A widespread concern is what would happen to Dutch weapon systems if the Americans were to withdraw completely as an ally. For example, Dutch F-35 aircraft are dependent on American software updates. Yet, Tuinman isn’t particularly worried about this.
“The F-35 is truly a shared product. The British make the Rolls-Royce engines, and the Americans simply need them too.” And even if this mutual dependency doesn’t result in software updates, the F-35, in its current state, is still a better aircraft than other types of fighters.
If you still want to upgrade despite everything, I’m going to say something I should never say, but I will anyway: you can jailbreak an F-35 just like an iPhone. (Crack it with your own software, ed.)
With F-35’s costs, is it really the best equipment? I suspect the real reason is that replacing it is a gigantic undertaking that might be far more expensive short-term.
The components dependency part in fighter jets, though, is something they really should be able to solve. Those are very complex systems, but designed with integration and customization in mind. That’s one of the reasons they are so expensive. Slowly replacing everything in them with components from more reliable producers is normal for militaries. Well, for militaries with actual RnD and production, of course Uzbekistan or Colombia can’t do that, but Netherlands can.
Name another stealth jet that you can buy right now in significant numbers.
Do Netherlands need a stealth jet at all? Perhaps a fleet of cheap drones is better.
I mean, in some “global power projection” context like USA or thinking of readiness for total war like Israel, those jets are not optional.
But the threat model of Netherlands is which? Considering it doesn’t even have mandatory military training.
There is an argument smaller countries need stealth fighters more than big ones like America because there is a larger emphasis on each plane and pilot. Giving each pilot the competitive edge is necessary when you only have a few hundred pilots max, compared to the USA that has around 15,000.
Honestly calling a country that can afford even a single F-35 small seems strange. And having only one doesn’t make sense. You need to rotate them for maintenance, have a few up at once (at least 2) for basic tactics, so it seems having less than 8 fighters is just not enough. And then you need jet fuel, missiles, ground systems, avionics, radars, all up-to-date.
Small militarily not small economically. The Royal Netherlands Air Force is small, especially compared to the USAF. The USAF has more pilots than the RNAF has total service members.
The RNAF has 50 F-35s, not all are active at the same time, and Wikipedia does not list any other active combat aircraft since they sent their F-16s to Ukraine. So not a lot of aircraft and not a lot of pilots.
OK, I think I’ve lost track of what I was arguing. F-35 is fine.
It’s just that strategic reliance upon such a complex system intuitively seems bad without some Russian\Iranian style main scalable cheap body, which is also what Ukraine has, Turkey has and what USA is building. Basically everyone with a pretense at having self-sufficient military.
What would EU countries do if right now a mass of cheap drones, cruise missiles and stormtroopers started moving their way?
It’s not just about defending the Netherlands but all of NATO, which involves deploying Dutch planes to eastern Europe, close to Russian AA systems for example.