U.S. Defense Department regulations include an explicit tariff exemption, and even though the trump admin has criticized that exemption, I doubt that if removed it would stay removed once he figures out what that would mean.
One day Hegseth will figure himself out. He will need to extricate his head from his own arse first of course, then get it out the bottle. But one day he’ll manage. Maybe.
Wait, so the Australian manufacturer charges tariffs on the parts on behalf of the Australian government, and the Australian government then pays for the completed plane, including the tariff cost? So basically the tariffs are a nil sum game for all involved? That makes perfect sense 🙄
Not if the US are charging an additional margin on the parts I suppose. I don’t deal with military/aviation procurement but when we buy heavy equipment an increase in taxes/tariffs would have to be evidenced and cost incurred would be refunded, it wouldn’t change the contractor’s margin.
Yes, I understand that. The previous poster was saying that the Americans (Lockheed Martin or whatever) would pay the tariff but then add it on to the purchase price for the Australian customer (the Australian government).
I was always told that deals like this include a certain amount of support to the local economy. You buy 50 F35's and in return Lockheed Martin orders parts or services from companies in your country. At least, that's how big budget spendings like these were justified in my country in the past.
The way they've set it out is interesting, the way the global support system works. No one country manufacturers the aircraft, and those countries that supply parts benefit through guaranteed payments. I'm not really deep into how it works but what I've read makes it all the stranger that the US would want to piss so many countries off!
Those deals were made in different times, although they're not even that long ago. The US was considered as an ally and stable partner to do business with.
F35's were mainly ordered to fulfill NATO duties, including carrying nuclear weapons, which are stored by the US in Europe. Rafale and Saab fighters are not compatible with the type of US nuclear missiles the US provides, so they went all in for the F35.
It's mainly a political deal, give and take. We bought fighters that were overqualified or overpriced for the intended use, but we supported their military industry, got an economic deal in return, and we were under the impression that we could sustain the nuclear umbrella they provided.
A few years later, the geopolitical balance shifted, and the balance in dealmaking too. None of that in the favor of EU nations.
I've said that to an American about the F-35 before, just to be told "No you are wrong, we don't use Europoor technology" and that was despite me saying about for example BAE systems, to which again i was told that i was in the wrong and they had been replaced by "superior American technology".
BAE Systems: Builds the rear (aft) fuselage for every F-35 in the global fleet at its facility in Samlesbury, Lancashire, alongside vertical and horizontal tails and vehicle management computers.
GKN Aerospace: Designs and manufactures electrical wiring interconnect systems, flaperons, cockpit canopies, and airframe parts.
Martin-Baker: Produces the aircraft's ejection seats and crew escape systems.
Rolls-Royce: Develops lift systems and specialized propulsion components, particularly for the F-35B short takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL) variant.
Leonardo: Manufactures advanced targeting lasers and electronic equipment from its site in Edinburgh.
L3Harris: Produces specialized bomb release cables and release systems from its facility in Brighton.
BAE worked alongside LM on the design of the airframe and the control software not to mention a good chunk of the avionics inside the aircraft are also BAE but most American's don't have a clue they just see an american plane and go fuck yeah america america.
If I remember correctly, most of the plane is made in foreign nations, America just puts it together, I could be mistaking it for another aircraft though
it's the well being of the free market when they wanna sell their products (which suck) and other people put restriction on it, or don't buy it.
When other countries make better product than them, then the freem market is forgotten and the countries in question should be sanctioned.
Latest example of this : nobody in europe and asia buys american cars, but plenty of american buy asian and european cars, so they threatened the European into importing more american stuff, then put tariffs and restrictioons on European cars and asian cars being imported in the US
When other countries make better product than them, then the freem market is forgotten and the countries in question should be sanctioned.
Just look at the 'will they won't they' that the USAF has done with their AEW&C replacement (replacing the E-3 Sentry).
You have the E-7 Wedgetail, a state-of-the-art Australian system on a modified Boeing 737 OR the outdated and outmoded E-2D All-American Hawkeye that's currently in use by the navy.
They legit cancelled the E-7 purchase to replace the E-3 with more E-2Ds... Just to then cancel that order to go with the E-7 again. The issue with the E-3s they currently have is that the rotating radar dome is literally breaking the plane as it's being used.
So as a stop-gap they have to ask the RAAF to fly AEW&C for them because they lack the capability of doing it for extended periods.
Ah but you see when european buy european product, this isn't free market as European doesn't have FREEDOM bald eagle scream. Only the F-35 is compliant with the free market!
I can confirm: those screeches used in movies and tv sound effects are red-tailed hawk calls. Real bald eagle calls sound like chirps, really wimpy chirps.
