Posted on 08/08/2025 9:27:45 AM PDT by libh8er
Spain has formally ruled out buying US-made F-35 fighter jets, opting instead to expand its fleet of Eurofighter Typhoons and invest in the Franco-German Future Combat Air System (FCAS). The move reflects both strategic and political divergence from Washington, especially amid renewed pressure from Donald Trump over NATO spending.
..
Why the F-35 lost out
Spain’s pivot is part of a wider rethink in Europe. The F-35 programme, long plagued by soaring costs, software delays, and mechanical issues, is losing ground. Recent operational mishaps, including a British F-35B grounded in India and a US Navy crash in California, haven’t helped.
.. Portugal, Switzerland, and Canada are now reconsidering their own F-35 commitments. India, too, has shown little interest in joining the programme, despite a direct offer in early 2025.
..
The bigger problem: No control Underneath the technical failures and political tension is a simpler truth: the F‑35 is not just a jet. It’s a flying computer and that computer is owned, operated, and updated by the United States.
All foreign operators depend on US approval for mission data loads, software updates, maintenance schedules, and even spare parts logistics. That level of dependence makes the F‑35 a powerful diplomatic lever and a strategic risk for countries that want operational independence.
It’s why Spain went with Eurofighter. It’s why India turned it down. It’s why Canada and Switzerland are having second thoughts. No country wants to be left asking Washington for permission every time they need to launch or land.
Europe is starting to build alternatives. FCAS is one of them. So is the UK-led Tempest programme. India is investing in its own fifth-gen fighter development. Even long-standing US allies are starting to hedge.
(Excerpt) Read more at economictimes.indiatimes.com ...
Since Spain has gone full socialist, this may be a good thing in the long run.
No one needs US permission to launch and land FFS!
yeah, because they are a bankrupt nation
So Spain and Switzerland will not buy the F35?
Didn’t those two countries also sit out WWII when they were needed to fight Nazis?
Even back then it was too hard for them to do the right thing.
At least Franco told Hitler to pound sand when Hitler asked Franco to help him take Gibraltar from the British.
The obsolete Typhoon is going for $124 mil.
The F-35A is going for $82.5 mil and it can shoot down Typhoon’s at, at least a 10-1 ratio and can penetrate anybody’s air space.
The left wing government in Spain is an enemy to the west, as much as a warsaw pact country was during the cold war.
All foreign operators depend on US approval for mission data loads
Not true. Allies can purchase Mission Data Load capability. UK, Canada, Australia and Israel have purchased "sovereign reprogramming capabilities".
The Euro Fighter is a decent aircraft that is impressive in some areas but it costs almost as much as an F-22 and it is not even in the same league as the F-22. After 25 years of development it's finally becoming the aircraft it should have been but as a flagship front line fighter it's an obsolete flying target that an F-22 will beat across the board.
Even Typhoon pilots acknowledge that the F-35 will kill the Typhoon pretty much every time before the Typhoon even knows the F-35 is there, even if the Typhoon is a better visual range aircraft and the F-35 is only a strike fighter. .
The thought that the EU and India are going to develop the technology to build an aircraft comparable to the F-35 in any reasonable time frame in our lifetime for less money than the US invested in the JSF program when even Lockheed is pushing the edge of it's envelope is patently absurd.
The only people who think this is going to happen are the ones who don't even know what they don't know.
The US will be fielding 7th gen aircraft before that happens.
The Chinese stole pretty much the entire Lockheed technical data package almost two decades ago and look at where they are trying to copy what they they stole from Skunk Works twenty years ago.
It just ain't that easy.
“Spain was likely looking for a way out of the huge price tag of the F-35”
See reply #7 in this thread.
The F-35 is far cheaper than the Typhoons they’ll buy instead.
Well, in so many words. He said he’d join if he receives a bunch of free stuff from Germany. The Caudillo carefully calculated his price to be sufficiently high as to be unaffordable by Hitler.
The drone era has changed thinking. The F-35 is still technology superior but expensive. America is on the cusp of the 7th generation. What Spain does is irrelevant.
Software policies are not a positive way to screw your hardware customers... missile lauch denials also play a role in rejections of US Arms tech. Ukraine has seriously damaged America.
“Ukraine has seriously damaged America.”
How?
“Software policies are not a positive way to screw your hardware customers... missile lauch denials”
Better to lose an F-35 sale than Boston, Chicago, Dallas or Houston.
Due to the time differences, Russians can be sent out to pick mushrooms 50 kilometers from their cities while mushroom clouds arise above the beds of Americans that were sleeping.
It was the squadrons of Israeli Fc35’s that overcame the vaunted Russian air defenses in first Syria and then Iran proper.
Iranian command in Syria was destroyed by the F 35’s. Unmeasurable damage was done all across I ran by the F 35’s flown by the IDF pilots all the way from bases in Israel
The IDF F35 pilots made the long trip to Yemen where they again destroyed the Russian air defenses and wreaked havoc on the Houthi ports and air fields.
The F-35 faces a threat problem.
The Russian scare was also a huge “sales pitch.”
A sales pitch for the armaments industry, in particular the US, and for NATO expansion.
There is no viable/real threat and everyone knows this.
The Russian scare was based on trying to reignite Cold War imagery and played on cliche’s to get people scared and stirred up in support of a war we basically started (NATO E. expansion), was unnecessary (no real national security need for us), predictable (Russia blocked NATO expansion elsewhere), avoidable (we had 3 months to change course), and based on a HUGE double standard where we would NEVER accept what we expect the Russians to swallow and where they can reasonably argue this is a threat to them (which we just ignore with our mentioning of Ukrainian “sovereignty” - ironic coming from us: we don’t care about a nations sovereignty)!
Ukraine is not something that is going to get the Euros spending massively on defense (long term - the excitement is already fading) - the Euro leadership realizes this is NOT the threat it is made out as in our media or political leadership.
1.) Euro nations are not going to want to waste their money on expensive US weapon systems that are not really needed.
2.) Nor are they really interested in being used to further our economic and political interests. Become a pawn.
The US basically wants to remodel NATO into a US military global support organization ever since 2003 and Donald Rumsfeld (who had this vision). The idea being, anytime we go to war, even if offensive and outside of NATO’s AOR (examples: Libya, Syria, Iraq...) , we can rely on NATO to back us up. The Euro’s are not interested in being Lindsey Graham’s personal pawn and frankly I can’t blame them. If you look at how many lives we burned through in Ukraine, and there is zero national security interest at stake, that’s a scary thing.
So now as the dust settles, expect them to shrink back.
Or, if you believe in conspiracy theory that the US War Industrial Complex has a huge political influence and is the one pushing for the “endless war,” expect us to find some other nation to “democratize, protect human rights in, help be sovereign, or prevent from having WMD” really soon after Ukraine ends.
As we attack, invade and occupy nations in pursuit of our national interests (almost always economic, expeditionary and expansionist), at least today we don’t pretend to do this in the name of God like the Conquistadors.
and it can shoot down Typhoon’s at, at least a 10-1 ratio
—————
Assumption, an unproven assumption. I can’t remember when our F-35’s have actually shot down a Euro Typhoon. Please do “inform” me.
We all know about opinionated “ opinions”.
The article mentions that Typhoon pilots agree they can’t see the F-35.
10-1 was a CONSERVATIVE opinion.
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