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The F35 was an enormously expensive program only possible by increasing the production run through sales to partners/allies. It was predicated on a defense model currently burning down.

Absolutely. This isn’t just about the F16 and F35 either. It effectively ends or drastically changes the upcoming NGAD before they even get started. Any previous sales projections are irrelevant in a world where the USA has essentially remotely disabled an ally’s fighter jets without cause. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have to redesign major components of the NGAD in light of a budget that looks drastically different than it did a month ago.

NGAD was already being scaled back due to cost. But yeah this is probably going to get it canceled.

Doubt it. The final decision hasn't been made yet but it appears the NGAD will be going ahead as planned despite the enormous cost. Like the F-22 Raptor, this will probably be an entirely US program with no exports allowed. The design is still in the early technology demonstrator stage, so all of the major components were going to be redesigned anyway.

https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2025/03/no-more-viable...

>and its superiority is front and center.

The vast majority of the comments I am reading on this site are not stating this. The vast majority, even the Americans, are agreeing that this is a bad decision. Unsure where you got this from.

Specifically the F-35, as that phrasing is ambiguous within the context I wrote it.

I think he is referring to the F-35 only here. On military discussion forums it is the consensus that the F-35 is superior to everything else out there with the only exception being that the F-22 has superior air to air combat capabilities.

Dollar for dollar is the f35 or a drone superior?

“A drone” could mean literally anything from a twenty dollar quadcopter to the next generation $300M NGAD system.

There is currently no drone that can replace everything the F-35 does. There might be one in the future, and it will likely be the most expensive aircraft ever made (see the two NGAD programs' unmanned components)

No drone can take out a CRAM (aka: RADAR aimbot shooting bullets into the sky).

Meanwhile, a helicopter with an anti-radiation missile can take out CRAM, let alone a stealth F35. F35 (and F16) are the next step after helicopters: you send F35 when enemy antiair is good enough to threaten helis.

Couldn't you just fit your drone with an anti-radiation missile?

ARMs generally require a supporting electronic warfare suite to be effectively employed. EW equipment draws a lot of electrical power, so you need a large aircraft with large engines. This is against current drone trends, though it is likely such drones will eventually be deployed.

Another challenge is that ARMs are designed to fight air defense systems that could potentially include equipment to jam drones. Concepts for future drones include a "drone commander" manned aircraft nearby (as opposed to an easier to jam remote operator) and onboard AI to make autonomous combat decisions.

Overall the drone likely won't be much cheaper than an F-35. But it can be sent on suicidal missions without risking a human crew.

None of the drone people are talking about today are the Predator drone we were using 20 years ago in Afghanistan.

But yes. Large drones (like Predator) can launch missiles. But the news is about smaller drones that are being used to cheaply send small grenades over large distances.

Dollar for dollar a $10 net takes out a drone

I have seen interviews with Norwegian pilots responsible for integrating F-35 into Norway’s airforce. Reading between the lines was that it seemed “complex”. I’m not site it is buggy, or overly complicated or what.

I heard a story the other day where kids tried to steal either a Bentley or a Porsche, and could not figure out how to get it into drive.

Is that a feature or a bug?

Its a sign of task saturation present even when not in combat.

Also why get all proud and defensive? Its a dead program now. Europe and other regions will buy homespun.

It's getting the point where people are actively avoiding USA made goods as a protest. To tell you the truth, it's not as hard to do as avoiding Chinese made goods so I think America is going to lose out massively. Right now as it stands today, I feel a lot less guilty about buying Chinese than I have in the past. Not because China is "better" but because supporting the current regime feels just as not, if not more morally bankrupt.

Sure "tech" is hard to avoid but all the rest is still a massive loss for US companies and I suppose we'll see Europe and Asia working even hard to avoid American tech dependency now.

If political change is going to happen swiftly back to something more sane, it's going to be because of poor economic policy, and right now, that's looking like a given.

Yeah, I was surprised to find myself concluding that "tech" is, to me, quite literally the only hiccup.

It's only been 2 months. America in free fall.

Middle finger politics at work, brought about and cheered on by evangelical christians.

