in a war with the US. Not going to happen. Against Russia/China or anyone else ... every fighter jet will do fine, so take the cheapest.
The US got guaranteed this business because of international treaties ... which Trump has abandoned. But no worries, I'm sure he'll just make a "deal" and fix things again, right? Meanwhile I suggest you invest in EU weapons manufacturers, who are a lot cheaper than the US ones.
cm2187 · 2h ago
Well, technically Pakistan shot a Indian Rafale with a Chinese made missile a few months ago, which created some consternation in France. I heard the French explaining it away, as India trying to bomb some Pakistani territory without hitting the Pakistani military, hence putting their jet fighters in unecessary harm's way. I am not qualified to draw my own conclusions on the quality of Chinese weapons but it seems to imply they can certainly do significant damage.
slaw · 1h ago
Rafale was shot down by J-10 plane using PL-15 missile.
Rafale, Eurofighter and J-10 are old 20+ years designs.
Europe has nothing equivalent to Chinese J-35 or even previous generation J-20.
> Against Russia/China or anyone else ... every fighter jet will do fine
Will it though? Underestimating your (potential) enemies might not be the smartest idea. Of course as the war in Ukraine has shown jet fighters might not even be that relevant anymore if you can't take our your opponents air defenses.
slaw · 2h ago
None of European jet fighters can stand against Chinese, but China is far away.
daviding · 3h ago
Up here in Canada it's a question of trust, or rather the lack of it. Things are unlikely to ever go back to the way things were.
Buy, make and domestically develop drones, lots and lots of drones.
buildsjets · 3h ago
Canada should build their own air superiority fighter, with hookers and blackjack. They can call it the Avro Arrow.
So the question becomes whether these countries truly want to move off of the platform, or if this is all more of a bargaining chip in the trade negotiations.
JD Vance pretty much single-handedly destroyed most trust in the US in with his speech at the Munich Security Conference. Europe (and probably Canada and Australia) were shaken for days after it and realized that the US is not a reliable ally (or even not an ally) anymore. This was confirmed by the disastrous meeting with Zelensky in the White House and the US stopping to provide intelligence to Ukraine and F-16 updates (F-16s which were provided by European countries, not the US).
The pathetic little show you saw at the White House last week (with Macron, Mertz, etc.) is just a strategy to appease the US as long as needed so that the Europe can speed up its own weapon's production, increase independence, etc. It's damage control. The reason countries have stopped buying the F-35 is because nobody trusts the US anymore. And one or two sane presidents are not going to fix it (the US elected Trump a second time after all).
kjkjadksj · 2h ago
It is interesting how it is basically an indictment on the ability of the american people to manage their hard and soft power and military capability. That being said, populist right wing movements are taking root in europe as well. This threatens long term strategic planning in general, not just with the US, when critical positions of world power are replaced every few years by a subset of the population increasingly liable to propaganda influence granted by technology. In some ways regimes like North Korea are the most stable on earth due to careful control of the reigns of power and lack of any possibility of inroads for third party influence.
abletonlive · 2h ago
It's crazy that you're acting like this is some kind of policy failure for the US, when this administration has been telling Europe it shouldn't rely on the United States at this level. This isn't some "gotcha" that you're describing, it's exactly what the administration wanted europe to do. Wake up and start innovating instead of being the Disneyland for American tourists.
smodo · 2h ago
Us Europeans are just baffled by the fact that this ‘administration’ wants this. The EU is a big economy that’s relatively easy to deal with. Why would you alienate us?
But yeah so far Trump has been relatively true to his word, as far as it goes. Not really practically but going further down the road of a dare I say fascist outlook. I think Europeans still can’t believe it’s happening, much less intentionally so.
abletonlive · 2h ago
> The EU is a big economy that’s relatively easy to deal with. Why would you alienate us?
Easy to deal with? We basically subsidize your entire existence. The fact that you can't understand this is exactly why this administration is doing this. We have too many problems at home to be daddy with a credit card.
At every level Europe is getting in the way of the US mindset of building and pushing forward. You "regulate" our tech companies, which let's be honest here, is a euphemism for extortion. You try to destroy moats that innovators have risked everything to build, not in the name of competition or an egalitarian society, because you believe that excellence is not worthy of being rewarded. Your culture has the mindset that excellence is not a product of hard work and determination, it's a product of luck and nepotism, so any hint of excellence gets taken away and diminished. It's a coping mechanism for your own lack at a society scale. Your people are snobby and literally think you're better than us while we pump trillions into your economies.
