Suspend not terminate. Btw it's not just F-35 it's a whole package of weapon systems but unfortunately for a frenchy like you the F-35 has mentally haunted you that all that is in your mind is F-35. What are you going to do when UAE finally decides to go a long with what Biden wants or Biden caves and a deal goes through? It's funny how when Trump was president the buying the french plane wasn't even a conversation but the F-35 was.
Come down to earth, this is a chess game: We sacrificed our queen but we put your king in checkmate.
For you, success means winning in competitions between different hunters, and for that anything is allowed, no matter what the method. Your goal is more or less world hegemony and therefore you have to win everything. In this approach the qualities of the aircraft count a little, but not much: the power of the USA, its extraterritorial laws, its ITAR or CAASTA rules, its diplomatic influence and its will to destroy European military aeronautics and the propaganda that presents the aircraft as a marvel count much more.
This is why the F-35 is half as expensive in Finland as it is in the UAE, the Americans, when they want to win a contract, are able to listen to the most secret conversations and adapt the prices to be unbeatable.
Our objective is not world hegemony, nor even the destruction of the US military aeronautics industry, no our objective is to keep a national military aeronautics industry at the best world level. As the French market is too small for that, we have to export 50% of our production. For the Rafale we plan to buy 225 of them, which means that we have to export about 225.
And Finland has helped us a lot to achieve this goal: indeed I already said that the F-35 in Finland was half the price of the UAE, this must have been known, before the decision was made public (we also have secret services) and the UAE was offended to be taken for idiots.
So the negotiations for the sale of 60 Rafales, which had not progressed for 12 years, were suddenly unblocked and to send a clear message of French preference to the USA, the UAE even increased the number of Rafales purchased from 60 to 80 without demanding any compensation! We are now at 242 Rafales exported, which makes this program a success and ensures the sustainability of Dassault for at least 10 years.
If we have the impression that the F-35 programme is a failure, it is because if Dassault managed one of its programmes in the same way as L.M., it would go bankrupt. So for us, L.M. is lining its pockets, but this is an anomaly of the American system.
