With Poland and Finland being the newest operators of the aircraft in our focus region, we thought it would be interesting to go across Northern Europe to see which countries have ordered the F-35, which aircraft were replaced by it, and how many have been ordered.
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Just imagine European countries would have been able to align their aircraft purchases, how many billions would have been saved.
worth noting here is that the Norwegian competition was so flawed it became a runnong joke in Sweden next to Diplomatic crisis where it was actually close to a cut off on relations due Norways unfair treatment.
a plane will always be cheaper if you dont count the engine nor the maintance of siad engine against the competitiors.
There is questions regarding the SAAB Cars bankruptcy and the nordic purchases of F35.
Given the insane behavior of the Swedish Government around the bankruptcy and the down right furious reaction to Norway and finland choosing F35's above Gripen one do wonder.
We also had the Thyssenkrupp incident where the german company tried to Steal the SAIP tech from the Swedish Navy.
Their destruction of the Karlskrona shipyard is another part of it to.
no matter what happened regarding the F35 affairs around the 2010's i think we all can agree that it was alot of geopolitical points involved in the decisions that comes back to the NATO military spendings discussions and wanting to be on the good side of USA and possible with the then President Obama.
I think that had they been making the decision today given the geopolitical situation adn Sweden now part of NATO there would have been a radically diffrent amount of Gripen Echo in the North and eastern Europe and far less of the F35 purchased but possible to have still the same amount of planes delivered.
The F-35 a/b/c is a full scale calamity. The big idea was that 'Everyone has to buy the same jet with 3 variants .. Then because the whole US/Western world system will have the same base airframe and matching parts, then the savings in maintenance will be vast, as will the lesser cost of spare parts!" … LOL, even the Yanks themselves have cut their order in half to 'Make way for Gen 6 … a programme which is already in serious trouble, has no flying R&D … Whilst the Chinese have been flying 2 different Gen 6 for the past year and are fast heading for full scale production
How reliable is the F-35? It is outrageous… Do you Americans know the Mission Capable numbers for the F-35?
* F-35 A (Army) …. 28.5% of planes at any one time, are ready to be launched and complete their mission
* F-35 B (Marine Corps) … 16.2% of planes at any one time etc etc
* F-35 C (Navy) … 15.3% of planes at any one time etc etc
* F-35 C (Marine Corps) .. 22% of planes at any one time etc etc
So in real terms (and whole planes) the US Army F-35 A is the very best and if they had 100 planes, around 28 would be able to fly when needed. … The Navy? 15 out of 100. It is insanity caused by a lack of parts, software that STILL doesn't work properly and a wide variety of other issues. The Block 4 TR 3 upgrade story started in a committee in the 2014 … It was first tried in a F-35 in 2023 … It simply didn't work. Now the nbest guess for a functional TR 3 Block 4 F-35 is? 2032, and that's not a guarantee just a hopeful guess.
Why does ANYONE ever believe the Americans? They couldn't successfully build a model plane .. It'd be years late, over budget and then have 'integration' issues.
The truth of the matter is that the F-35 is a calamity for the US/West … You know American people like to be all patriotic and split hairs about
'Oh the Chengdu J-10 isn't as good as an F-16. Or the Chengdu J-20 isn't as good as the F-35 Lightening II or the Shenyang J-35A, isn't as good as the F-35c'
Not true at all, the Chinese make extremely fine fighter jets as the Indian Rafales found when faced with Chinese J10-Ce. With at least one Rafale biting the dust. The Chinese offerings not only work, they have BVR missiles that are twice the range of the US/Europeans and the thing work. Which sort of helps.
We all made the same mistake…
Poland have for now 8 f-35 of 32
Well check how many of them that are combat ready!
Most of them are in training mode Tr-3 and waiting for block 4, that hopefully they get 2030-32. So to buy a plane get it dlv and have it parked for 5-7 years. Great investment.
I hope Finland doesn't use its planes to attack Palest*n*ans.
The reason Germany dropped the F-18 was that the US cancelled its nuclear capability. If Germany wanted a nuclear launch capability, its only option became the F-35.
It should be also noted that the reason for Belgium to increase its F-35 fleet is the poor availability, insufficient to maintain pilots training level.
If you wish very detailed rants about why the F-35 is liability for Europe, they’re a few YouTube French language channels who produce great videos based on OIG’s reports (last one so hot that the US gov prohibited its publication) and insider knowledge.
I think most will regret buying an american airplane.
Big mistake. Since Orange One has the finger on a kill switch. Hangar queen especially given to the rough environment in the nordic. And the Title? everyone but Sweden? You missed canada.
Bad, bad, bad…… gevaarlijke, onbetrouwbare en de duurste keuze…… wanneer gaat europa nu eens lessen trekken door steeds amerikaans te kiezen…..😢
Poor economic decisions by the UK leadership have screwed its economy to the point that it CANNOt AFFORD the military equipment it desperately needs.