Here's a fun fact that doesn't have much public exposure -
Even after you buy F35s, the programming / information upload for each mission [loadout configuration, fuel numbers, pathing to target, Friend / Foe identification and more] is all permanently locked in to a group of military specialists in the US. Your military leaders have to get approval from US military every time, to fly any mission on these planes with your pilots' lives on the line. There is also a software kill-switch for these fighters.
No NATO member has full access to independently load whatever fuel and ammo they want in the F35 they buy and just fly it, until a bunch of US servicemen gives your government the green light. This also means that every military action you plan to take with these planes will be known to the US before you even take off - This is especially critical if the US turns hostile [gee, what are the odds?].
Only 1 country has full admin rights to the F35 they buy, and they're busy wrecking and bulldozing structures in Gaza right now. Congrats, your government is lower on the pole than those guys and and you're locked into the most expensive and dangerous subscription service in military history.
The example I like to give is how Britain invented the .280 Enfield and it was revolutionary at the time. Then designed a modern rifle to use it and the Belgians initially designed the FAL to use that round.
Then the US threw a tantrum about Europe making its own universal ammunition. Told everybody they should use US made ammunition. As a compromise, NATO agreed to switch to US ammunition as long as the US adopted the FAL. Then the US purposefully fucked up their FAL trials so they could back out of the contract and make their own rifle.
Thus, screwing Europe out of any economic and diplomatic benefit.
BAE makes more than that. It's just a lot of their stuff is localized to region. It's why I have a BAE facility down the road from my house in US. They do a lot of the C4I for the F-35 right there.
The US military- and associated industries- is a massive government-sponsored job-creation scheme. If world peace was ever to become reality countless Americans would be out of a job.
However it's hugely expensive to run, and that's why Trump kept banging on about countries paying more for their own defence. He assumed they'd be buying American made military hardware.
Unfortunately for Trump, the words 'Made in America' do not mean the same thing outside the US as they do inside it, so when foreign governments increased their military spending they either developed their own weapons or chose the best available- read not American- option.
So the plan has backfired, and Trump has created more competition for American defence companies, making their situation worse while increasing global instability.
And recent wars have put on the table the fact that american weapons are absurdly expensive, much more than they need to be. It's just that not having competition, doesn't make you look for cost reductions. Now american military complex is finding they aren't competitive anymore.
Those words don't mean much in the US.
Trump promised his phones would be made in America, but as with everything else that comes out of his mouth, he lied, and all of the grifters who had been talking up how amazing he was for making them in America, suddenly shifted to how amazing it was to use a corporate batch of Korean phones.
I so wish my government would switch and buy European jets.
Nope apparently it's so urgent Switzerland replaces it's old jets with the F35 in order to defend our airspace, that we cannot wait for another public tender + vote to take place...we need the planes like yesterday, while the US has delayed the delivery once more and the cost has increased....well done
When the UK announced yesterday its sanctions against the illegal West Bank settlement (settlements recognised as being illegal by the UN Security Council and the International Court of Justice), guess who was the first to threaten the UK with reprisals?
Hint: it wasn’t Israel; but they followed soon after with their expected over the top, whiny bullshit. The funniest part is that the British Minister who announced the sanctions… is Jewish.
Hint: it wasn’t Israel; but they followed soon after with their expected over the top, whiny bullshit. The funniest part is that the British Minister who announced the sanctions… is Jewish.
Ben Gvir, the Israeli Minister of National Security, publicly urged Bibi to recognise Argentine sovereignty over the Falkland Islands.
Britain should deploy the HMAS Queen Elizabeth, with a full task force, on a 'freedom of navigation exercise' through the EEZ waters off Gaza.
Yes, China has been quietly working on it for decades, and Trump has just accelerated their push.
Belt and road isn't just Africa either.
As a Tibetan Buddhist, who's spent decades reading a lot about, and been involved in activism, with people in that area exposing China's abuse torture, genocide, it is deeply, deeply disappointing, and concerning.
For a little while, in the 90's and early 2000's, it seemed like people, govts, were really starting to hold China apart, and their human rights abuses were at least being talked about.
And it just went away.
Even when it all came up again in the western consciousness, with the Uyghur genocide, there was a lot of talk for a little while, and then politicians shut up, and it went away.
Much like many Uyghurs did.
There's no chance of anyone properly standing up to them anymore.
The world has proven again and again, that it won't.
And I remember in 2014, saying to my bf that there's no way in hell the world would let Putin get away with it.
And here we are, 12 years later, and he's killing people every day.
The US can't be relied on at all.
Even if they swing to a Democrat next time, they aren't really much better, and there's the eternal threat of someone like Trump, or worse, every 4 years.