And what do you have to offer us? Tourist destinations and luxury goods? No thanks.
Without us it will quickly become apparent what your society is behind all of that exuberance and arrogance. Your right wing will become a problem again in decades and you will revert back to the endless wars with your neighbors in territorial disputes.
danieldk · 1h ago
You are effectively saying that Europe should be a vassal state to the US and cannot have its own laws. Europe has a different vision on privacy and competition. The regulation asks for e.g. Apple are peanuts compared to what China asks. Apple bends back over to please China, but if Europe has some requirements for doing business part of the US do the tired trope “US innovates, Europe regulates”.
We have too many problems at home to be daddy with a credit card.
First, this is rich for a country living on borrowed money (that they can only get away with because the rest of the world uses it as the default currency).
Second, a lot of the problems of the US are caused by the lack of proper wealth redistribution, lack of efficient health care (no, the US doesn’t subsidize European healthcare, European countries spend far less on healthcare with better outcomes). It’s not solved by throwing lifelong allies under the bus and trading the for some dictator friends.
Finally, the security situation also arisen because the US did not want European militaries to become too powerful and has pushed a lot to be dependent on the US and US tech. For instance, countries have to buy US fighters for nuclear sharing, etc. The primary exception is France because they never wanted to be reliant and have their own nuclear force, etc.
Also let’s not forget Article 5 was only invoked once (by the US) and we were happy to help, because that’s what friends do. We have been in Afghanistan for over 20 years as a result and a lot of our soldiers died and were injured.
dingnuts · 2h ago
I don't know why Europe wants so badly to be reliant on the US. It's bad for them, it's bad for us. It's embarrassing for Europe that Ukraine is relying on the US instead of Europe for defense. It's embarrassing for Europe how little they contribute to NATO. The US isn't a partner, it's a caretaker. And as they say, if someone provides what you need, they also have the power to take it away.
Outsourcing your defense is stuupiiid.
Europe should be thanking Trump for waking them up to the reality that has always been the case through his boorish negotiation.
jltsiren · 2h ago
Defense is a bit like advertising or finance. It has some aspects of a zero-sum game and a negative-sum game. All the money you invest in it is wasted. But if your enemy/competitor chooses to waste more money, you may be in trouble.
From an European perspective, the entire purpose of NATO from 1992 to 2022 was to prevent wasting too much money on defense. Because, for some reason, Americans were willing to do it instead.
Then Russia invaded Ukraine, and the calculus changed. Now European countries are rebuilding their defensive capabilities, while Russia is still bogged down in Ukraine. Given the lack of credible short-term threats, limiting defense spending was clearly the right choice until 2022.
tobias3 · 16m ago
Also it makes sense to have a capability only once within an alliance. If the US has the command, space and air capabilities, why would anyone else need to have this. You can add to their capability by buying F-35s and hosting their air bases.
Now that we are not allies anymore we need to wastefully build up our own command, space and air capabilties resulting in duplicated effort.
AnimalMuppet · 2h ago
After Russia took Crimea and part of the east of Ukraine in 2014, I'm not sure that calculus was valid.
danieldk · 1h ago
Yeah, spending also started increasing steeply since 2014 already, 2022 only accelerated it.
So it’s true that Europe/Canada spent less, but it comes with a bit fat asterisk that the US also wants to project power in the pacific/Asia, whereas European defense is primarily focused on avoiding Russian aggression (+ peace missions + supporting the US in various operations to give them more legitimacy).
Europe should be thanking Trump for waking them up to the reality that has always been the case through his boorish negotiation.
That credit should go to Putin, European spending has grown rapidly since the annexation of crimea.
The credit the Trump should get: stop buying US weapons as quickly as we can and focus on non-US alternatives. It’s going to take a while, but US material has certainly become less attractive.
samdoesnothing · 3h ago
Maybe if there was some political will for building stuff but there isn't. Canada should be an absolute AI and energy powerhouse, but our politicians are some of the most incompetent buffoons on the planet.
biglyburrito · 1h ago
Also, there's Alberta.
anigbrowl · 2h ago
I don't know enough about Canada to know if this is a reasonable take or not, but I think you'd get downvoted less if you took a few sentences to articulate what the politicians' main failings are.
