So why don't those countries get equal access to the thing that they all went in on creating?
I sympathize with the F-35 customers who are now feeling uneasy about their choice due to recent changes in US foreign policy. But that's the risk you take when you fail to adequately fund your military and try to get by on the cheap. Most of them had the option of joining at Level 1 at the time, and had they done so they would have much more leverage today.
Except it's nuts to pretend like this system hasn't been working out great for the US. Competent leaders have expanded it for a reason.
> Most of them had the option of joining at Level 1 at the time, and had they done so they would have much more leverage today.
I think that Trump/Vance have run their mouth about the UK in roughly the same ways that they have about Canada and Ukraine and your claim is far from obvious. We have leaders who are stupid and will trash a good thing without a second thought.
That's the relationship between the two. The problem is not that these nations weren't Tier 1 partners. The problem is that the current administration cannot be negotiated with in the most damning sense of "these people can't even be trusted to work for their own self-interest."
As the UK is also a Level 1 partner if they were so inclined they could provide the resources necessary to allow lower level partners to operate and maintain their F-35s?
The USA does have all of the technical data packages so in theory we could probably get domestic suppliers to make the components we currently get from the UK but it would take several years. The reverse isn't true, though. The UK simply no longer has the capacity to support such a complex program on their own. They sacrificed their defense industry years ago and accepted dependence on the USA so that they could fund social programs.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Combat_Air_Programme
They are starting to /design/ it now. Tempest is supposed to enter service in 10 years' time, which I will believe when I see it.
If that's the case they maybe they would be able to help the other partner countries develop the parts that they would otherwise require America to make.
Your personal opinion is proven to be absurd and baseless for the single fact that the UK, a level 1 partner, was very vocal in its frustration for the "lack of U.S. commitment to grant access to the technology that would allow the UK to maintain and upgrade its F-35s without U.S. involvement."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning...
You need to face the fact that as of now the US is an unreliable and untrustable partner, and depending on them for defense, even when it's to meet their end of the treaties, is extremely risky.
always has been. Trump is just an excuse, a façade, to make that insincerity bearable. "There are two americas". Bullshit.
Weird logic. US is equally unrealiable no matter what level you bought yourself in to.
during development and going into first flight, it was fairly open discussion that israel 'was' an original partner whom was funded by usa, and thus why israeli flag was not on the a/c during promo but israel and their tech companies had input into development.
many times it was also discussed that israeli pilots would ask to have their engines deliver above spec thrust, sort of like tunning your turbo car... it created a whole logistical black hole but it certainly was technically possible. perhaps 15 years later someone finally figure out how to cater to that market.
The more Airbus or Boeing own inside the aircraft, the more they can play into this model. 787 is a great example of Boeing hurting themselves through their outsourcing, but greatly assisting their suppliers.
these day's there's not many "parts" outside of fuselage and flight IP that someone like Boeing/EMB, etc. owns that wasn't outsourced:engines, air data system, actuations, cabin, flight controls, landing gear, etc.. THere's nothing really that the A/C mfg could "service" to ever make back a 300mil airframe. the A/C sell for the fixed cost, sometimes the operator gets to select their own engine, but othewise they buy it for cash, not for future services. boeing and other A/Cs would not survive on maintenance plans because there's very little they actually maintain.
Really? A country that engages with neighbours that are barely able to send primitive missiles, while its last generation (US) jets drop bombs straight on their capital cities any time they want, with total impunity? And you still repeat this "poor existentially threatened country" propaganda?
As a side note, terrorists successfully attack highly developed economies all the time. Having good jets doesn’t magically negate that possibility.
Israel has only recently become as strong as it is. Until very recently it could very well lose, and has lost, wars with its neighbors.
Pretty much all modern fighters require replacement parts from the original manufacturer. There are not enough fighter jets to support an aftermarket parts manufacturer, especially one that could exist without getting sued by Lockheed, Northrop, and the like.
The main technical issue is that you have to reverse engineer the parts if you don't have original drawings and didn't get a legal license to make your own. All the technical bits on an F-35 have anti-tamper features designed to make reverse engineering almost impossible (in case a jet gets shot down over enemy territory the USA doesn't want the enemies to have an easy time figuring out the weak points or finding bugs to exploit).
If you want to see what fighter jets without legal repairability license turns into, look at Iran. The sanctions placed on Iran have meant that they've been stringing their inventory of jets along for decades without official parts. They cannibalize other jets, buy black market parts, and cobble together their own solutions to keep their Air Force going. Check out the Sedjil, which is a modified SAM, that they created to put on their F-14s because the USA stopped providing Phoenix missiles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedjil_(air-to-air_missile). Trying to keep an Air Force going without official permission is really challenging.