This is a political bubble view if I've ever seen one. Evangelical Christians (those that are practicing and going to church regularly and very zealous in their beliefs) make up a tiny minority of those currently aligning with the right, and many are fervent never Trump'ers and prefer a Romney or Bush type Republican. They've simply lost their voice within the party. Most "conservatives" are okay with gay marriage and abortion up to a 22-24 week term (about the point where the fetus can experience pain). Devout religious practice by every survey and measure has fallen into the minority in the US and the country is largely agnostic at best if not in profession, then in practice. They don't care about the

The middle finger is by a larger portion of the working blue collar middle class that has had their economic base wiped out by free trade or trade policies like negative tariff's (ex: China subsidizes shipping of products to the US, hiding the true costs and incentivizing higher carbon/energy consumption practices like shipping raw products overseas to be processed and shipped back, its why you can ship something from Shenzhen for 30 cents when it costs $50-$80 to send the same small item the other way). The few manufacturing facilities and industries here view this as a hostile predatory business practice, similar to when Walmart or chain moves in, cuts prices to cost/loss, drives local competition out of business, then raises prices after they're gone to at or above what the prior businesses sold at. You'll never see this reported on because its a practice that benefits the very rich and people in cities who like cheap goods and don't care where it came from. They view this trade war as a return shots to a war or attacks that's been ongoing for 20 years.

If you frame this as anything outside of working class politics or rural vs metropolitan you're still viewing politics from a view point of 30 years ago. People in rural or less populated areas don't care if people in NYC pay more for goods. They've had their entire economic infrastructure ripped out from under them and were told to learn to code or move to an expensive city or something after they're already barely surviving. They've seen the cost of living raise as they're outcompeted in lower cost housing segments by an influx of migrants who need housing and buy up/rent out the few affordable lower cost areas of a city or location to live. Meanwhile everyone living in the nice neighborhoods thinks its all racism and enjoys the novel new ethnic restaurants popping up. They're experiencing none of the downsides and all of the upsides so find it easy to say its entirely xenophobia. People not affected by it at the same levels in academic or corporate jobs are able to talk in idealist terms about how great these things are because they don't have to deal with the base realities of the issue or fentanyl epidemic, etc. So yes, that segment of the population is very much in a mood of "if we have to suffer, you'll suffer too until you start giving a shit about us instead of entirely what just benefits you". Whether or not this is entirely correct or nuanced doesn't matter. That's the overwhelming sentiment. If you still keep thinking of politics from the viewpoint of what's discussed in bars and dinner tables in cities with a population >500k or everyone in your friend group has a 4 year degree and gets their politics from major outlets, you're dealing with outdated information and context. Even highly educated conservative pundits who live in high population density areas don't get it and have struggled to catch up with the huge shift over the last 10 years.

The world has been getting progressively more and more sick of America's shit since March, 2003.

> We don’t want the US’ stuff anymore

I wonder why this sentiment is not reflected in stock prices. It seems like major defense companies are close to ATH and keep growing. Not trying to argue, just wonder what is the reason for it.

Because stock prices and the people's interests they reflect only care about immediate returns that allow investors to then dump those returns into the next immediate returning investment again, to maximize return with no consideration for the overall health of the system they operate in. Capitalism. Long term health of the stock systems. Long term health of the underlying value they reflect. Nothing long term matters in a stock buy at all.

Why do you even ask this question, did the answer really not seem obvious, or was it rhetorical?

What are you on about? I can ask an llm (which amusingly autocorrects to “lol”) or a search engine, stocks that retained and grew their value over decades. There’s lots.

Would you rather a centrally planned government where companies no longer care about their value? That, in a nutshell, is socialism.

I think it's a combination of the market not believing the reality of the unprecedented policy shift and things only getting clearer the last ~2 weeks. If you look at that time frame, US defense stock is definitely suffering: https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/industrials/aerospace-defe... especially if you compare this to Korean (https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/KDEF/) or European defense stock (https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/EUAD/ and https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/RNMBY/ for a longer perspective since EUAD is new). A large portion of that money could have gone to the US defense sector, but that's not an option anymore.

