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I'm gonna make a prediction (defense industry) [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-02-19

In the last 20 years or so, most of NATO and other until-last-week longtime US allies have gone in pretty heavily on the Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter as their next-generation aircraft, as they look to replace a lot of 1980s/90s era aircraft like the F-16.

The orders I’m aware of:

Israel — 75 aircraft, amount unclear

Singapore — 20 aircraft, 2.75 billion USD

Denmark — 27 aircraft, price as of 2016 was 3 billion USD (probably has blown up since then)

Norway — 52 aircraft, price unclear

Canada — 88 aircraft, 19 billion CAD

Netherlands — 52 aircraft (cut from 85), cost over 4.5 billion as of 2018

Italy — originally 131, later cut to 90. Price unclear.

United Kingdom —Originally 138 aircraft, 60 to 80 aircraft as of March 2021, price unclear

Australia — 72 aircraft (63 already in service) price unclear… was 11.5 billion AUD in 2014 but probably has blown up

Turkey — Had ordered 100 aircraft but status unclear, they were in the program but got dropped because of buying Russian missiles, but then they turned the missiles over to the US so they’re back in.

Belgium — 34 aircraft, 6.53 billion (USD)

Finland — 64 aircraft, 8.4 billion (EUR)

Germany — “up to” 35 aircraft, 8.4 billion (USD)

Japan — 149 aircraft, 30-odd billion (USD)

Poland — 32 aircraft, 6.5 billion USD

Switzerland — 35 aircraft, about 6 billion magic swiss chocolate coins

Czechia — 24 aircraft, 5.6 billion USD

Greece — up to 40 aircraft, 8.6 billion USD

Romania — number of aircraft unclear, price alleged to be 6.4 to 7.2 billion USD

South Korea — 60+ aircraft, price unclear but probably over ten billion USD

That is an AWFUL LOT OF BILLIONS (but oh the US military is as of this writing on order for 2,500 aircraft, so about 70% of the total planned production).

Now, these prices are just what I found on Wikipedia, since it’s almost 1 AM and I don’t have the desire to trawl through the vast wasteland of defense industry press releases or congressional export approvals for anything else. 

This is how one aircraft project produces three things that are nominally versions of the same aircraft but which actually share only about 25% parts commonality, winds up 80% over budget as of 2023, and entered service ten years late. The original budget was $200 billion but in 2017 it was double that and in 2018 the GAO auditor just sat there and cried. The F35 is now the most expensive single defense project in western history (we can’t rate Russian/NK/PRC costs), eclipsing the Manhattan Project.

Current production costs ranges from about $78 million to $102 million per aircraft, depending on version (the vertical/short takeoff F-35B costs about 20% more than the conventional F-35A version). Flyaway costs add about another $3-5 million per aircraft.

Production delays also meant that some of equipment the first batches of aircraft flew with circa 2014-2018 needs to be replaced, i.e. more powerful onboard computers, to keep up with specs for aircraft entering service in 2024-2028.

Worst, the F-35 ‘sucked all the air out of the room’ for a lot of military budgets, including US aircraft appropriations, to the point where countries were abandoning other projects (some quite close to fruition) because they needed to throw more money into the F35 budget. The cost also absolutely ballooned… which forced many countries to either cut their orders or drop out entirely.

I’m just going to note that for many of these countries, the other big defense line item they had at the time was keeping troops in Iraq and Afghanistan alongside US troops, and they never sent us a bill. 

So I’m gonna put a marker down now and see how things turn out over the next 6-8 months. If Tantrump continues on course to scuttle most of our traditional alliances I predict that a lot of these orders will be cut back or canceled entirely (especially the ones where there is little or no domestic economic benefit, i.e. having an Italian company making wing parts for the Italian aircraft) in favor of domestic production or stuff available within NATO or the EU.

After all, a 5th-generation fighter in Europe is probably going to be less immediately essential than things with much shorter lead times and more opportunities for domestic production, like drones, cruise missiles, artillery and AFVs. If your major threat is Russia/Belarus/etc., which let’s face it, has mostly a lot of 1980s/90s aircraft itself, and between the French Rafale, the Eurofighter 2000 (which the UK, Germans, Italians and Spanish currently fly), and the Swedish Gripen (Sweden and Hungary, and the Czechs have been leasing some), there is in-Europe production capacity (although some might require a restart) and infrastructure for aircraft at least as good as what Russia was starting to field in 2022. 

For example, the Gripen is much less expensive than a F35A to buy ($40-50 million) and also costs half as much as a F35A to maintain and operate.

Poland was already spending huge amounts of money on South Korean weapons (most of their new tanks, artillery, and a lot of aircraft are South Korean), and the US making either a hard or soft exit to NATO will probably only accelerate that. 

On the other hand, countries with aircraft carriers or things like aircraft carriers (UK, Italy, Spain, Japan, and so on) were leaning hard on the vertical/short takeoff version of the F35 as a replacement for the Harriers they’ve been operating since the 80s; the F35B is currently the only western V/STOL aircraft on the market. The UK rather conspicuously has two big, fancy aircraft carriers but for several years really had no aircraft for them to carry.

On the other other hand, the western defense industry is so massively cross-owned and entangled…. just look what BAE and General Dynamics own, and where it is, and what they make, and who for. 

Nations facing China might be in a different boat, of course, given how they keep rolling out impressive-looking new aircraft, but we weren’t going to sell F-35s to Taiwan anyways, and the ROK has a domestic design on order. 

I’ll end with…. I wish we could spend all this money on stuff other than weapons, but that’s the world for you….. deus defecerat et mundus erat

[END]
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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/2/19/2304958/-I-m-gonna-make-a-prediction-defense-industry?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

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