Government sources confirmed in early August 2025 that preliminary contacts had been indefinitely suspended.
Spain’s decision to cancel the F-35 acquisition was driven by a mix of budgetary rules, industrial policy, and strategic concerns.
The government’s €10.471 billion defense plan requires that 85% of funds be invested in European programs, making the U.S.-built F-35 incompatible with current spending priorities. Although Spain had allocated €6.25 billion in 2023 for a fighter to replace the AV-8B Harrier and C-15M Hornets, and had submitted a non-binding Request for Information, those steps were suspended.
Officials cited restricted access to the F-35’s critical systems, which limits national control and prevents integration of local technologies. The cost of the necessary infrastructure to maintain the aircraft and a unilateral price increase were also cited as negative factors.
The government aims to avoid dependence on non-European suppliers and instead support European initiatives like the Eurofighter and FCAS, aligning procurement with industrial participation and strategic autonomy objectives.
The decision also aligns with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s resistance to NATO’s 5% GDP defense spending target, limiting the government’s financial flexibility while reinforcing its emphasis on European defense autonomy.
That’s great news. Airbus has shown they can build airplanes given enough budget, it can definitely translate to military planes as well. If not, French or Swedish industries can profit from it.
At least some good news, back home in Switzerland our government is cowering before Trump, reassuring him that we will buy the F-35 even though they just put a flat 39% tariff on us…they even flew to Washington to improve our offer, whatever that means, fucking cowards.
The whole world should stop buying stuff from usa, we should let tRump marinate in his own juices.
Why isn’t that happening?You don’t have to be nice to a bully?!? It’s probably money but can someone eli5 this to me? Are we so dependent on everything American? Or is this a long game, wait this storm out?
Europe doesn’t have the manufacturing capacity to arm Ukraine. It has the know-how but it just doesn’t produce enough arms. Why? Because they thought they don’t need it. Europe thought that in a case of any conflict US will help it so they just need to bare minimum of everything. Now that they realized USA is not a reliable partner (about 8 years too late if you ask me) they are trying to expand their capacity but it’s really difficult and will take years. You have to build the factories, hire and train workers, find new sources of raw materials, figure out how to transport it… On top of that USA realizes what is happening so they are putting pressure on everyone to keep buying American weapons. The trade deal requires Europe to buy billions worth of arms from USA so now they have to invest money in local production while spending it in USA at the same time.
How did we get here? Shortsighted and corrupt leaders, especially in Germany.
Like, iphones, Coke, McDonalds and Facebook, WhatsApp and on and on ?
Ask the average Joe to stop buying coke, you will have your answer.
The pedophile has been already festering in his bile for so long he has turned sickly orange.
Father Nurgle loves him for that.
It’s almost like going around spouting “America First” everywhere got other countries thinking, “What about us first?” Maybe those dirty “globalists” had a point.
Not just that but there is evidence that the US intentionally feature limits planes that they sell to foreign governments, to the point that they can disable them remotely.
How any government can trust US made planes is beyond me.
I’m not sure a remote disable is even needed, if they can just withhold spare parts.
There is no ability to disable remotely. That’s just trump spitting bull shit again
Nice article here on why a kill switch is unnecessary. It goes into the supply chain of parts, control over maintenance and IP, and associated systems tied in with the fighter’s advanced features.
Its development was in coordination with (at the time in the 90s), and while a lot of funding was the US, it was built as something for us and our allies, even if those relations are strained now. There are a lot of countries that make things for the F-35, and if a killswitch were discovered, I can’t imagine it would please any of those countries and they could cease supplying parts or services the US needs in turn from them.
To reiterate, there is no evidence to date that F-35s in service anywhere feature some kind of dedicated capability that can be used to fully disable the jets at the literal or figurative touch of a button. What is true is that Joint Strike Fighters are subject to particularly significant U.S. export and other governmental controls. Virtually all F-35s in service worldwide are dependent in critical ways on proprietary support from the U.S. government and contractors in the United States.
“You don’t need a ‘kill switch’ to severely hamper the utility of an exported weapons system, you just stop providing support for it and it will wither away, some systems very quickly,” TWZ‘s own Tyler Rogoway wrote on X yesterday. “The more advanced the faster the degradation.”
I’m no expert on this, but it all sounds pretty reasonable. If anyone understand better, please feel free to correct anything I’ve said!
If John Deere has the ability to remotely shut down your tractor because they detected that you tried to change the oil on it yourself, then Lockheed Martin ABSOLUTELY has a kill switch installed on critical systems that allows Uncle Sam to remotely disable the plane. The US entirely abandoned the F-14 because Iran inherited the Shah’s old fleet of them. This seems way more economical if someone Uncle Sam deems unfriendly has F-35s than developing an entire new fighter jet
While it sounds true, there’s no direct evidence. Keep in mind the average European military has better signal interception and analysis than the average farmer.
Lower KDA though.
From what I remember, it wasn’t Trump saying it, it was Lockheed Martin.
FYI the word “globalist” doesn’t mean “person who thinks globally”, it is just a 1-1 replacement for “the Jews”.
Hopefully Canada follows suit.
Great decision. It will be interesting to see what they will get now. From what I’ve read the only options were F-35 or Eurofighters and they said they will not buy Eurofighters because they already have those and don’t want to rely on a single platform that much.
This is only an issue for the Navy that has single light aircraft carrier. It currently launches Harriers but those will be decommissioned by UK soon and Spain will be last country still using them. Recently they announced plans to build two more light aircraft carriers and one full scale one. So they can try using Harriers a bit longer, wait for the full scale aircraft carrier or buy some Eurofighters just for the navy. Even if the navy will lose the ability to deploy fighter jets I don’t think it will be a big issue for Spain. They are not planning any middle east invasions anytime soon.
Spain is going to wait for FCAS which it is part of but I don’t know if the navy can wait that long
Perhaps a certain winged lion would be of interest, mi amigo?
What’s that
E: Ah the Saab one