But Israel's case is a little different from the above discussion- negotiating for the rights to modify isn't really about replacement parts. They aren't that concerned that the USA will cut them off. Their negotiation is more because they want to put some of their own systems on the jet. In older 4th generation jets, integration of new systems could be straightforward; you can put it in an external pod with a standardized mounting pylon and standardized data bus. On the F-35 you obviously want to avoid hanging a bunch of extra pods off the jet, so you need to get engineering drawings and software details to figure out how to internally integrate your stuff. Because reverse engineering is hard, they pushed to get this technical information legally. The only time this effort is worth it is when you think your country's equipment outperforms what the original F-35 can do. You need a decent tech to beat the stock F-35 systems, but Israel probably has a few areas where they can do that. But even with the right to modify the F-35, Israel will be heavily reliant on original parts for maintenance. They do not have a big enough industrial base to make all the parts needed for the jet.
This certainly applies to the aftermarket activities in the Westl, but entities doing that in Iran, Russia or Ukraine would not be liable to such measures. The question is more about technical capability.
> If you want to see what fighter jets without legal repairability license turns into, look at Iran. The sanctions placed on Iran have meant that they've been stringing their inventory of jets along for decades without official parts. [...]
True. Then again I see the ability for Iran to do this as a consequence of the effect of the sanctions and determination to make the best of domestic engineering potential. Quite a feat, I would say. The country has chemicals, electronics, mechanical engineering - and it trying to use it to create their own competing version of military platforms, starting with tanks, airplanes, drones, etc.
> The main technical issue is that you have to reverse engineer [...] All the technical bits on an F-35 have anti-tamper features designed to make reverse engineering almost impossible [...]
Very interesting! Almost impossible is a strong combination of words. Could you perhaps point me forward to some examples of such anti-tamper features?
What??
Technically, they don’t need permission, but if they want access to the documentation, that costs extra. And sometimes it’s not available at any cost.
On or about 2025-03-07, the US apparently cut off intelligence support for the AN/ALQ-131 electronics countermeasures pods (jammers) carried on some F-16s. Those can still be used but will become less effective without constant software and configuration changes to adapt to changes in Russian radars. Some of that support might have at least partially resumed in recent days but the details haven't been publicly reported.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2025/03/07/france-to-t...
Most of those transfers were done in the context of upgrading a fleet (with F-35); They did block the transfer initially.
> On or about 2025-03-07, the US apparently cut off intelligence support for the AN/ALQ-131 electronics countermeasures pods (jammers) carried on some F-16s
If you cutoff a feature of the equipment you sold, it is effectively a kill switch; its not really relevant what was the political rationale of cancelling the subscription. Thing is, this dumb flex move (it is possible to migrate the jammers to european platforms) just killed the F35 commercial roadmap, and will make the just-announced F47 a dud (it will be a struggle to find partnerships on this one with the same terms).
It's a cool jet, but there's something to be said about having the right tool for the job. Canada doesn't need a joint strike fighter, they need a cost-effective interceptor.
The problem isn’t a lack of F-35 capabilities, the problem is that Canada doesn’t know what it wants. AFAIK Canada only has two fighter bases, and given the fact that the country is arguably the largest in the world, this means Canada is not serious about intercepting adversary aircraft. Canada also hasn’t had over 100 fighters in a long time, so it doesn’t have a significant deployable force. So what does Canada want?
The Canadian armed forces participate in international missions in cooperation with other forces, and in domestic matters. You don't really need fighter aircraft for domestic missions; and for international missions you need whatever will work in coalitions. With a stable US pushing the F-35, the F-35 is a reasonable candidate for coalition work. Without a stable US, the F-35 is a poor candidate; presuming Canada would continue to be allied with NATO ex-US, whatever that group decides is the future is going to be a better choice.
If Canada can't defend against the US, then they should just accept they'll be swallowed by it or start making babies and populating the prairies. In the meantime, if Canada wants to contribute to defense of its allies, it should focus on creating a credible air counter to the Arctic.
Canada does coalition missions because Canada relies on allies for defense. We traipsed along on British misadventures for a century or so because we relied on them for defense and wanted to keep the British happy, and then we traipsed along on American misadventures for the last century because we relied on them for defense and wanted to keep them happy.
It's not the F-35's fault it's not suitable for Canada. It was never intended for tundra. It's Canada's fault that for the last 20 years there's been no juicy tender for a long range fighter to entice the europeans or the yanks to come up with a suitable modification of one of their twin fighter jets.
But every military is aware that the plan to go full fox-3 (+ stealth) might die in the next decade, and we might be back to FOX-2 / dogfighting. Is it likely? Not really, but drone and AI change the battlefield to much to be sure of anything.
