Massive pressure and incentives from the U.S. Just like everyone else who want to be in good standing with NATO.
The “selection process” in Denmark was a total sham, most of the competitors didn’t even bother submitting a bid, because it was obvious from the start that the F-35 would win.
There was no pressure from the U.S. to buy it and there are no incentives from the U.S. to buy it. And no there are plenty of NATO countries that care very much about indigenous hardware development and do not buy US hardware.
The real reason is because the F-35 is in fact very cheap for what it does.
How would you know? Are you privy to all conversations between the Finnish and the U.S. government?
> there are no incentives from the U.S. to buy it
Right from the article itself:
>> However, in what is a major win for the team behind HX, Lockheed Martin provided a unique tailored solution to Finland – one described in their BAFO-press statement to “includes many opportunities for the Finnish defense industry related to the direct manufacture and maintenance of the F-35 that have not been offered before.”
Pretty much all buyers of the F-35 have been offered different sorts of kick-back deals, where they get to produce parts of the plane or handle maintenance, so the deal props up the national arms industry in some way or another. A nice boon for the politicians who can then brag about how they’re securing Finnish/Danish/Italian/whatever jobs.
> Pretty much all buyers of the F-35 have been offered different sorts of kick-back deals, where they get to produce parts of the plane or handle maintenance, so the deal props up the national arms industry in some way or another.
What? This is pretty much standard practice across the board in military procurements. For example, as part of SAAB's Gripen bid for Canada, they would arrange for the aircraft to be produced, assembled, and maintained in Canada if the Gripen were selected. Countries do this for a variety of reasons -- yes, to bolster local industry, but also to give them a leg-up on sovereign sustainment of the platform, and so that they can ramp up manufacture to meet their own needs in the event of a war.
> How would you know? Are you privy to all conversations between the Finnish and the U.S. government?
It's usually on the person proposing the existence of something to prove that it exists rather than on the person saying it doesn't exist to prove that it doesn't. I can't prove the lack of existence of bigfoot nor can I prove the lack of existence of aliens having visited earth.
> Right from the article itself:
> <snip>
> Pretty much all buyers of the F-35 have been offered different sorts of kick-back deals, where they get to produce parts of the plane or handle maintenance, so the deal props up the national arms industry in some way or another. A nice boon for the politicians who can then brag about how they’re securing Finnish/Danish/Italian/whatever jobs.
That's not an incentive from the US though. That's an incentive from Lockheed Martin. Which is something businesses do when they're trying to close sales with a skeptical customer and can afford to do so.
At least in Denmark, it’s a bit of an open secret that the Danish government is unusually efficient and unanimous whenever decisions are made that help U.S. interests in some way or another.
Like how Denmark have joined pretty much every U.S. war of aggression in recent history, despite having no interests at all in Afghanistan or the middle east.
That's still not proof of any such conversation happening.
Denmark joined because the US invoked Article 5 after 9/11. It was more about making sure they're protected if they ever need it in the future, so I'd say it was absolutely in their interest. This was the first time Article 5 was invoked, not going would've killed NATO and their own security. The invasion of Ukraine has solidified their reasoning.
No, of course they wouldn’t make such pressure official. But it’s not exactly a secret that the U.S. arms industry has a lot of political pull. Not hard to imagine that such pull extends to “helping” NATO subjects to pick the right suppliers.
As for article 5, that might explain the second gulf war and/or Afghanistan, but certainly not the first gulf war, Libya or Syria.
Whenever Uncle Sam says “jump”, you’ll see all the small NATO states lining up to ask “How high?”.
One could also read that as providing the nation the ability to handle its own needs for these aircraft and thus not be as reliant on Lockheed Martin. Basically just alleviating one of the primary concerns of choosing a foreign aircraft.
Also the fact that it keeps proving to be an actually good plane by all standards with a price tag that's not all that higher than its competitors stuck with a full generation older design and all the downsides that brings.
And augmented by the fact that a large chunk of Europe is going to be operating the same plane, driving down maintenance costs, sharing maintenance knowledge, reducing interoperability issues and ensuring that spare parts will be available.
So great that only Brazil was willing to buy them. And not at all because they were the best planes they could get, but because Brazil strongly prefers to not buy from the US and SAAB offered a great technology transfer deal.
Political reasons that may or may not make sense. Brazil would perhaps benefit in many ways by aligning themselves with the US, but for a variety of reasons they simply don't want to do that.
In the fickle Brazilian political environment, not aligning with the US might end up being a rather pragmatic move. As a politician, who knows how badly your successor will fuck up those ties?
They're generation older (with everything that means for their sensor suite, pilot workload and situational awarness) and won't have all the benefits of sharing the same platform with the rest of the Europe.
> won't have all the benefits of sharing the same platform with the rest of the Europe.
Buying the _eurofighter_ wouldn't let them share the same platform as the _rest of Europe_? I realize that the F-35 has racked up a number of sales recently, but there's quite a few eurofighters around still, and more on the way IIRC
Yes, unsurprisingly more countries are procuring F-35 than the Typhoon. Eurofighter also costs about the same while being technologically less advanced, its A/G capability was bolted on after the fact.
same happened in Belgium, the US won over the French Jet.
In hindsight nobody cares anymore, but it was a lot of public debate and very clear the decision was political and not merit based
Hey, that has value, there is definitely a good case to be made for that. But just be open and honest about it instead of doing weird procurement steps
The “selection process” in Denmark was a total sham, most of the competitors didn’t even bother submitting a bid, because it was obvious from the start that the F-35 would win.