Animats · 2h ago
It's a real issue. The overall world reaction to Trump's policies has been to take steps to do without the US. That's just getting rolling, but it's happening. Canada exports oil to China now.[1] China's trade with Asia is up, and trade with the US is down.[2]
Supply chains are slowly changing to cut the US out of the loop. The US is seen as an unreliable trading partner.
It's hitting software. "Dutch Parliament Calls for End to Reliance on US Software".[3]
I always thought Trump missed an important concept with his 'who pays for NATO' rhetoric. A huge amount of NATO spending from Europe was going to US arms companies, so the US benefited massively. Now the US is an unreliable ally, that money will go back into Europe. And even when Trump is gone, governments will still remember that their sovereignty can't depend on the whims of the US. This damage will last a generation. Personally I think this will be an eventual benefit for Europe, who seem quite capable of making advanced weapons when they have to.
leoh · 2h ago
Sounds about right.
pointlessone · 2h ago
It’s not about trade. Trump and his administration pulled Ukraine aid on multiple occasions. They halted intelligence sharing for like a day and a half and that let Russia retake Kursk region.
Once a solid partner Trump turned USA into an unpredictable dependency that can change allegiance at a drop of a hat.
And "the best weapons” USA sells are best not because of hardware but because of the services that pull the hardware together. Patriots, F-35, even Abrams are all so good because they’re all networked and work together. If the service is cut it all become much more expensive and so much less usable than competition from Europe.
So while technically Mirages, Grippens, Typhoons, and whatnot are a bit less advanced than F-35, now they seem much more reliable.
Bratmon · 3h ago
The irony is that if the countries that pull out of the F-35 program buy jets that actually function instead (and aren't just a $2 trillion piece of scrap metal), this trade war might be what saves democracy.
mpyne · 2h ago
F-35 functions fine, lots of its problems relate to things like its logistical tail and associated IT system pain points that you'd have to solve with a different plane than F-35 either way, but I can't argue against the fact that a lot of countries are having to wake up to the reality of meeting their defense needs in much different ways than you'd have thought in 2015.
mrweasel · 2h ago
That's just not what's happening, at least for some of the countries. Spain is rejecting the F-35 for the EuroFigther (which is the plane they already operate) and Tempest (which doesn't exists yet). So in that case it's not that they are buying jets from competitors, they just aren't buying anything. In this case it feels much more like the Spanish government not really wanting to spend the money, or can't afford it, and Trump is just a convenient scapegoat.
toomuchtodo · 1h ago
Why would you transact with a country for defense infrastructure that will use force against you whenever they deem it necessary for leverage and power in a transaction? Better to replan and retool for sovereignty even if it means you lack some capability in the near term.
noxer · 36m ago
The article seems deliberately misleading for example the "F-5s, which the U.S. Air Force retired out of service in 1990" is of course still in use in the Navy and Marine as well as in China, South Korea, Iran, Brazil and probably other countries.
Also the F-35 is an always was highly controversial in Switzerland from the very first day it was publicly considered that was around 2017.
In 2020 the people voted in favor of the F-35 with 50.1% support. So the reality is that any and all reasons to stop or delay the purchase of these jets will be uses by the parties that opposed the purchase, it has little to nothing to do with the so called "trade war".
atoav · 3h ago
In most European countries I have traveled to during the past months the popular opinion regarding the US is that we have to operate under the worst-case-assumption that the US won't assist or would even actively use their tech as leverage in the case of a conflict.
That was unthinkable a year ago, but it is now. Given that it is probably better to roll your own in the mid/long term and not rely overly on US tech.
cm2187 · 2h ago
Though technically France always worked on that assumption. Or rather, that the US would support France against a soviet invasion up to a certain level, but wouldn't risk a nuclear war for France's pretty eyes. Hence the will to have no other finger than the French president's finger on its red button.
And to be honest that's the only way it can ever be. I don't understand France's talk about extending its nuclear deterence to the rest of Europe. Those european countries can no more rely on France than France can rely on the US in those extreme scenarios. Nuclear deterence is like the bee's sting. It will die if it uses it, but it's because you know it will use it that you tread carefully.
neilv · 2h ago
Maybe this post is buried because more comments than upvotes?
Don't forget to upvote if you comment, unless you want the post to be buried?
