Honest question because I don’t know: I thought the US could only afford F35 development and purchasing cost because its supply chain was internationalized.
If all the world would suddenly decide to stop working on F35, and stopped supplying parts, wouldn’t the US fleet also disintegrate after some time?
The vast majority of the F-35 construction is actually done inside the US, and that’s required for security requirements for things like this.
Now a bunch of countries (Canada, UK, Netherlands, and some others) did contribute to the development of the F-35 but I want to say it was only around ~10% of the total cost. And that also went towards the purchase price of their first block of airframes.
I sincerely doubt any other than the UKs aren’t easily replaceable by the US and for the UK piece BAE has US sites all of whom I’m sure have at the very least full access to the specs.
Honest question because I don’t know: I thought the US could only afford F35 development and purchasing cost because its supply chain was internationalized.
If all the world would suddenly decide to stop working on F35, and stopped supplying parts, wouldn’t the US fleet also disintegrate after some time?
The vast majority of the F-35 construction is actually done inside the US, and that’s required for security requirements for things like this.
Now a bunch of countries (Canada, UK, Netherlands, and some others) did contribute to the development of the F-35 but I want to say it was only around ~10% of the total cost. And that also went towards the purchase price of their first block of airframes.
UK alone was 10%.
There are components made by the international partners
https://simpleflying.com/how-many-international-parts-us-f-35-fighter-jet/
I sincerely doubt any other than the UKs aren’t easily replaceable by the US and for the UK piece BAE has US sites all of whom I’m sure have at the very least full access to the specs.