If you look at European arms manufacturers you'll see that their stock prices have gone up substantially (take Rheinmetall for example, up 169% YoY). But always remember, the stock price can be wrong, and when a downward correction comes to disabuse optimism it tends to be painful.

Because nothing the OP stated is true... The difference between a superior product in war is the difference between winning and losing, not a cost control mechanism. a f35 would destroy a fleet of other aircraft, VTOL land on an aircraft carrier, and be launching a second volley before any other aircraft even had radar signature of the f35.

>We don’t want the US’ stuff anymore and the only thing that can save that relationship is full software control.

This is not how this works... You do have full software control when doing deals of this size. However, that does not mean that you have to provide software updates. The program in question is about find the different frequency's the russians are using so the f-16 can continue it's jamming capabilities. This is not "Full source control" It's whether the US should be using US Cyber Assets to be manually update the frequency's detected.

Just 2 points missing.

1. The sale of planes like the F-35 is not just about the plane. It’s about the ability to be a nation with nuclear power by “renting” the US nuclear missile it can launch. People bought it mainly for that. The pilot and YouTuber ATE Chuet did a video talking about this if you want to dive into it.

2. The plane in itself is not as capable as say the Rafale. They tried to do way too many things with it. The vertical takeoff capability in particular made the plane worst in every other aspect and its own design is very questionable. A Dassault engineer talks about it in this video [1]

[1] https://youtu.be/AVUn0e9Ic2o?si=1mTiFpZLCvRRlrIU

The Dassault Rafale and F35 are meant for two different types of missions, and can't be viewed as competitors.

Also F35s don't need to be ALIS enabled. Israel's Adir version of the F35 uses a separate set of parts and systems co-developed with France and India.

Realistically, I don't see Ukraine getting the Dassault Rafale in the near future. They'll probably go with either the Gripen due to it's lower cost or the Eurofighter due to Germany's strong relations with Ukraine.

I also wouldn't rule out the potential of Ukraine potentially rolling out it's own jet fighter program - much of China's jet program owes it's origins to Ukrainian firms in the 2010s

These Ukrainian firms were remnants of the USSR aerospace program. The only reason they were in Ukraine is the USSR's policy of geographically distributing technological investment. And the only reason China benefitted so much was that these firms were in a state of complete abandonment and nobody in the dysfunctional government cared that the IP was sold off wholesale. There is nothing useful left.

Ukraine had the most technologically advanced rocket industry in late USSR and a pretty good aviation industry. Alumni of Ukrainian aerospace schools are showing up in Europe and Americas. We all witnessing the work of current technological pace in Ukrainian defence capabilities.

If California were to secede I guess by that logic you could claim the future independent Californistan had always had advanced rocket industry. After all, look at all the Lockheed Martin and NASA facilities. This statement would of course completely ignore who funded this work, when, and why.

Why ignored? Just like in USSR Ukraine was generating a lot of produce - and share in the USSR economy - the California also generates a lot of money it spends on rockets. So - I don't see ignoring.

But that's the point. You are trying to deny that Ukraine's aerospace industry was a component of the larger USSR constellation of design bureaus. The Ukrainian bureaus were important, yes. But not the most important. By and large they were the B team. Still highly skilled, mind you.

In the 1990s and 2000s the funding dried up and they mostly fell apart. They were sold to China for parts.

> But not the most important.

Why do you think so? Moscow was a good magnet for educated and active people, and Leningrad too, but Kiev was next, and there were other big cities in Ukraine with institutes and factories which were modern at the time as well. In USSR there were a distribution of expertise, and in some areas Ukrainian organizations were best in USSR. Ukraine was also quite big in terms of territory and population. So why they wouldn't have their proportional share in at least the mentioned areas?

> They were sold to China for parts.

Mostly, but not quite. A lot of people went to the West - we still see them appearing in aerospace companies. A lot of expertise in theoretical sciences also went global, as it's easier. Mriya was supported until 2022 - and rocket industry kept making Zenith and then Antares well into 2010-th. So clearly working industry remained - even though it have suffered quite a few years of problems.

Eh californias sw industry?

Yeah. Initially funded by DARPA, grown by near-zero interest rates. I doubt it would be anything close to what it is today without being connected to the rest of the US economy and its global dominance.