119. The F-35 is losing the trade war (jalopnik.com)
45 points by rntn 1 hour ago | unvote | flag | hide | 65 comments
bigyabai · 3h ago
taps the sign
The F-35's Defining Characteristic Is Surviving Hostile Airspace
Most nations don't need an F-35. They want to protect their own airspace, intercept potential threats and minimize the cost-per-mission for their operations. The sort of power projection afforded by a Joint Strike Fighter just isn't worth the cost to most nations - unless you're intent on molesting hostile airspace it's kinda a waste of taxpayer money. The existence of the F-35 is a byproduct of imperial ambition that few peer powers can match.
scott_w · 3h ago
I think you’re missing something huge: when you’re under attack, YOUR OWN AIRSPACE can become hostile if you don’t fight to gain air superiority. NATO doctrine prioritises air superiority for good reason.
bigyabai · 3h ago
No number of stealth planes will help you regain the advantage in that scenario if your ground assets can't support them. If your own airspace is hostile and your ground radars/SAM systems are disabled, then your CAP/supremacy mission has already failed.
scott_w · 3h ago
The two aren’t separate. If your jets can’t defend your ground assets then they’re likely to go boom. One way you can do this is to send your jets into enemy airspace and make their ground assets go boom, forcing them to keep jets in their own territory to stop that.
cpursley · 3h ago
How can a jet protect ground assets in the age of hypersonic weapons systems and drones? Anyways, isn't that the job of ground air defense?
stoltzmann · 2h ago
By for example destroying the enemy launch platforms. By intercepting enemy flights that would deploy those weapons. And specifically in case of F-35s, also by providing ELINT.
"Hypersonic" weapons used in current conflicts are nothing more than a glorified long range missiles that are useless if you can't launch them from the air. They're also currently statistically not significant due to their low amounts.
cpursley · 2h ago
They seem to be taking out their targets (IRIS-T the other day went boom - was taken out by a sea based variant). We should probably consider getting some of those glorified systems going and to our allies as well. Ditto on the air defense side where we lag. While jet-planes are cool, pilotless systems are the future and that ranges from ML-enabled drones to faster arrows.
bigyabai · 2h ago
This is closer to how things worked in WWII, but not the Cold War or especially modern (eg. India vs. Pakistan) air combat. The ground attack role has largely shifted towards precision artillery and guided standoff-range munitions. You don't need a jet to attack ground assets, and you most definitely can't rely on a jet to defend against rocket artillery or FPV drones.
In any case, you're really just proving my point. Yes, an F-35 can "win" a conflict in a day by flying into enemy airspace undetected and bombing their presidential convoy. That's the sort of interventionist politicking that sickens everyone who isn't American or Israeli.
colinb · 2h ago
Your assumption is that the only thing that stops someone from bombing the US or Israel is moral scruple? I'm not interested in arguing who-went-first or root causes, because that can go on all day, and we all already believe that we know the answer. But really? You don't think Iran would've bombed the US, or Israel in a heartbeat if it had the means? You don't think the Huthis would bomb the Saudis if they could? You don't think the IRA would mortar the hotel where the British Prime Minister was sleeping if they could? Ooops. Of course, they actually did that.
I don't actually know enough to hold an informed opinion on the F35 and all this other war-porn [though my inner 10 year old thinks it is kinda technically cool] but the politics you bring forth are sickening to anyone who tries to remember /all/ the bad things, not just the ones done by people we don't like.
siliconc0w · 3h ago
It also compromises your sovereignty since you cannot operate them without US assistance. These days that is a deal breaker.
scott_w · 3h ago
I think this is the biggest factor. Comments about the USA potentially cutting access to software updates could have cooled interest. The UK is the only country that can operate F-35 semi-independently (our government bought the system to run our own updates).
I’ve seen people point out that the F-35 is still better than anything else you could buy but an inferior jet is probably better than an F-35 with no targeting information!
abletonlive · 2h ago
Insanely short sighted. If all you need to do is "intercept potential threats" instead of dealing with a real threat when it becomes apparent then just send a balloon.
n4r9 · 3h ago
Which aircraft models would be more suitable for European countries to give a deterrent against potential threats like Russia?
mrweasel · 2h ago
While I'd generally say that the F-35 is probably the best (one of the best) option for countries like my own (Denmark), who need/want a plane that can do a bit of everything, we also need to see what's happening in Ukraine.
