The F-35 Is Losing the Trade War

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.

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.

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.

Is it? Especially in 2025.

It is embarrassing how little of (very old) heavy equipment USA provided to Ukraine. North Macedonia provided same amount of main battle tanks as USA, Poland provided ten times more. And zero fighter jets.

Anyway, people of Ukraine are thankful for any support and USA was the biggest donor during first years of the war.

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.

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.

As I and others point out: the problem is if you do something Trump doesn’t like and he cuts off the extra features that make the F-35 better than anything else you can get. At that point you just paid millions for an expensive paperweight.

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.

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.

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

It’s hard to know for sure, though. The only true information we’ll get is when it’s used in a hot war and hints if or when countries reduce orders.

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.

That being said this all assumed that Russia had a strong air-defence. The various strikes that Ukraine has been able to make on Russian territory seems to have challenged that idea. I don't know how confident Putin feels he could block such attack, so that adds to the dissuasion too. The thing with nukes is that it only takes one missile to go through.