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Comment by ceeplusplus | Hacker News Reader

Not a surprising outcome given Europe's underspending on defense. The US has long been subsidizing EU defense via security guarantees and foreign bases and this is the natural outcome of falling behind in domestic R&D spending and relying on US defense.

The F35 might have been a colossal money blackhole but given two equally inefficient defense contractors the one with more money wins.

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I think it's the opposite. Now that countries are spending more on their militaries there's more money in the budget for operating costs. The main benefit the Gripen has over the F-35, especially now when F-35s are getting cheaper to buy, is the lower operating cost. If that's not an issue then using the same platform as other NATO countries combined with scoring political points with the US makes it hard for others to compete. These huge military deals are never only about performance and matching the needs of the buyer, they're also political.

Gripen and its predecessors was developed precisely because Sweden was alliance free and needed to not be dependent on security guarantees from the US.

South Korea's KF-21 doubtlessly isn't as good as the F-35 (no internal weapons bay for one thing) but it seems like it should be better, or at least stealthier, than any of the European 4th generation fighters. And South Korea created it for a small fraction of what the F-35 cost to develop. I think there is a lot of room for Europe to produce better fighters without the massive America-style spending. Politics/bureaucracy is probably a major impediment though.

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