If you have a large country and can hide your airfields hundreds of kilometers from the front, the F-16, Rafale, EuroFigther and the F-35 are all fine, but you have more options with the F-35. If you're a small country, like the Baltics, or Denmark, they are a silly choices if you expect to fight a battle at home. You simply don't have anywhere to service the planes after missiles and drones take out your three airfield equipped for the F-35. In those cases the SAAB Gripen is a much better choice. You can service is straight of a highway with basic tools and conscripts. It's also a plane designed to fight Russia, so if that the enemy you expect, it's fine.
xdennis · 2h ago
> Which aircraft models would be more suitable for European countries to give a deterrent against potential threats like Russia?
Ironically, S300's from Russia. That's what Ukraine used to deny Russia air superiority. You can fight the orcs with orc weapons but you cannot fight them with American made airplanes because the US can stop support at any time.
bigyabai · 3h ago
The F-16 is cheap, attritable, highly available, and occupies a similar multirole mission profile as the F-35. It should be able to launch the same standoff munitions, albeit from a slightly further distance to avoid detection. It's likely they can be bought secondhand for ~1/10th the price of an F-35 and equipped with MBDA Meteor/IRIS missiles for a mean air patrol payload.
More realistically though, I'd imagine many European nations are eying twin-engine multirole fighters like the Rafale and Eurofighter. These have a larger range and payload than the F-35, bigger radars and pylons and the all-important high top-speed (mach-2 intercepts are a must-have bordering Russia). These can be had cheaper than the F-35 and are generally better suited to a high intensity inland conflict.
maciejw · 2h ago
Thailand invested in Swedish Gripen recently.
izacus · 3h ago
Can you explain this "don't need" concept?
richardw · 2h ago
Temporarily. At some point all the allies need world class kit. They just can’t buy it from the US exclusively. But they have committed to higher defence spending. That problem solves itself over time, especially when the world’s researchers are now looking for a safer home than under this administration.
TL;DR: you don’t need a world class jet when you trust your partner 100%. Anything less than 100, collaborate fast to overcome the limitation.
toomuchtodo · 3h ago
It’s kind of wild to watch the US squander its allies trust and therefore ability to project force globally as every other country that would’ve bought this weapons platform finds an alternative, leaving the US to shoulder the entire program cost burden.
Who could’ve ever foreseen these consequences? /s
varispeed · 3h ago
It's not the trade war, but the fact US administration is run by Russian assets.
E.g. it's pure coincidence that few months into Trump's rule, Russia suddenly can overcome Patriot systems.
Basically US industry is compromised and nobody with brain cells is going to buy American weapons any time soon.
mnky9800n · 2h ago
Can you say where you read about Russia suddenly overcoming patriot systems
I saw this too. America pretty much selling, giving away their near-deprecated toys.
themafia · 2h ago
Perhaps Ukraine's military is not as good at keeping secrecy as the US would be against Russia.
Maybe we don't need to invent entire international conspiracy theories to explain something this basic.
Weapon systems have a shelf life. The longer they're deployed in the field the shorter that life is.
hagbard_c · 2h ago
> the fact US administration is run by Russian assets.
fact
noun [ C or U ]
UK /fækt/
US /fækt/
something that is known to have happened or to exist,
especially something for which proof exists, or about
which there is information
Could you provide the proof for the current US administration being staffed by Russian assets? By proof I do not mean '...as seen on TV...' or '...as written in The Guardian...' or '...as said on MSBNC...' but proof:
proof
noun
UK /pruːf/
US /pruːf/
proof noun (SHOWING TRUTH)
a fact or piece of information that shows that something
exists or is true
If you can not produce such proof - which would be odd given that you proclaimed this to be a fact - I suggest you refrain from using such inflammatory terminology to keep the discourse from erupting into even more partisan hackery.
varispeed · 13m ago
You’re demanding a sealed dossier, which is an absurd standard for public discourse. The ‘proof’ is in the public record of actions and consequences.
- Give concessions without return (walking away from long-negotiated agreements, reducing deployments unilaterally).
- Sideline national security and intelligence professionals who oppose the adversary’s interests.
- Stoke domestic instability that distracts and weakens national unity.
When these patterns converge, you don’t need classified files to hear the smoke alarm. My point stands: U.S. weapons are a hard sell when its own foreign policy works against its strategic interests.
Btw. Your command of English is very good, comrade.
[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/21/trump-boeing-stealt...
[2] https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2025-03-2...
