The Portuguese Air Force is no longer expected to acquire the 5th generation F-35 fighter from Lockheed Martin, all due to the review of the US position towards NATO.
hey guys, I think that trump guy might just be really awful for America.
I’m assuming because American arms dealers like Lockheed Martin are losing a ton of business and America is rapidly losing the soft power and influence its build over the past 80 years
Love to see it
If we assume that Portugal would have ordered the same number as Czechia (a fellow European country with a pretty close GDP, population, and military budget that already bought F-35s) and take the flyaway cost on wikipedia of $82.500,000 as the price Portugal would have paid per plane, that’s $2 billion in sales that Lockheed Martin doesn’t get
that’s $2 billion in sales that Lockheed Martin doesn’t get
And that’s just the beginning.
I feel like billionaires might resolve the Trump/musk issue for us. Fucking with a defense contractor’s bottom line is pretty dangerous, especially when you have private security (Musk)
I feel like billionaires might resolve the Trump/musk issue for us. Fucking with a defense contractor’s bottom line is pretty dangerous, especially when you have private security (Musk)
Honestly, I feel it’s more likely to display how much the defense industry is just another ordinary industry. They’ll whinge and wring their hands, maybe openly support the limpdick opposition if they’re feeling particularly pressured, but all that experience in making killing machines is just engineering and marketing. They’re not more likely to have clout or death squads (of their own, at least) than other major industries of comparable size and importance, and everything is structured in such a compartmentalized way that they couldn’t really leverage that against the government if they actually wanted to throw down.
The defense industry is more like the oil industry than a cyberpunk future. Influential, not independent.
Portugal would probably have bought more, since we have a large area of the Atlantic Ocean that needs to be patrolled not only by sea, but also by air.
Disclaimer in that I am not in any way an expert on military procurement: it depends on what they buy.
There are three European planes that can do similar roles: the Typhoon (Anglo-German-Italian), the Rafale (French), and the Gripen (Swedish). According to this RUSI article, it looks like the Typhoon is probably actually more expensive per plane. The Typhoon was also, unlike the other two and the F-35, designed to be a pure air superiority fighter, so it’s more of an F-22 competitor than an F-35 one. Probably not what Portugal is looking for. That RUSI article has the Rafale as being a bit more expensive than the F-35 and the Gripen being a bit cheaper than it. However, the source for the F-35’s number is the flyaway cost for the Americans, who did ordered it in huge numbers and also did most (not all, but most) of the development and I would assume get a better deal than others. Further, it’s in an article headlined “F-35’s price might rise, Lockheed warns”. So I’m just going to hedge my bets and say:
- If they buy the Typhoon, definitely no, but the Typhoon probably isn’t the right fit anyway
- If they buy the Rafale, somewhere around the same, and it’ll still be extremely capable
- If they buy the Gripen, yes, and it’ll still be very good but not quite individually capable as the other options
That’s all well and good, but you’re also missing a critical point.
The European Union is very likely to introduce a bill that will massively subsidize purchases of local (EU) military equipment. This will make all EU alternatives much, much more attractive than F-35s.
This is a great move by the EU - it drives a lot of military spending away from the US and into the local economies, while shoring up its own security as well as preventing being at the hands of a fickle fascist for maintenance and upgrades.
It’s migration season, and this is only the first bird - I predict there’s more of them.
I think we have an interesting conflict of interest on the US side of the ocean: “the US military industrial complex” vs. “Trump, driving away their customers”.
They went to the fighter store and all the F-35s were turned upside down.
