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Europe and Canada Are Finally Saying No to the U.S. F-35 Stealth Fighter, Motivated By a Desire For “Strategic Autonomy”
(nationalsecurityjournal.org)
this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2025
267 points (99.3% liked)
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The F-22 being a disaster, can you elaborate on that? I thought it was a good plane that while it does cost a lot is the most advanced fighter the US has made to date.
I have no clue what the other guy is talking about. The F-22 is an amazing plane that was and still is the stealthiest fighter made.
They're just parroting the BS about "western weapons are too reliant on technology". Oh no, complicated things, so scary. It's unfounded and pretty prevalent in russian-aligned commentary as more and more information comes out about the spectacular technological shortcomings the russian military has been trying to hide (like how the much celebrated and modeled SU-75, russia's 5th gen steal "equivalent" to the F35, turns out to have been made of plywood. And as far as anyone knows, it still is, we've never seen one fly).
If they push the line that advanced equipment is bad then they don't look so pathetic. Unfortunately, people who dont know any better also wind up believing them.
The F-22 is the coolest plane ever built. That is a scientific fact and anyone who claims otherwise is a liar.
It is also effectively a death trap with a long history of operational issues stemming from overly tight tolerances and systems far too dependent on software (there it is again) that basically cannot be tested in anger. If you go through most of the accident reports they tend to begin as "pilot error, not our fault" before becoming "oh, those wires were chafed" or "this hose kinked". And there are a few "anonymous" anecdotes about how horrible they are to fly but those are few and far between because... there are very few pilots and it is super easy to track who said what.
In large part because their maintenance costs (and procedures associated with that) are so extreme that any experiment or "test flight" runs the very real risk of destroying an incredibly expensive plane and killing the pilot. And any lessons learned become a very expensive re-training for the crews who are responsible for trying to maintain those things. So most issues are left ignored until they actually need to be used in anger... at which point it is a lot easier to blame the pilot for breaking protocol rather than wonder why such a simple maneuver drastically increased the risk of a coolant leak.
Yes, they are still "in service". But it is incredibly telling that they were "introduced" in 2005 and the final delivery to the US military was in 2012. Contrast that with the F-18 where it was "introduced" in 1983 and they are expected to continue to be produced until 2027. And the F-22s that are still capable of flying are mostly restricted entirely to surveillance and alleged use as missile magnets ("bad guy" fires a missile at the F-22. F-22 kicks on the afterburner. Bomber behind the F-22 flips the bird as they complete their mission. Everyone else wonders why they didn't just use drones and flares)
In many ways it represents the problem of the Military Industrial Complex (and, to be clear, the US does not have a monopoly on this. I've read arguments that any Fifth Gen fighter is effectively just a pipeline for corruption and bribes and... I probably agree most days). It began with good intentions but rapidly became a magnet for new technologies as different officials wanted different things (or different companies found a way to get NRE money...) and it became a product searching for a purpose rather than a program searching for a product.
I'm going through the accident reports now, and so far the only one blamed on a pilot has been when the pilot ejected at 500mph (or thereabouts) and mulched himself in the air-stream as a result. That seems pretty conclusively to have been his fault, and they haven't ever blamed it on a technical failure. Otherwise, there's a couple of maintenance issues, two foreign objects getting sucked into the engine, one time the canopy got stuck... none of these have required any retraining thus far.
Update: Ah, they blamed the pilot for an accident that turned out to have been caused by a flaw in the emergency oxygen system that required a handle redesign. Another pilot error, though not retracted, was that the landing gear was retracted too early during training. The "chafed wire" you mentioned was never blamed on pilot error since the plane data recorder confirmed that the hydraulics were on fire.
More Update: So... Sixteen total crashes. Five of which were writeoffs, the rest repaired. Only one of which appears to have been erroneously blamed on a pilot. None of which required retraining beyond "the handle is shaped different now".
... Did you actually read these reports before making these claims?
Also, side point, what does this mean? The last B-52 was delivered in 1962, and those have been a mainstay of the USAF for the 63 years since. What does "having enough of the planes with a very niche role" indicate about that plane's capabilities?
Nah, you made my point much more succinctly. The US (and world) managed to purchase all the f-22s it will ever want or need over a 7 year timespan.
Thanks
So your engagement with the criticism is to... claim a single piece of criticism supports your point, and ignore the rest (which is devastating to both your argument and your credibility). And what you are claiming it supports doesn't even make sense within your earlier comment.
Convincing!™
Also the F22 was never available for export - no stealth tech is. Trying to present it as rejected by the world is just comically transparent.
I mean, drones seem far easier to overwhelm enemy defenses with, and aren’t constrained by having a squishy meatbag to protect inside.
The effectiveness of drones on the modern battlefield is widely overstated and mostly a function of the complete lack fo discipline (or competence) the average russian conscript has. Which is why Ukraine has much fewer casualties to them.
Similarly, long range operations do more or less require a human for a mix of latency and signal strength.
But when you are allegedly sending "the greatest stealth fighter ever made" to get detected by enemy radar and attract missiles... yeah, that is a case where it makes a lot more sense to send out a drone.
Which gets into a huge discussion over what a "fighter jet" even is in 2025 and what is role is. Which is also exemplified by some of the greatest military propaganda of all time (Top Gun Maverick!!!!) needing to make a REALLY convoluted reason to even have f/a jets in the area of operations... and then completely forgot about the massive walls of SAM sites when they wanted to let Tommy dogfight (which was fucking awesome...).
Which gets back to even more reasons "Canada and EU ditch f-35" doesn't necessarily mean "Canada and EU buying more Typhoons"
Hmm, I dunno about that. I know that the US likes to downplay the effectiveness of drones, but they also aren’t the ones in a real war. I’m just very skeptical about people pitting their warfare theory against actual combat results.
Modern US and NATO armor/vehicles have air conditioning (and aren't crammed full of stolen loot.... before a battle). Just closing the hatch goes a LONG way towards limiting the effectiveness of a DJI with a hand grenade taped to it. Same with actually setting up the overhead cover to protect from mortar fire at night rather than just leaving said tanks to air out.
As for larger targets and installations? Most modern militaries (all EU/NATO?) have early warning systems that are effectively a microphone array used to pinpont where gunfire is coming from. Whether they are installed on ships/bases, taped to the back of a vehicle, or literally worn by infantry.
And drone engines tend to be pretty distinct noises. They might not come up until it is too late if you are having a conversation with your buddies but if you have a simple filter listening for them... Which is existing tech in place at airports and even the better funded public events.
At which point it becomes a much simpler version of the problem of shooting down ballistic missiles. Think stuff like the Phalanx which is basically a computer attached to a minigun with the human in the loop theoretically agreeing to fire.
Modern drones are very much along the same level of danger as mortars. If you are close enough to deploy one, you can cause some real chaos. But a competent military can minimize the threat considerably.
And... much like mortars, the real threat is against civilian targets where you might not have a machine gun or two controlled by a few microphones and a gimbal... yet. The world is real fucked so give it a few years until that is the norm in a lot of countries.
Pfft. Drones. The markup on drones is garbage! How are you gonna gouge the taxpayers with a $10,000 screwdriver with drones?
Oooh. Wait. Volume. 100,000 $100 screwdrivers! Yes!
Okay, withdrawn. Lets do drones.