Weird argument to make.

> completely ignore who funded this work, when, and why.

Well yes, because it’s tangential.

Also who funded it? Are you implying that the USSR’s colonial possessions didn’t contribute anything economically?

These were not "colonial possessions". For example, Britain had colonies.

And in the USSR, national republics were financed at the expense of the core of the country, where Russians lived. You can look up (which you certainly won't do) data on the standard of living and level of freedom in different republics of the USSR. For example, in Georgia, small business was allowed, in the RSFSR they put people in jail for it, but in Georgia, for example, you could grow tangerines, transport them on subsidized planes to the north, to all sorts of Norilsk, sell them, and receive in two weeks approximately the annual salary of a Soviet engineer who developed those very missiles, planes, etc. Of course, when the lights went out in the Union in 1991, all this Caucasian prosperity reached a civil war within a year.

By the way, I think that something similar exists in the modern USA, but the locals are blind, just like the Soviet citizens of Russian ethnicity were blind (you may not be aware, but not every successful person of smoked appearance from Russia is Russian), and do not see what is happening. When your Red-Haired Atlas completes his "perestroika and acceleration" in the USA, there will also be changes there, and perhaps people will also begin to see what they did not notice before. Well, that is, if there will be someone to do so.

> These were not "colonial possessions". For example, Britain had colonies.

Would you define Ireland as a colony? It preceded all other British colonies and they used very similar methods to those that the USSR did in its “colonies”, confiscation of land, population replacement, (indirect or direct ) genocide etc. etc.

> which you certainly won't do

If you actually did that would you mind sharing that data?

Of course there is very little accurate data available (due to obvious reasons) and we have to use proxy indicators but still.. can you actually provide any meaningful statistics besides anecdotal claims about a single Soviet state?

> you may not be aware

A lot of projection going on here..

Also I really can’t understand at all what are you trying to say in your last paragraph.

I agree that they are meant for slightly different types of missions. In practice they are not as different as other planes like the F-22 or other stealth planes. But for its design I think you should check out the video because it’s not just a question of which type of missions one plane can do but more how much the vertical takeoff impacted the overall capability of the plane, and this with its VTOL on or not.

My point was that countries buy those planes for the types of missions it was designed for but beyond that also strongly because they can fire nuclear missiles and are able to lease nuclear missiles from the US and have nuclear deterrence capabilities for lease.

Also agree with Ukraine not having the Rafale, it’s way too advanced for a proxy war. They didn’t get F-35 either but F-16 for the same reason.

> My point was that countries buy those planes for the types of missions it was designed for but beyond that also strongly because they can fire nuclear missiles and are able to lease nuclear missiles from the US and have nuclear deterrence capabilities for lease.

Yep, that's the point of all MCAs, but the biggest difference between the F35 and other MCAs is the stealth technology aspect.

The F35 (along with the SU-57 and J-35) incorporated learnings from other MCA projects from the 1990s and 2000s.

You won't be able to fly a Rafale undetected on a bombing raid in Tehran or Isfahan, but that's not the point of the Rafale anyhow.

Most applications I've seen of Rafale and Rafale comparable MCAs is acting as a missle platform with some dogfighting capabilities and basic bombing capabilities if needed.

If the Super Rafale project takes off then you might see an F35 comparable jet from Dassault.

> Also agree with Ukraine not having the Rafale, it’s way too advanced for a proxy war. They didn’t get F-35 either but F-16 for the same reason

Yep! Hence why I think if Ukraine rebuilds it's airforce after this war, they will probably try to procure Saab Gripens because all they need is dogfighting plus missle platform capabilities.

I remember a similar analogy. No matter how hard you encrypt your device - if the border police holds a hammer to your head and forces you to unlock your phone, it’s as good as no encryption.

While this might be the thinking of many critical citizens, I would hope that this translates into political and governmental action. This is unfortunately not an automatism.

One problem remains if politics decide to scrap the F-35 deal in Germany:

While the Eurofighter was an alternative to the F-35, it is not certified to carry tactical nuclear weapons. The phased-out Tornado was the go to platform for this particular scenario.

Source: German Luftwaffe personel