Europe, Canada eyeing alternatives to American-made fighter jets

BERLIN (AP):

Questions are mounting in Canada and in Europe over whether big-ticket purchases of high-end US weaponry, such as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, are still a wise strategic choice for Western countries worried about their investment in US defence technology.

In less than two months, US President Donald Trump has upended decades of foreign policy. He has left NATO members questioning whether Washington will honour the trans-Atlantic alliance’s commitment to defend each other, if other European countries are attacked by Russia. He’s also made repeated overtures to Moscow and suspended most US foreign aid.

That could impact foreign sales of the Lockheed Martin-produced F-35 and other advanced US jets like the F-16. As Russia’s war in Ukraine grinds on, it’s become clear that Eastern European NATO members still have vast stores of Soviet-era weapons in their stockpiles that weren’t interoperable with Western weaponry.

A long-term plan to get all of NATO on similar platforms — by replacing old Soviet-era jets with Western ones, particularly the F-16 and, in some cases, the F-35 — has gained momentum.

Some of the NATO countries are now rethinking tying their defence to US-made systems and potentially considering European jets.

And the European Union (EU) on Wednesday announced a new drive to break its security dependency on the United States, with a focus on buying more defence equipment in Europe. In recent years, the EU’s 27 nations have placed about two-thirds of their orders with US defence companies.

In Canada, where Trump has launched a trade war and has threatened economic coercion to make it the 51st American state, new Prime Minister Mark Carney has asked Defence Minister Bill Blair to review its purchase of F-35s. Canada has been a partner with the US in developing the fighter.

Blair will see if there are other options, “given the changing environment”, a defence spokesman said.

Carney on Tuesday announced an early-warning radar system purchase from Australia worth CND$6 billion (US$4.2 billion). Officials say it will have a smaller footprint than a similar American system.

And in Portugal, the outgoing defence minister recently told a Portuguese newspaper that “recent positions” taken by Washington compelled a rethink about the purchase of F-35s. Portugal is considering various options to replace its F-16s.

“You’re not just buying an airplane, you’re buying a relationship with the United States,” said Winslow T. Wheeler, who spent three decades in US Congress working for Democrats and Republicans on national security and defence issues. “People in the past have not just welcomed, but craved that kind of relationship.”

The Netherlands and Norway, on the other hand, have recently voiced support for the F-35 programme.

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter was designed to combine stealth, manoeuvrability and attack capabilities in a single aircraft. Each jet costs about $85 million (78 million euros), and the price jumps to as high as $150 million (137 million euros) when supporting infrastructure and spare parts are included.

About 1,100 have been produced to date for 16 military services across the globe.

The F-35B, a variant that can take off from ship decks vertically, is the latest model. It’s the most expensive weapons system the US has ever produced, with estimated lifetime costs now expected to top $1.7 trillion. One of the ways the programme was counting on reducing those costs was by selling more aircraft to international customers.

But the Trump administration’s recent stance on the Russia-Ukraine war has fuelled fears that Washington may have similar ways to coerce buyers in a future fight — such as by embedding a hypothetical ‘kill switch’ in the F-35’s millions of lines of programming.

The Pentagon’s F-35 Lightning II Joint Program Office, however, vehemently rejected that notion.

“There is no kill switch,” the office said in a statement on Tuesday. “We remain committed to providing all users with the full functionality and support they require.”

But that’s not the only way to impact an ally’s programme, Wheeler said. The F-35 requires constant US-controlled tech upgrades to operate in combat. If a relationship with the US soured and updates were delayed, it could make a jet, or even a fleet, inoperable, he said.

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