Furthermore, as much as I love a slick single-engine fighter, the F-35 is still fundamentally designed to operate in contested airspace. Canada, if they operated the jet for the next 50 years, would likely never have to use it for it's intended joint strike purpose. Unless you habitually molest the borders of other nations, the F-35 is not a purchase that makes a whole lot of sense to taxpayers. If the F-35 was truly "comically overpowered" then Congress wouldn't be asking to restart the F-22 production line, now would they?
Is that a demonstrated capability, or a claimed one? Because if there's one thing the war in Ukraine has shown, it's that Russia seriously overpromised on the performance of its high-tech hardware.
Even giving the Russians every capability that they claim to have, it is questionable if they can even keep producing much of the high end of their technology with the sanctions leveled against them. Without Western components they are unable to manufacture a decent range of their good stuff.
The Su-35 has one of the highest fuel fractions of any military aircraft at about 38% of max take-off weight. That's 9% higher than an F-22 and equates to 11,500kg of fuel.
Just conceptualise 11.5 tonnes of fuel - basically an American yellow school bus being hauled into the air by a fighter than can do Mach 2 and pull 9g.
To be fair though the F-35A has a remarkably high fuel capacity too, about 8,000kg. All that chunkiness has an advantage.
Jet fuel is about 7 pounds a gallon. So we’re talking about something like 4000 gallons. A bus is something 40 feet by 10 feet by 10 feet, which is like 20000 gallons. So it’s about a fifth of a school bus.
Still a lot, though!
I think the Eurofighter would have been a better fit for Canada. It is already built on multiple production lines, no problem adding another one in Canada for their aircraft.
There is nothing that can replace the Tornado in the German arsenal at the moment.
The Arrow was a brilliant plane for its time and purpose. But its cancellation was not wrong (if perhaps immature) - if there are no Tu-92 to shoot down, there's no need for the Arrow.
It's like the CANDU that solved a problem (Canadian inability to enrich U and make welds for PWR) using a solution at hand (world's largest capacity to make heavy water) but that is now largely obsolete (the CANDU's have been increasing their enrichment is an attempt to gain market share).
EDIT: I know that Tu-92, like B-52s still fly as part of the triad. But when the Arrow was designed there was no triad, or even diad. But what does the Arrow do to Tu-92s that an (modern, not the '50s crap) AA missile can't do better?
Historically, there are few aircraft that fit that niche. (Mig-25, Mig-31, F-104 as you said etc). It would be cool to have a modern interceptor like that (F-15Ex with the pods, CFTs, and pylons removed??), but there's no existing solution that fits what you seek.
In reality our peacetime military has been a welfare project to assist the US in whatever (mis)adventures it gets in around the globe. Our choice of jets, guns, vehicles, and so on is predicated on "when the US drags us into some conflict or other, what equipment integrates with whatever their goals are". So when we signed up for the F-35, that was purchasing criteria.
The world is quite obviously changing. If Canada were seriously interested in true self defence against all realistic foes, it would be nuclear weapons and nuclear powered submarines...like the sort the US blocked us from being able to buy from the UK back in the 80s.
2025: Promoting nuclear proliferation, trying brinkmanship diplomacy with Iran, drafting security arrangements to privatize space-based interceptors
Metal Gear Solid 4 was right, war really has changed!
I’ve heard a lot of talk of CANZUK again recently and it makes a lot of sense to me.
However the missiles are regularly rotated back in to the common pool in the USA for servicing. The schedule is such that the USA could disable our deterrent within a couple of years if they so desired.
So we have the nukes, but no independent way to deliver them.
- Ukraine exchanged nukes for beautiful promises.
- North Korea which has comically bad diplomacy, but also nukes; rendering them un-invade-able.
- Even Canada faces threats to its sovereignty from its closest ally. Nukes would render this concern moot.
They had no other choice but to hand over their nukes since the nukes were never theirs to begin with, they belonged to Russia, they had no launch codes which were in Moscow, nor the resources to maintain them, and that's not exactly what the world needed at the time of the USSR breakup in 1991: nukes in then hands of a bankrupt and corrupt nation going through political and economic turmoil of the 90s, guaranteeing them to get "lost" and end up in the hands of warlords.
So giving them up was the correct and only choice. Otherwise they would have been persuaded by force to give them up either through sanctions then military intervention.
My point - which I thought was very obvious - is that other countries should now pursue their own nuclear programmes because that is seemingly the only deterrent that works.
The point that you keep missing is that I'm not describing my ideal state of the world. I'm describing the current state of the world.
Nukes are the only existential guarantee a state can have nowadays. The leaders of Iran would like their state to continue existing, and have set their strategy accordingly. After Russia invaded Ukraine, and Trump threatened Canada, other nations will be revisiting the calculus around nukes in the years to come.
