The U.S. State Department’s approving of the sale of 48 F-35 fifth generation fighters to Saudi Arabia marks a significant change in policy on the export of the aircraft, which has considerable implications not only for the balance of power in the Middle East, but also for fighter markets globally. It follows the announcement by U.S. President Donald Trump in November 2019 of an intention to sell the aircraft. As the only fifth generation fighter type in production in the Western world, the F-35 was previously marketed primarily to NATO members, allowing it to dominate European markets, with Australia, Switzerland South Korea, Japan, Singapore and Israel being its only clients outside the alliance. Although designated a major non-NATO ally, Saudi Arabia represents an entirely different kind of client, with its political system, economic development level, and geopolitical alignment all bearing strong contrasts to those of preceding clients. The loosening of export restrictions to allow F-35 sales to the country sets a strong precedent for the fighter being offered to a much wider range of clients outside the developed world, allowing it to be marketed as a replacement for Cold War era F-16s and F-5s that were exported much more widely across much of the Third World.
In those markets where it has been offered, the F-35 has consistently won every tender, with clients consistently evaluating it to be far more capable than both fourth generation American fighters such as the F-18E/F, and than the competing pan-European Eurofighter, French Rafale, and Swedish Gripen. From Finland, Switzerland and Belgium, to South Korea and Singapore, no client which had been offered the F-35 had turned it down in favour of an imported fourth generation fighter. Other Western fighter programs have thus been able to gain exports almost exclusively by targeting clients which have not been permitted to procure the F-35, as is clear when considering the foreign client bases for the Rafale and Eurofighter, and for the latest production blocks of F-16s and F-18s. The extend of the F-35’s superiority has been such that European fighter aircraft have been outcompeted not only abroad, but also on domestic markets, with significant pressure from local industry in the United Kingdom and Germany failing to prevent their governments from deprioritising procurements of the locally produced Eurofighter to favour the F-35.
F-35 sales to a wider client base are expected to result in a major fall in sales of both American fourth generation fighters, and more significantly of European fighters. While the much lighter and simpler F-16 Block 70/72 has significant cost and maintenance advantages, allowing it to appeal to less economically developed clients even if they are offered the F-35, the F-18E/F, Rafale and Eurofighter all have comparable costs to the newer fifth generation aircraft. Although production of the F-18 will end in 2027, European states are not expected to operationalise post-fourth generation fighters for the foreseeable future, meaning competition from the F-35 could effectively lock them out of foreign markets. Europe’s four largest fighter export successes in the past two decades were all direct results of these countries not being permitted to procure F-35s. These include the recent Turkish deal to procure the Eurofighter, which followed the blocking of Turkish efforts to procure the F-35 and the new F-16 Block 70/72, as well as prior Rafale sales to the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, and Egypt.
Multiple coinciding factors are likely to have influenced the decision to relax restrictions on F-35 exports. The development of the F-47 sixth generation fighter, which is scheduled to enter service in the mid-late 2030s, makes the F-35’s technologies significantly less sensitive. Furthermore, Lockheed Martin’s plans to develop a ‘5+ generation’ variant of the F-35 are expected to significantly increase the discrepancies in combat potential between F-35 variants, allowing Washington to still influence regional power balances and ensure that many F-35 clients are still more constrained in their fleets’ capabilities. Restricting Arab states’ access to ‘5+ generation’ technologies for their F-35s, for example, while providing these to Israel, would allow the Israeli qualitative military edge to be sustained. A further factor is the recent confirmed service entry of the J-35 fifth generation fighter in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force and Navy, with Chinese efforts to market this advanced aircraft abroad potentially gaining significant traction if there is no Western alternative on offer. Offering the F-35 to countries with growing defence ties with China, such as Thailand and the United Arab Emirates, could when paired with economic and political pressure help Washington to close these markets off to Chinese exports.
A further factor is the saturation of NATO member states’ fleets with F-35s, which is expected to occur once all the fighters already ordered are delivered in the mid-2030s. This makes opening new tiers of clients important to be able to sustain newly expanded levels of production into the late 2030s and 2040s. Delaying the offering of the F-35 to new clients such as Saudi Arabia had ensured that allies within NATO will remain ahead in receiving their aircraft now that years long queues for production have developed. The importance of a wider client base to absorb the full capacity of production lines may grow further as the U.S. Air Force plans to significantly reduce its own F-35 procurements, and as competition for funding from the F-47, the B-21 bomber, and other programs may cause further reductions to domestic orders in future.
The shift in policy on F-35 sales has the potential to provide hundreds of billions of dollars in additional revenue to the defence sectors of the United States and other program partners, including not only the costs of sales, but also of spare parts, refurbishment, new weaponry, and upgrades over the aircraft’s lifetimes. A single F-35 is currently projected to cost close to half a billion dollars over its life cycle, with the rate at which iterative blocks, new upgrade packages, and new weapons types have seen their costs rise, expected to increase this by hundreds of billions of dollars by the mid-2030s, providing the potential for tremendous revenues for the program from an expanded client base. The potential for a significant fall in market share for non-American fighter aircraft, furthermore, will not only affect European allies, but also China, and Russia as they face far more difficult competition in markets such as Southeast Asia and the Arab world. The unprecedented control the United States can maintain over foreign operators’ fleets through the F-35’s logistics system and software will also represent a tremendous geopolitical asset should the aircraft proliferate widely as the F-16 did. With the United States poised to gain significant geopolitical and economic benefits from a wider F-35 export profile, the unprecedented extent of the stealth aircraft’s combined cost and performance advantages over other Western fighters makes a major transformation of global fighter markets appear likely should there be a significant loosening of export restrictions.
Bio:
Abraham Abrams is an expert in international security and military affairs specialising in combat aviation, and author of the book F-35 Joint Strike Fighter : A Great and Terrible Program. As a long-time analyst of the American defence sector, particularly in the context of its influence on broader global security and geopolitical trends, he has closely studied the F-35 program’s development for over a decade. Abrams holds a masters degree in War Studies from King’s College, London with a dissertation on the post-Cold War modernisation of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, as well as a prior masters in International Relations.