The exact transcript is here:
[3] https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/transcript/donald-trump-...
All of these are in the top-10 first results when you search for this.
Of course it's also a quote from Trump, so who knows how much of it is from his random sentence generator. Although I'd guess he's quoting another official or someone from the defence industry.
Honestly, it's just absurd to think that any jet fighter is somehow low maintenance. The issue here isn't the f35, it's the host country becoming a unreliable/hostile partner.
And what if you look at the equivalent force it's competing with on the market? It's a bit pricey once you factor in CAS and supersonic interceptors to fill the gaps.
> The issue here isn't the f35, it's the host country becoming a unreliable/hostile partner.
Here? The issue is the F-35. What happened to Pakistan's F-16s when America became an unreliable/hostile partner to them? They kept flying them for decades, that's what happened. Same with Ukraine's Su-27s, Iran's F-14s, North Korea's MiG-29s... plenty of countries keep other nation's keepsakes in the air. The jet abides.
The F-35 has to be bought as a subscription package, you can't "own" features like sensor fusion without the US' consent. All but one nation has been denied the right to modify the airframe, everyone else is basically just renting the jet with permission to go eat an R-77T when the time comes.
Second for the on-board radars to evade detection they need to be reprogrammed with the latest updates regularly. Not so much because the programming has a kill switch but because otherwise "adversaries" could still turn out to have rockets that can home in on an F-35.
And even in the case of the US, you don't have to shoot down that many F-35s to get them all.
Beyond that, is there a viable competitor available for an US allied nation to purchase?
Fictitious scenarios: let's say the US sells F35 to Taiwan. China tries to invade Taiwan. Taiwan wants to use the F35 to fight Chinese forces. China makes a deal with the US to limit the economic impact on the US of the invasion of Taiwan, and the US president of the time thinks maintaining a good trade relationship with China is more important than Taiwan remaining an independent democracy, and will therefore curb Taiwan's ability to use those F35. Not completely far fetched. Doesn't mean Taiwan has gone rogue.
The US tries to keep good relationship with Pakistan, while at the same time considering selling some weapons to India. You can imagine why India would prefer the older French Rafale (the French are much less demanding about what you do with their weapons, though there is the precedent of helping the UK with the Exocet it sold to Argentina during the Falklands war). The middle east is also full of those complex relationships.
US allied is a concept that is quickly losing its meaning. As the current administration no longer treats allies as allies, most European fighters are more viable
Not available yet, but Korean KF-21 and Turkish Kaan/TF-X (which Spain is thinking about buying/co-producing IIRC), though they're both considered 4.5th gen fighter jets rather than 5th like the F-35.
Rafale, Typhoon, Gripen. None are as good as the F35, but all are better alternatives to a bricked airplane.
Trump already demonstrated how even older models (F16 given by Europeans) can be bricked in Ukraine simply by not providing support.
Plus every other party has far inferior fighters to "the West" anyway. And then you calculate ... you are not going to successfully defend against the F-35 in a war with the US. Not going to happen. Against Russia/China or anyone else ... every fighter jet will do fine, so take the cheapest.
The US got guaranteed this business because of international treaties ... which Trump has abandoned. But no worries, I'm sure he'll just make a "deal" and fix things again, right? Meanwhile I suggest you invest in EU weapons manufacturers, who are a lot cheaper than the US ones.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenyang_J-35
Will it though? Underestimating your (potential) enemies might not be the smartest idea. Of course as the war in Ukraine has shown jet fighters might not even be that relevant anymore if you can't take our your opponents air defenses.
Buy, make and domestically develop drones, lots and lots of drones.
So the question becomes whether these countries truly want to move off of the platform, or if this is all more of a bargaining chip in the trade negotiations.
JD Vance pretty much single-handedly destroyed most trust in the US in with his speech at the Munich Security Conference. Europe (and probably Canada and Australia) were shaken for days after it and realized that the US is not a reliable ally (or even not an ally) anymore. This was confirmed by the disastrous meeting with Zelensky in the White House and the US stopping to provide intelligence to Ukraine and F-16 updates (F-16s which were provided by European countries, not the US).
The pathetic little show you saw at the White House last week (with Macron, Mertz, etc.) is just a strategy to appease the US as long as needed so that the Europe can speed up its own weapon's production, increase independence, etc. It's damage control. The reason countries have stopped buying the F-35 is because nobody trusts the US anymore. And one or two sane presidents are not going to fix it (the US elected Trump a second time after all).
