I don't disagree with your theme, but I think in this case it has less to do with the grenades Trump is randomly exploding and more to do with the E-7 simply being the wrong solution.
In the past it was useful for nations to opt for an American solution even if it wasn’t the most optimal precisely because of America being a dependable and trustworthy ally.
Well this was quite openly communicated, why germany bought the F35 for example. To still get (nuclear) protection. (with the homebuild Tornados phasing out and the Eurofighter not getting a licence so easy, only the F35 is capable of delivering nukes with german pilots).
That's a true claim today. The defence industry moves surprisingly slowly for a field where more advanced technology is such an advantage so it probably will be true for close to another decade as well because Europe has no native fifth gen fighter.
However the story might be different in a decade as sixth gen aircraft like Tempest are entering service and probably other modern technologies like unmanned/autonomous drones and hypersonic and directed energy weapons are more widely deployed. Connectivity between units in the field is also clearly a huge deal that is going to matter more and more and that is going to require a level of interoperability and trust that won't be kind to "partners" who aren't good team players.
On that kind of timescale I expect "buying American" will be much less attractive to most "allies" of the US than it has been for most of the past century and it will show exactly in decisions like who is making and buying whose planes.
F35 has far better bvr capabilities than the eurofighter and in practice ends up being far more useful in the air superiority role.
Eurofighter is really only good for peacetime patrols, the F35 will detect and shoot down enemies in real conflict far before the Eurofighter can do anything.
In a bizarre hypothetical conflict you would certainly not want to engage a F35 in an Eurofighter, the Eurofighter would be knocked out of the sky long before it could even see the F35. It certainly couldn’t turn on it’s radar.
One would hope, as the Eurofighter is a 20-year-old design. There are older fighters that serve their purposes quite well, but the F35 will end up being compared against fighters yet to appear. And I wonder whether any of these birds will be effective during the day in a modern battlefield before the missile and radar systems are taken out.
I won't be put in (public) writing, but it's a same thing as “no-one gets fired for buying IBM”. Sometimes it's part of a bigger international agreement, like, you buy food and we buy weapons or sth.
Or more realistically because no one else actually produces enough missile or bullets to shoot. It's like France being such a joke right now suggesting that Ukraine use their missile system instead of the USA's.
Oh France sure how long until you can supply a fraction of what we are buying from the USA? What a decade!?!?! Ukraine won't exist in a decade if we wait and what's that you won't even ramp production unless you can get guarantees from multiple member nations? What a joke.
That may well be, but if there had been a different person in the White House (or what's left of it) they would have most likely bought it anyway. They're just not going to come out and say it but the 'strategic' element is what points to that, I doubt the US would have withdrawn in Juli if not for Trump, Hegseth and their buddies. This is just one more program they've gutted.
