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...which is, of course, why the F-35 program is developed in a way that expands European military production, lowers the cost per unit such that a fifth-generation multi-role fighter is competitive on cost grounds with fourth-generation European staples, allowing larger and higher quality air forces than otherwise supportable while also crowding out a number of competitors to such a point that the closest European alternative, are talking delivery dates in the late 2030s to 2040s.
Set aside that the United States ran an entirely separate and exclusive fifth-generation air-superiority program to completion in parallel. The F-35 alone has been structured in a way to ensure that involved parties are buying into an American fighter programs and so will continue to align their defense policies with the US for as long as they want to maintain the F-35s they have bought and built. It also, by virtue of serving as a common platform, expands the capacity for cross-servicing and loaning as parts of coalitions and alliance burden-sharing, meaning that partners across Europe, Asia, and in the Middle East can surge capacity hardware to eachother in case of crisis, without having to establish entirely new training programs or logistic trains, greatly expanding the speed and flexibility of alliance-level response coordination. The interoperability savings are a significant advantage that directly addresses one of the current observed difficulties of the Ukraine war, of the trainup to foreign equipment.
'The F-35 is built with partner assistance because the US is weak' is trying to invent a sin out of a virtue. The F-35 is built in foreign countries so that they will buy it, and in doing so create economies of scale that benefit not only all participants, but swept the European airforce recapitalization market of the late 2010s and so far going forward in the 2020s. The F-35 program has been one of the most ambitious defense industry programs since the Ford super-carriers, and more importantly has become one of the most successful aviation projects of the last half century in terms of international scope and expanding production of a new air fighter.
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