But yeah so far Trump has been relatively true to his word, as far as it goes. Not really practically but going further down the road of a dare I say fascist outlook. I think Europeans still can’t believe it’s happening, much less intentionally so.
Easy to deal with? We basically subsidize your entire existence. The fact that you can't understand this is exactly why this administration is doing this. We have too many problems at home to be daddy with a credit card.
At every level Europe is getting in the way of the US mindset of building and pushing forward. You "regulate" our tech companies, which let's be honest here, is a euphemism for extortion. You try to destroy moats that innovators have risked everything to build, not in the name of competition or an egalitarian society, because you believe that excellence is not worthy of being rewarded. Your culture has the mindset that excellence is not a product of hard work and determination, it's a product of luck and nepotism, so any hint of excellence gets taken away and diminished. It's a coping mechanism for your own lack at a society scale. Your people are snobby and literally think you're better than us while we pump trillions into your economies.
And what do you have to offer us? Tourist destinations and luxury goods? No thanks.
Without us it will quickly become apparent what your society is behind all of that exuberance and arrogance. Your right wing will become a problem again in decades and you will revert back to the endless wars with your neighbors in territorial disputes.
We have too many problems at home to be daddy with a credit card.
First, this is rich for a country living on borrowed money (that they can only get away with because the rest of the world uses it as the default currency).
Second, a lot of the problems of the US are caused by the lack of proper wealth redistribution, lack of efficient health care (no, the US doesn’t subsidize European healthcare, European countries spend far less on healthcare with better outcomes). It’s not solved by throwing lifelong allies under the bus and trading the for some dictator friends.
Finally, the security situation also arisen because the US did not want European militaries to become too powerful and has pushed a lot to be dependent on the US and US tech. For instance, countries have to buy US fighters for nuclear sharing, etc. The primary exception is France because they never wanted to be reliant and have their own nuclear force, etc.
Also let’s not forget Article 5 was only invoked once (by the US) and we were happy to help, because that’s what friends do. We have been in Afghanistan for over 20 years as a result and a lot of our soldiers died and were injured.
Outsourcing your defense is stuupiiid.
Europe should be thanking Trump for waking them up to the reality that has always been the case through his boorish negotiation.
From an European perspective, the entire purpose of NATO from 1992 to 2022 was to prevent wasting too much money on defense. Because, for some reason, Americans were willing to do it instead.
Then Russia invaded Ukraine, and the calculus changed. Now European countries are rebuilding their defensive capabilities, while Russia is still bogged down in Ukraine. Given the lack of credible short-term threats, limiting defense spending was clearly the right choice until 2022.
Now that we are not allies anymore we need to wastefully build up our own command, space and air capabilties resulting in duplicated effort.
https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2024/6/pd...
It's embarrassing for Europe that Ukraine is relying on the US instead of Europe
Europe has spent more on military aid to Ukraine than the US now.
https://www.ifw-kiel.de/publications/news/ukraine-support-tr...
Even though the US vowed to protect Ukraine in the Budapest Memorandum.
It's embarrassing for Europe how little they contribute to NATO
Before Trump, non-US NATO spent 425 billion and the US 654 billion:
https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2024/6/pd...
So it’s true that Europe/Canada spent less, but it comes with a bit fat asterisk that the US also wants to project power in the pacific/Asia, whereas European defense is primarily focused on avoiding Russian aggression (+ peace missions + supporting the US in various operations to give them more legitimacy).
Europe should be thanking Trump for waking them up to the reality that has always been the case through his boorish negotiation.
That credit should go to Putin, European spending has grown rapidly since the annexation of crimea.
The credit the Trump should get: stop buying US weapons as quickly as we can and focus on non-US alternatives. It’s going to take a while, but US material has certainly become less attractive.
It's hitting software. "Dutch Parliament Calls for End to Reliance on US Software".[3]
[1] https://www.ualberta.ca/en/china-institute/research/analysis...
[2] https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/features/2025/canada-interna...
[3] https://www.usnews.com/news/technology/articles/2025-03-18/d...
Once a solid partner Trump turned USA into an unpredictable dependency that can change allegiance at a drop of a hat.
And "the best weapons” USA sells are best not because of hardware but because of the services that pull the hardware together. Patriots, F-35, even Abrams are all so good because they’re all networked and work together. If the service is cut it all become much more expensive and so much less usable than competition from Europe.