F 35 is too expensive to purchase in fuel consumption and (As far as I understand) they cannot be repaired with local spare parts everything has to come from the US, then there is a problem, the hangar queen will just be useless and totally dependent on a country other than the owner country itself !
How is that safety ? 🇩🇰
Germany would need more like 100 more in order to create and maintain real deterrence
The long list is painful to watch as each every one F-35 buyer country has made a very bad choice on 3 fronts, capability (see US congress report on that), availability (idem), costs, and strategic enslavement to Trump nation.
3 out of 4 Eurofighter consortium country bought the F-35 which demonstrates the confidence on their own technology.
The video doesn't take into account the weight of the US "diplomacy" on procurement process.
The video don't even mention that all branch of the US military have canceled orders of F-35 due to all the shortfall of the F-35.
Most European countries discovered very recently the notion of stategic autonomy ; they will find out soon enough that being a US vassal is not, or no longer, a viable option.
The F-35 is a at the same time the most ambitious fighter and a complete failed program.
Fuck the USA
Why isn’t everyone baying gripen it’s more likely to become a better deal
F35 is rubbish
JAS is the way forward
Europe already got some 200 F35s. France, Sweden and Russia are the European countries with their OWN fighter jets, 3 countries that are NOT BUYING fighter jets from ANY OTHER COUNTRY.
If War comes,
Northern King – Gripen will protect Sweden with or without Hangars & runaways at a cost Sweden is able to sustain for centuries!
Hangar Queen – F-35 will be grounded, Russia WILL target hangars, but if not, it will ruin your economy so you will lose anyway in the end!
/ Sweden
Given UK is the only tier 1 partner, no wonder we bought them.
The F-35 is a good 5th Gen multi-role fighter for any nation's airforce. Yet, imo, it's not a good fighter jet for airforces aiming for a singular fighter fleet. It's not a workhorse fighter like the F-18, Typhoon, or Gripen. It's a surgical weapon meant for first-strike missions and interception in contested air spaces. Which is why, while an unpopular opinion as of late, I support Canada still buying at least 30 F-35's while buying a larger fleet of Gripens or the more future proofed KF-21s from South Korea.
Poland is so dumb, the need is for 64 jets and they ordered 32 and politicians are now saying we need 32 more! Incompetence at its finest!
The "kill switch" isn't some literal button that can shut off aircraft mid flight. It just means that the US could decide to stop supplying a country with spare parts and software updates.
Why would any European country trust the USA with their defence needs post Trump?
you forgot F-35 was FORCED on NATO members, not a choice.. Norway was about to buy Swedish Gripen then USA stepped in and started to threat Norway if they signed for Gripen.
GCAP better
Complicated F35 procurement…. Downing my Molson Canadian and adjusting my waist-strapped maple syrup bottle…. My time to shine!
Sadly, Germany has already bought the US jet. It would have been much better to choose the swedish machine. But maybe it will be a new option for the faded FCAS plan.
This comment section is filled with some of the dumbest arm chair generals I've seen in a while. It's funny how somehow they think they know more than the ones conducting these procurement programs. You really think they haven't looked at every single possible scenario when coming to decisions about these things?
Also, this whole scaremongering about a "kill switch" is just total nonsense. Anyone believing in a scenario where Russian missiles and aircraft are flying overhead and striking targets while the F-35 pilots are stuck on the ground unable to start their jets and take off because USA switched them off are completely delusional and need to seek professional help for such paranoia.
The F-35 is simply ridiculous. Operational readiness in the US has dropped to just 25%. Maintenance requirements and costs are absurdly high. The aircraft handles neither heat nor cold well. And let's not forget, the Americans can switch off the mission updater at any time (except for the Israeli aircraft).
US air superiority proven by orders placed, not woke, left wing EU bureaucrats
A jet lasts longer than any US administration, this narrative has to end, now!
The number of aircraft Finland acquired seems very high for a small country. Did they get a favourable deal? The Gripen should have been quite a bit cheaper at those numbers.
F35 jets are very expensive to buy and even more expensive to maintain. It's better to develop your skills own 5th gen jet rather than buying it. India is doing the same.
Northern Europe has money, so they bought the best possible fighter jet. Even though the Gripen may have made more sense. If they were to make the choice again now, after trump, they probably wouldn't buy American
finland, norway and denmark…. bribed and falsly promised costs by us to buy f35. i feel sad // 🇸🇪
Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, in the 70s were part of group of countries w/the US to develop the F16. They shared the developmental cost.
No surprise that they ALL got F35s. This is the 1st ever stealth capable fighter for the European AFs.
No country should be stupid enough to get handcuffed to another country. 😂
And the only country with a working air force is Sweden with the best fighterjet there is, Gripen. When the F35 needs a cozy hangar, the Gripen can stand outside in minus 30 degrees Celsius and still work perfectly! More and more countries ordering F35, is now lowering their orders of that hangarqueen!
The fighter choices were all political with assumptions that buying American would be a part of the support from the US of Europe (as it had been since WW2). The prices and even specs that were given at bidding has in most cases not materialized, aka higher prices and less capability.