This is much worse than the world order we had, but there you have it.
What does imagining have to do with reality? Imagine you could fly, shoot lasers from your eyes and shit money out your ass. There's no point in talking about unrealistic hypotheticals. There was 0% chance UN or any world powers would approve Ukraine keeping any of those nukes they inherited from the USSR.
And even if we were to imagine they did get to keep them, given Ukraine's situation back then, it was a big chance that some of those nukes or fissile material would end up in the hands of warlords creating more way problems than what we have right now.
> History would've gone differently; likely in a much, much better direction.
And now Saddam or Ghaddafi or Binladen or 9/11 planes could have been carrying fissile material stolen from poorly kept nukes in Ukraine at the USSR breakup. How is that a better direction?
This is the issue when people make short sighted emotional arguments without considering the second order effects of what their decisions would cause. It's like the trolley problem.
In 1993, Ukraine wanted to "dismantle only 36 percent of its delivery vehicles and 42 percent of its warheads, leaving the rest under Ukrainian control." Only US promising them more money got them to change the position.
[0] https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/ukraine-nuclear-weapo...
Because it looks consistent, it's incredibly close to actual facts and it serves the narrative well.
But yeah, it is false.
First of all, broadly speaking, Budapest memorandum was not broken at a scale people think it was. The memorandum is quite short, go read it and decide for yourself whether it was failed. Bear in mind that the memorandum has no legal consequences, it's not binding at all.
Second, what you have said about the nukes is mostly correct. I have been living in Ukraine since before the independence and up until the war and let me tell you: people in the West have no idea how poor Ukraine was at the time. A wasteland. There was no funds to fuel ambulances in Kiev, let alone maintain the extremely expensive nukes. Nukes have an expiration date, and they would be rendered useless by the time Ukraine scrambled funds to maintain even a single one of them. Leave alone the fact that there was no (extremely expensive and complex) service facilities, no fissile material to maintain the nukes and no ways to procure or produce one.
Third, people in the west have no idea how corrupt Ukraine was (and I hate to say it - is). There is no doubt at all that some of the nukes would be lost.
So, there is no conceivable scenario in which Ukraine gets to keep and maintain those nukes in the nineties.
(I hate to say all of it as I am ukrainian.)
PS: Kasachstan bought some 3 months ago and how the music has shifted. Enjoy your frozzen jail, with nuclear armed neighbors as guard.
Also back in the early 90s spending massive amounts of money you can't afford when your country is in an extremely horrible spot economically just in case you might need it 20 years later doesn't seem politically feasible (i.e. you need to be an authoritarian shithole like one of the countries you mentioned or slightly less authoritarian but consider a much larger neighbouring country to be an existential threat which again.. didn't make much sense in the early 90s)
Couldn't the US government also kill all Windows workstations, iPhones or AWS servers? Of course they could.
Smaller companies or individuals may not care, but governments or bigger companies that are risk averse? Of course they'll care.
Many countries are now reevaluating their US dependence and I'm sure it's a very high priority throughout the world to reduce or eliminate it.
If you want to re-sell the 100% made Swedish arms you already bought, to a third party, you'll also need Sweden's consent for that. This isn't a US exclusive thing.
This feels like exaggeration to me. How is the US an ‘unreliable partner’? Has any country had parts for their existing defense purchases restricted? This type of reaction to the US choosing to not spend its own taxpayer money or military equipment on a far away conflict doesn’t make sense.
If anything, the truth is the opposite. The other countries in NATO have been unreliable partners that did not meet their spending requirements. For example, Germany, France, and Canada all underspent but benefited from the US taxpayer spending a lot.
> Western nations cannot buy into a platform when its supplier might go from being a democratic part of the West to aligning with dictators and autocrats literally overnight.
The US is not aligning with dictators. Pushing for a resolution to a conflict that is costing the world hundreds of billions, not to mention huge amounts of Ukrainian lives, is the only reasonable path. The EU has literally no solution for this conflict - just complaints that America is now seeking resolution and doesn’t want to keep wasting money or lives.
Iran in olden times. Venezuela recently. I wonder who is next?
Also denial of certification for 'shared nukes' for Eurofighter comes to mind.
The prospect of getting cut off is hardly theoretical: the US already partially halted support for Ukraine's F-16s (I'm not sure where this stands at this precise moment).
The US is clearly demonstrating it is an unreliable partner in defence. Western nations cannot buy into a platform when its supplier might go from being a democratic part of the West to aligning with dictators and autocrats literally overnight. This doesn't just mean that platforms like F-35 are vastly less desirable to Western militaries, it also means that other things we thought we could rely upon, like the nuclear umbrella, are also unreliable, which is likely to lead to nuclear proliferation.