So while technically Mirages, Grippens, Typhoons, and whatnot are a bit less advanced than F-35, now they seem much more reliable.
Also the F-35 is an always was highly controversial in Switzerland from the very first day it was publicly considered that was around 2017. In 2020 the people voted in favor of the F-35 with 50.1% support. So the reality is that any and all reasons to stop or delay the purchase of these jets will be uses by the parties that opposed the purchase, it has little to nothing to do with the so called "trade war".
That was unthinkable a year ago, but it is now. Given that it is probably better to roll your own in the mid/long term and not rely overly on US tech.
And to be honest that's the only way it can ever be. I don't understand France's talk about extending its nuclear deterence to the rest of Europe. Those european countries can no more rely on France than France can rely on the US in those extreme scenarios. Nuclear deterence is like the bee's sting. It will die if it uses it, but it's because you know it will use it that you tread carefully.
Don't forget to upvote if you comment, unless you want the post to be buried?
The F-35's Defining Characteristic Is Surviving Hostile Airspace
Most nations don't need an F-35. They want to protect their own airspace, intercept potential threats and minimize the cost-per-mission for their operations. The sort of power projection afforded by a Joint Strike Fighter just isn't worth the cost to most nations - unless you're intent on molesting hostile airspace it's kinda a waste of taxpayer money. The existence of the F-35 is a byproduct of imperial ambition that few peer powers can match.
"Hypersonic" weapons used in current conflicts are nothing more than a glorified long range missiles that are useless if you can't launch them from the air. They're also currently statistically not significant due to their low amounts.
In any case, you're really just proving my point. Yes, an F-35 can "win" a conflict in a day by flying into enemy airspace undetected and bombing their presidential convoy. That's the sort of interventionist politicking that sickens everyone who isn't American or Israeli.
I don't actually know enough to hold an informed opinion on the F35 and all this other war-porn [though my inner 10 year old thinks it is kinda technically cool] but the politics you bring forth are sickening to anyone who tries to remember /all/ the bad things, not just the ones done by people we don't like.
I’ve seen people point out that the F-35 is still better than anything else you could buy but an inferior jet is probably better than an F-35 with no targeting information!
If you have a large country and can hide your airfields hundreds of kilometers from the front, the F-16, Rafale, EuroFigther and the F-35 are all fine, but you have more options with the F-35. If you're a small country, like the Baltics, or Denmark, they are a silly choices if you expect to fight a battle at home. You simply don't have anywhere to service the planes after missiles and drones take out your three airfield equipped for the F-35. In those cases the SAAB Gripen is a much better choice. You can service is straight of a highway with basic tools and conscripts. It's also a plane designed to fight Russia, so if that the enemy you expect, it's fine.
Ironically, S300's from Russia. That's what Ukraine used to deny Russia air superiority. You can fight the orcs with orc weapons but you cannot fight them with American made airplanes because the US can stop support at any time.
More realistically though, I'd imagine many European nations are eying twin-engine multirole fighters like the Rafale and Eurofighter. These have a larger range and payload than the F-35, bigger radars and pylons and the all-important high top-speed (mach-2 intercepts are a must-have bordering Russia). These can be had cheaper than the F-35 and are generally better suited to a high intensity inland conflict.
TL;DR: you don’t need a world class jet when you trust your partner 100%. Anything less than 100, collaborate fast to overcome the limitation.
Who could’ve ever foreseen these consequences? /s
E.g. it's pure coincidence that few months into Trump's rule, Russia suddenly can overcome Patriot systems.
Basically US industry is compromised and nobody with brain cells is going to buy American weapons any time soon.
Maybe we don't need to invent entire international conspiracy theories to explain something this basic.
Weapon systems have a shelf life. The longer they're deployed in the field the shorter that life is.
An administration acting as an asset would:
- Dismantle alliances (undermining military cooperation, trade disputes, questioning mutual defence).
- Give concessions without return (walking away from long-negotiated agreements, reducing deployments unilaterally).
- Sideline national security and intelligence professionals who oppose the adversary’s interests.
- Stoke domestic instability that distracts and weakens national unity.
When these patterns converge, you don’t need classified files to hear the smoke alarm. My point stands: U.S. weapons are a hard sell when its own foreign policy works against its strategic interests.
Btw. Your command of English is very good, comrade.