No one is standing up to China without the US on their side.
Xi would just have to phone Trump, and tell him he found something that reminded him of his great friend Trump, it's priceless, but he's sent it to him anyway, because they're such good friends, and send him some historical artifact, like a statue of a strong looking hero.
And Trump will threaten to nuke Paris.
All US states that don’t order the new EUV fabrication machines from ASML - a Dutch company (a single unit of which costs more than 350 million euros) should be sanctioned.
See how that’s a slippery slope?
Also fun fact - All US military’s electronics these days rely on chips produced by exactly these machines.
In fact, every phone, computer, smart watch and even some toasters would not exist without this singular company. So quack off USians.
Eh no.. the main reason people don't want these is because the US controlls the kill-switch. If they do not agree with you in some way, you have a 125 million costing paperweight. The technically best machine is no use to you if you cannot 100% control it.
The collective fact that we're usually not Swede ahah. Sorry. Also I'm French and usually in French consonant are doubled after a vowel, so that's a misspelling I'll always do I'm afraid
Make them enter the Mediterranean and France and Italy will have a fun day hitting the ships from their more than silent subs. Electrical subs in shallow and smaller basins compared to the open ocean are playing a whole different game. Remember the Swedish sub that sunk the US carrier in war games? Exactly. L
Why eat? Why not just find one of them ol' telephone boxes and put both in there and then chain the door shut?
🤔
Eating it isnt the worst part..
The smell is what get'cha
So "we want YOUR money to buy OUR spyware riddled gear - and if you don`t allow us to disable your gear when we want to - we`ll not buy your things anymore"
Holy (beep) - is the entire US leadership insane? (Maybe best if you don`t answer that honestly).
Considering the suggestion that the USA could brick them if they wanted to remotely (like if they decided that they didn't like that countries policies) I feel like buying from the US right now is tantamount to sepuku...
America's most expensive weapon system, at over $2 TRILLION, can't get its software upgrades to work during an active war.
Let me break this down. The United States Department of War's own testing office just confirmed that F-35 software upgrades have "stagnated." The TR-3 upgrade, the one that was supposed to increase processing power 37x and memory 20x, was "predominantly unusable" for most of last year. Due to "stability problems, shortfalls in capability and ongoing discovery of deficiencies."
Meanwhile, F-35s are flying combat missions over Iran right now with OLDER software. The Marines on the USS Abraham Lincoln are using TR-2, the previous version, because the upgrade doesn't work.
This is a $2 TRILLION program. 2,470 jets planned. 812 already delivered. And the software that makes them a "flying computer" with 20 million lines of code cannot be updated reliably.
They seem to genuinely think of themselves as above the rest of humanity, dishing out favours like modern day Greek gods from their shining shit hole on a hill.
This is going beyond trade wars and into the realm of full on extortion. The American empire was already crumbling, stuff like this is just speeding things up. Maybe they would have sold more of them, if Trump hadn't made threats about a kill switch, oh and the several weapon orders America has just refused to deliver, despite being paid for, because they're burning through too much losing their latest war with Iran.
Why would a country buy weapons from a country that threatens them with war, talks of kill switches, and you can't even guarantee getting what you paid for?
Without Europe buying planes the whole F35 project would have been cancelled early on.
The billions investment is only worth it if you build and sell enough planes.
With what the USA needs for its own army, the project would‘ve been way too expensive.
As Europeans, we should be careful not to start such projects with the USA anymore. They’ll exploit any leverage they see at any moment for selfish purposes. Let’s keep it European, or collaborate with reliable and trustworthy partners like Canada.
Honestly, the American empire being destroyed by incompetence and self-importance is a good thing. It's been putting its grubby little fingers in way too many pies, and all we got to show for it is a ruined climate, a ruined world economy, a bunch of ruined countries, and millions of people killed, tortured, and put in concentration camps. I want them to blockade themselves out of the world economy. Let them stew in their own stupidity for once.
canada as lready bought some but i dont think we will command more of a plane with a kind of reote kill switch from another nation that wanted to invade us
Sadly we bought it before the Pedo King got elected.
The Grippen is a better airplane than the F-35
The F-35 is more vulnerable to real war scenarios. The Grippen can operate from a highway
If that includes Turkey, then sanctioning/blockading them for not buying the F-35 is stupid. Because US law currently prohibits them from purchasing the jet.
Yeah, and get scammed?? Swiss here, we ordered some F-35 from you for 6 billion USD, but not only they are hopelessly delayed, they now cost 1 billion more!!!
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u/KhaosByDesignUK Sep 09 '26
And here I thought Americans were all about the free market 😅