So would they have chosen the F-35 in hindsight? Ask Canada.
Looking backward, at the time the US appeared a trustworthy ally. Today not anymore. And that's where the troubles begin to become critical.
First off, F-35 customer nations do not have any form of so called user-sovereignty: they cannot decide which weapons to integrate on the platform, they do not have access to the source codes of the flight computers that control and integrate the sensors, ECM suite and manage the flight controls, and they cannot modify the aircraft to potential, additional wishes. This means in effect, that the US – under hostile government – has complete authority over what user nations can and cannot get.
Second, spare parts flow is managed solely in the US, using a unified and automated logistics system that is used to determine which user gets what and when. If Washington wants to use that as leverage in forcing allies into compliance, it will. Meaning: the Trump administration can easily halt the flow of spare parts, rendering European fleets as good as useless in a few months time.
Same goes for ordnance. Thus far it has been mainly US weapons that have been integrated on to the F-35 like the B-61 nuclear free fall bomb, AIM-120 AMRAAM variants, AIM-9X Sidewinder variants, JDAM in various sizes, laser guided bombs and the Joint Stand off Weapon. Requests by users like the UK to integrate Meteor, Storm Shadow, Brimstone have been halted, though I do believe only the European ASRAAM and IRIS-T have been integrated. This means, that if the US halts ordnance deliveries, the stock of munitions suited for the F-35 may dwindle very rapidly, rendering the F-35 again useless over time.
Final problem is, that the F-35's ECM suite depends heavily on US SIGINT/ELINT capabilities in order to keep the threat library relevant at any given time. The Trump administration can simply decide to withhold updates and that means increased risk, should European allies undertake military operations at their own discretion.
So all in all, buying the F-35 effectively means granting the US authority over the operational capabilities of allied nations who purchased the fighter. While there is not a genuine "kill switch" as such, Washington has tremendous power over F-35 users. With hostile Russia ramping up its hybrid attacks at Europe and Trump increasingly threatening European allies with tariffs, taking parts of their territory (Greenland, Canada), not helping to defend Europe if article 5 of the NATO Treaty is invoked and directly aiding ultra nationalist, anti-constitutional political movements undermining European democracies, the F-35 thus has become a tremendous liability.
Denmark just ordered an additional batch of 16 F-35As (as well as a number of P-8A Poseidon MPAs), which I find utterly bewildering, given Trump's on- and off threats to take Greenland, with military force if necessary.
Apart from that, the F-35A is indeed very expensive both in purchase as cost per flight hour, is malfunction riddled – according to each annual US Government Accounting Office report on the matter, the problems are pretty resilient too – and still the F-35 is not able to do what it was supposed to after more than 20 years of continuous testing and development. Moreover, the capabilities promised have now been pushed to the block IV upgrade, which will cost all users with additional costs, that keep on rising while the development of the block IV upgrade (modifications to the engine, a new radar, improved EOTS and DAS/ECM suite) keeps running into technical setbacks and delays.
In short: while the F-35 is potentially a great fighter jet, but it is still nowhere near where it was supposed to be technologically and financially. Meanwhile it has become a liability Europe cannot afford, being squeezed between an increasingly hostile US administration on the one side and a bellicose Russia on the other.
In order to turn things around, the only leverage Europe might have, is to threaten shipping a few F-35s to China, so the Chinese can take them apart and reverse engineer whatever they find useful. That would set the US back considerably in the Pacific theater, adding to the depleted stocks of interceptor and strike missiles due to the ill conceived campaign against Iran. If European allies can't use their F-35s, such a move would practically mean that the entire US F-35 fleet has become as good as useless in a potential war with China as well.
Should that rupture NATO officially, that would not matter, since that is already the actual case.
F35 is the most capable fighter and few would argue otherwise. But we want bang for our buck. In the Nordic countries we can now see that the running costs for the F35s were completely off the charts. We were in fact being lied to.
Norway stated flight hour costs were stated as 1/3 of USAF costs, despite much smaller numbers.
Denmark's State Auditors says lawmakers were not properly informed about true price of one of the country's largest defense purchases, with the auditors faulting Defense Ministry for failing to disclose soaring US F-35 costs.
Finland claimed no offer was significantly less expensive than others in operating and sustainment costs.
Allt this is obviously ridiculous, no?
For the Netherlands, what probably made a big difference was the US nukes kept on one of the Dutch airbases. The f35 is the only one capable of delivering those. Now you can question if that is something you want in these days but here we are.
The F35 has a serviceability of only 41% and a hourly cost of $50,000 per hour. Even the US have trouble paying for it. The F35 will be last American made fighter sold anywhere in Europe. No operator is pleased with them.
Why is Est Lat Lit with 6 million PPL have less defense than Denmark with 5 million PPL or Finland with 5 million as well?????
Well Trump has pretty much made the choice for Canada…He is intent on wrecking our economy so we can't afford the F35… and when he makes us the 51state we get them for free…lol.
We will have some F35s..but Finland and Denmark both advised Canada to go Grippen for the rest of our jets.