The thing is that nobody just buys a weapon in isolation. You buy into a weapons system, which includes not just the weapon itself but a whole universe of concerns that surround it: logistical concerns like spare parts, fuel and ammunition, operational concerns like tactical doctrines that work well with the weapon, and so forth. Without that stuff, the weapon by itself is pretty close to useless.
All of which means that it's more or less impossible to buy a weapon from a foreign power without opening yourself up wide to that power. You have to let their military advisors onto your bases, to train your troops on the doctrines that go with the weapon. You have to let their logistical specialists into your inventory systems, so they can hook you into the pipelines through which the spare parts and ammo flow. Any of these people could be using their access to snoop on you or worse, but there's not much you can do about that because without them all you've bought is a $100 million paperweight.
If you're the buyer, yes, that absolutely sucks. But, unless you're willing to spend vast amounts of money you don't have to build up your own domestic military-industrial complex, you don't have a lot of alternatives. You either buy into one of the existing ecosystems (American, Russian, European or Chinese), or get curb-stomped by a neighbor who did. Once you're bought into one of those ecosystems you're effectively at the mercy of the state that operates it, of course, but hey, you do what you've gotta do. As the saying goes, the strong do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must.
Yep, nobody buy F-35 planes because it's a superior airplane (it's not) countries buy it in order to have better diplomatic relationships with the USA.
It's pretty telling to see Germany refusing to buy F-35 or Hungary buying ones in order to piss off Sweden.
Thats also the situation here in Denmark.. everyone knows its the most expensive, and not the best.. yet we bought it. We havent even gotten the planes yet, but we have also been asked to buy spare parts in advance, as they might not be able to provide them later.. wtf?. Also we have been asked to let a number of the planes remain in the US, for “training”.. this is the shittiest of shitty deals..
I mean, I can understand the training request - the US has a lot more "land we don't care about people flying over at mach 1.2" than Denmark does (which means you'd probably want to train there anyways) and if that's where there's already training infrastructure setup it would make sense not to duplicate it.
And if you're going to be training pilots... Shouldn't you do it on the exact config of F-35 that Denmark's buying? Which means a Danish F-35, which means leaving it in the US.
You have a warped view of world politics if you think countries are incapable of making their own decisions and need to be told what is best for them.
That aside, it's more or less common knowledge these days that the planes have not been delivered for all these years due to the production problems they are still having.
Esquire just did a piece just month mentioning that the plane starts to fall apart if it's flown too fast and the computer fails to detect if the plane is flying to fast about half the time.
> You have a warped view of world politics if you think countries are incapable of making their own decisions and need to be told what is best for them.
We don't know what the "training in the US" requirement looks like, though. I wouldn't be surprised if it was just "you need to use Danish planes to train" + "we only have training facilities in the US, and if you want to bring your own that'll cost money". It has nothing to do with "Denmark can't make its own decisions", because as far as I'm aware that hasn't been alleged anywhere.
Denmark is so small, that most regular fighterpilot training, is already done in the US.. but having to pay billions for jets, that are then permanently in the US, is pretty bad. The high price, means we will have way fever than before.
How is that useless or arrogant? Germany used to train with Phantoms and then Tornadoes in Arizona because they didn't want to fly combat training in their own airspace. Same with Italy, and many other countries. It's a wise decision since the Southwest of the US has wide open spaces where they can do elaborate training like Red Flag etc. What would be useless would be to pay a lot of money for fighters, then just have them sit on the tarmac collecting dust (like Germany has with Eurofighter).
Having a military costs money. Living up to treaty obligations like NATO costs money. Trying to have a military on the cheap just ends up with dead troops/pilots/sailors.
There is at least a partial alternative: you can get involved in the supply chain.
For the F-35, other countries were asked to pay into the R&D budget, with the promise that large contributors could obtain exclusive manufacturing rights to certain components. I've seen a lot of grumbling about this, with people claiming it traded cost savings for a military risk that the planes will be useless (or at least lack spares) if things go wrong for those suppliers.
This is sort of true, but the missing insight is that the dependency is also a goal. It's not going to allay fears that F-35s are calling home with telemetry or have compromised software, but it does help create reciprocal interests in the same way as inviting in a foreign military base.
I think how reassuring that mutual dependency is will depend heavily on how easily Lockheed routes around Turkey now that the US is cutting them out of the F-35 program.
That's a very good point. Turkey is obviously the odd man out on the buyer list, and it seems like a clear case of economic and political considerations clashing with the military rationale of only selling to firm (and easily-defended) friends.
I think it extends the metaphor to NATO very well actually. A mutual-defense alliance gradually turned into a political and economic alliance, and now it's not clear how well the original proposition can be trusted. RAND, at least, thinks Estonia and Latvia can't be actively defended and couldn't be retaken without bombing campaigns in Russian territory. So suddenly, the strength (or at least universality) of that agreement becomes an open question.
Furthermore, buying weapons doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It is a political process. The US will use its considerable clout to “encourage” other countries to buy arms from the US.
All of which means that it's more or less impossible to buy a weapon from a foreign power without opening yourself up wide to that power. You have to let their military advisors onto your bases, to train your troops on the doctrines that go with the weapon. You have to let their logistical specialists into your inventory systems, so they can hook you into the pipelines through which the spare parts and ammo flow. Any of these people could be using their access to snoop on you or worse, but there's not much you can do about that because without them all you've bought is a $100 million paperweight.
If you're the buyer, yes, that absolutely sucks. But, unless you're willing to spend vast amounts of money you don't have to build up your own domestic military-industrial complex, you don't have a lot of alternatives. You either buy into one of the existing ecosystems (American, Russian, European or Chinese), or get curb-stomped by a neighbor who did. Once you're bought into one of those ecosystems you're effectively at the mercy of the state that operates it, of course, but hey, you do what you've gotta do. As the saying goes, the strong do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must.